2010 Tour de France launched under doping suspicions (Roundup)

Paris - Organizers of the Tour de France presented Wednesday the course for next year's edition of the race as doping suspicions once again swirled around the world's most prestigious cycling event. The 2010 Tour de France will start on July 3 in the Dutch port of Rotterdam with an 8km prologue, the fifth time in its history the race has opened in the Netherlands. It will end on July 25 on the Champs Elysees in Paris. The 3,590km course favours strong climbers, such as last year's winner Alberto Contador of Spain and seven-time champ Lance Armstrong. It includes 23 mountains, two more than last year, and 3 mountaintop finishes. The last of those finishes, atop the legendary Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees, on July 22, will likely be the decisive stage in the race. As part of the celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the first time the Tour de France passed through the Pyrenees, the riders will be climbing the Col du Tourmalet twice, during the 16th stage and at the conclusion of the 17th. Next year's Tour also includes a rare foray over cobblestones. During the third stage, from Wanze, Belgium, to the French border town of Arenberg Porte du Hainaut, riders will be forced to ride over 13.2km of cobblestone surface, which becomes particularly treacherous in the rain. Contador will be considered the odds-on favourite to win his third Tour title next year. He and Armstrong both rode for the Kazakh Astana team in the 2009 Tour and both men said their rivalry made riding together difficult. Armstrong left Astana after the Tour and will return with a new team, Team RadioShack. In an interview published Wednesday in the daily L'Equipe, Contador said that not having Armstrong on his team next year 'removed a big thorn from my side.' He also said he did not consider the 38-year-old Armstrong his main rival. 'Andy Schleck worries me much more than Armstrong,' he said. Schleck of Luxembourg finished second in the 2009 Tour, just ahead of the American. The presentation took place the day after French media reported that the Paris public prosecutor's office had opened a preliminary investigation into doping after the discovery of a substantial amount of suspicious material during the running of this year's Tour. Several teams are targeted by the investigation, but most of the attention has been focused on Astana. Agents from the Office Against Damage to the Environment and Public Health reportedly recovered 'hundreds of syringes' and 'perfusion material' during the running of the race. These are currently being analyzed. The news of the investigation came a little more than one week after the French Anti-Doping Agency leaked a report that accused inspectors from the world's ruling body, the Union of International Cycling (UCI), of having accorded Astana preferential treatment during the Tour. The growing feud between the AFLD and the UCI leaves open the question of who will be in charge of doping tests for the 2010 Tour. In a statement released last week, the UCI accused AFLD head Pierre Bordry of 'sabotaging... the fight against doping' and said it would look at options for collaborating with another partner for anti-doping controls in France. More than nine months before the start of the Tour de France, the great race appears fated to go through more controversy.