Sore legs and sore heads characterised today’s broiling 229 kilometre stage to Marseilles. If the riders were feeling both the heat and the distance, the race convoy as a whole was suffering a nasty case of déjà vu.

It had been too good to be true, a whole ten days of the Tour without the ‘d’ word — doping — rearing it’s ugly head. But then in a surreal twist, came a scandal that involved a rider, Patrik Sinkewitz, who was no longer even in the race, after crashing out three days ago.

The feel-good factor in England, that swept away the doubts about the Tour’s future, has finally evaporated. Now the old spectres, of a culture of cheating that won’t go away, of training camps where riders ‘prep’ themselves with their personal chemistry sets, of sponsors that look the other way, is haunting the peloton once more.

T-Mobile, who have fought kicking and screaming against the cultural resistance to cleaning up cycling, must be crestfallen to find that one of their own riders has brought their house into disrepute. Who will have complete confidence in their team now, when they insist, as they have done for the past year, that they believe in clean competition?

This may be the final nail in the coffin for the professional scene in Germany, where tolerance for doping scandals has reached breaking point. This year’s World Road Championships in Stuttgart may also be under threat after the local authority indicated that it would withdraw funding if cycling failed to clean up its act.

To the hapless Sinkewitz being downed after colliding with a spectator on Sunday in Tignes may have seemed like a professional catastrophe. Now it looks as if his broken nose and associated injuries are the least of his worries.