The Tour de France, as we have known it over the past decade, appears to be dead. The years of performances that have become synonymous with suspicion are coming to an end. The surreal speeds on mountains climbs, “extra-terrestrial” time trials and shows of stamina without any visible signs of suffering, may now be over, if the Tour’s parent company, ASO have their way.

With so many of the Tour’s modern champions discredited by doping allegations and scandal, it appears that we can expect radical action on the part of the race organisation to prevent further damage to their event.

In a remarkable interview today, on German website sueddeutsche.de, Tour director Christian Prudhomme revealed that he plans to cut ties with the International Cycling Union (UCI), that he believes economic interests may be behind the latest drug scandals and that, if he has his way, doping controls at next year’s Tour will be run by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the French Anti-Doping Agency.

“Next year’s Tour will be as clean as possible,” Prudhomme said. “That means we will work with WADA and the French anti-doping agency (LNDD). Without the UCI, it will be better.”

“Let’s got straight to the point,” he said. “I respect the UCI, but right now I trust nobody — least of all the UCI. We were ready to work with the UCI to fight doping and have supported them financially. But when you have made an alliance, looked the other person right in the eyes, then you expect to be told the truth. But that didn’t happen.”

“You can’t make the Tour de France responsible for everything… We also have an international federation, but they are worth nothing. The UCI never wanted a clean Tour.”

ASO and the UCI have been involved in a bitter feud for almost three years now, largely over the establishment of cycling’s answer to the Champions League, the season-long Protour. This feud has been both economic and ethical in nature. Now it appears to have become one of the keys to the spate of doping scandals that have polluted cycling.

Prudhomme continued, accusing former UCI President Hein Verbruggen of attempting to destabilise the Tour, in order, so he claimed, to facilitate a buy-out of the race by a Dutch consortium. “Verbruggen wanted to buy the Tour, but we said ‘No thanks,’ so now he wants to get the price down,” he said.

These are troubled times with accusations and recriminations now flying back and forth over the Rasmussen Affair and the Tour’s sorry state. Lost in all of this, are the clean riders who really deserve our respect and applause for their efforts over the past three weeks, athletes who have turned their back on doping and who are prepared to suffer for what they believe in.

We can’t be sure who they are, or how many they number, but even as the Tour braces itself for further revelations, some of them are still here, turning their tired legs all the way to Paris.