If history is any indication, the 2007 Tour de France will be full of surprises.

Whenever there are no former winners on the start line — as will be the case this year — anything can happen. That was certainly the case with last year’s race, which had the largest number of surprises since Lance Armstrong took the first of his seven victories in 1999 — the only other time in the past 30 years when there were no previous winners in the field.

While uncertainty is a given, there are still favorites for the overall. The Astana team is led by two former podium finishers, German Andreas Klöden and Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov, both of whom are former team workers for 1997 Tour champ Jan Ullrich.

Caisse d’Épargne has the two top Spaniards, last year’s runner-up Oscar Pereiro and team leader Alejandro Valverde (who crashed out of his first two Tours). Armstrong’s former team, Discovery Channel, features America’s top hope Levi Leipheimer and young Spanish climber Alberto Contador. Other top contenders include Russian Denis Menchov of Rabobank, Australians Cadel Evans (Predictor-Lotto) and Michael Rogers (T-Mobile), German prospect Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner), and two CSC riders, Spanish veteran Carlos Sastre and Luxembourg’s Fränk Schleck.

What’s awaiting them all is a course that is similar to the one in 2003, when Armstrong had to call on all of his considerable reserves and willpower to withstand the challenges of Joseba Beloki (who crashed out), Vinokourov and, ultimately, Ullrich.

Big names out
None of the recent Tour de France winners will start this year’s race for primarily two reasons — doping and retirement. No Floyd Landis (in limbo). No Ullrich (retired). No Armstrong (retired). And no Marco Pantani (deceased).

Beyond the past champions, other favorites such as 2005 runner-up Ivan Basso have been excluded by doping allegations.

But doping in cycling is nothing new. The sport has been trying to clean itself up ever since stage 13 of the 1967 Tour de France — four decades ago — when British legend Tom Simpson collapsed and died on the hot summer slopes of Mont Ventoux. Amphetamines, the most common performance-enhancing drug at the time, were later found in his back pocket. The following year, the Tour inaugurated drug testing under the banner of the “Good Health Tour,” which started in the mineral-water city of Vittel.

Thirty years later, despite all the drug tests, cycling had another major shock. On the way to the start of the 1998 Tour, French police intercepted a vehicle from the world’s top team, Festina, and discovered a trunk full of banned drugs, including the blood booster EPO. Once it was ascertained Festina was, in fact, engaged in systematic doping, the whole team was thrown out of the race. That led to another crackdown on doping practices, pinpointed by the following year’s “Tour of Redemption.”

Another decade later, despite more sophisticated testing and constant monitoring of every rider’s blood parameters, a doping cloud still hangs over the sport.

In the months leading up to this year’s Tour, three ongoing scandals were pulling professional cycling apart. First came the renewed scrutiny of the 50-or-so athletes implicated in Spain’s year-old Operación Puerto investigation after German investigators announced April 3 that DNA testing linked bags of blood seized by Spanish police last year with Ullrich, and Basso admitted he was linked to Puerto.

Then, on May 14-23, came the long-awaited public hearing for 2006 Tour winner Landis in his fight against suspension for a positive testosterone test at last year’s race; a result was expected a few days before the start of this year’s Tour.

Following the Landis hearing, on May 25, the 1996 Tour winner Bjarne Riis, now boss of Team CSC, revealed he used EPO when he won the race; he spoke after similar confessions were made by six of his former Telekom teammates, including the current sports directors of the German teams T-Mobile and Gerolsteiner, and the six-time Tour green jersey points winner Erik Zabel, who today races for Team Milram.

After this barrage of bad news, the Tour de France organizers asked the 21 participating teams not to select any riders implicated in the Puerto blood-doping ring. The Tour brass also questioned teams that were standing by their staff and riders who had admitted to doping in the mid-1990s.

The course
But the show must go on. This year that show includes six tough mountain stages, two 50km plus individual time trials and far fewer “easy” stages than usual. The biggest change from the 2006 Tour is that climbers will reach the mountains earlier, at stage 7 instead of waiting until stage 10, meaning there are three fewer days for the sprinters to flex their muscles before they have to go into survival mode. And looking at the opening week, the only stages that are likely to end in mass sprints are stage 1 in Canterbury, England; stage 2 in Ghent, Belgium; stage 3 in Compiègne, France; and stage 6 in Bourg-en-Bresse. In other words, the 2007 Tour will become a free-for-all far sooner than it did last year.

The mountains may play an even bigger role than usual

Photo: Getty Images

As for the mountain stages, all six either end at a summit (stage 8 — Tignes; stage 14 — Plateau-de-Beille; and stage 16 — the Col d’Aubisque) or right after a major climb (stage 7 — Col de la Colombière before Le Grand Bornand; stage 9 — Col du Galibier before Briançon; and stage 15 — Col de Peyresourde before Loudenvielle).

Besides making the climbs really count, the new race director Christian Prudhomme has cut out most of the long transfers between stages — which in the past have added to the fatigue of riding the Tour. The only significant ones remaining are through the Channel Tunnel after the two English stages, and the transfer by TGV express train on the morning of the final day.

Prudhomme is hopeful that this year’s Tour, in the spirit of the 1968 Good Health Tour and 1999 Tour of Redemption, will be a race remembered for its sportsmanship, not its cheating.