The 2013 Tour de France is breaking with several traditions as it starts with a sprint stage on Corsica Saturday. Here American Tejay van Garderen 24 second from left trains with his team on the island.
Laurent Cipriani/APWith riders in the Tour de France set to begin the race's 100th edition Saturday cycling is still coping with the fallout from doping scandals that have shaken the sport. But on the surface at least much will be new about this year's race which will lack last year's champion Bradley Wiggins.
Instead of the injured Wiggins his teammate Chris Froome 28 is many people's favorite to win this year's Tour particularly after he often seemed to be equal or perhaps even better than Wiggins in last year's race.
There's also something of a changing of the guard for American riders foremost among them Tejay van Garderen 24 who won the white jersey as the Tour's best young rider last year. Two other U.S. cyclists Andrew Talansky 24 and Ted King 30 will ride in the Tour de France for the first time.
Other changes await when the race begins in Corsica a first. Besides starting the race in Napoleon Bonaparte's birthplace Tour planners also shook things up by spurning the tradition of a prologue day instead choosing a flat sprinter friendly course for the first day. It's been 40 years since the race began with a pure sprinters' stage says Velo News.
The overall impression is that of a tradition's caretakers who would like to hurry away from recent events hoping to outrun the doping scandals that threaten to diminish the feat of racing on a bike for more than 2 000 miles.
Echoes of that long entrenched side of the sport were heard Friday when disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong told French newspaper Le Monde that it is impossible to win the Tour without doping.
The 2013 race will also lack three of Armstrong's former teammates. Perennial Tour riders George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer have retired. Both men testified in the U.S. Anti Doping Agency's case against Armstrong. Another veteran Chris Horner is sitting out with an injured knee. We should note Horner was not implicated in the USADA report.
The race will run from Saturday to July 21 a Sunday. Organizers say they expect 2 billion viewers worldwide to watch the Tour.
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