Tour looks to rebound after scandal-scarred '07 race

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PARIS -- For cynics such as this correspondent, the highlight of Sunday's ceremonial stage came at the 75-kilometer mark, when the peloton rolled past the Laboratoire National de dépistage du dopage, which played a starring role in this scandal-scarred Tour.

Crowds along the Champs-Elysees were lighter than usual for the final day of the race. That had something to do with the weather: it poured in the morning; skies were overcast and leaden much of the day. It also had something to do with the dopage-related pall that settled over the event. It was also strange and a bit sad to think that the Discovery Channel team, which laid low for the first half of this Tour before seizing it by the throat, could scatter to the four winds after the season.

Alberto Contador's victory gives team director Johan Bruyneel a jaw-dropping eight Tour wins in the last nine years. A kind of Belgian Bill Parcells, he has proven himself peerless as both a race tactician and a judge of personnel; at finding the right guys, and plugging them into certain roles. I was struck during this Tour by the selflessness of Yaroslav Popovych, a huge talent whom we used to talk about as a successor to Lance Armstrong. But there he was doing the dirty work in the Alps and Pyrenees, attacking early to soften up Contador's rivals; riding a cruel tempo at the base of critical climbs to shed all but the true contenders.

Then you had Levi Leipheimer, the stoic Montanan, sliding without complaint over to the shotgun seat when it became apparent that this Tour would be Contador's show. Leipheimer's first-ever Tour stage win was one of the grace notes of this race. Very strange to think that the New York Yankees of cycling might not be here next year.

Which is not to say there will be no American team at the '08 Tour de France. Prediction: the darlings of next year's Tour will be a bunch of guys in argyle jerseys. They may not win a stage, but they'll be working hard every day to blow the race up. Hard, I should say, but clean.

The curtain having come down on the Tour, I took the Metro over to the Blvd. St. Germain, where Jonathan Vaughters hosted an informal press gathering. Vaughters, 34, is an ex-pro rider who got out of the sport early, at 29. It got old, he says, having to choose between disappointing his "my parents, my friends, the guys down at the local bike shop," or, as he put it, "have my wife deliver me a liter of blood in some hotel room."

With a stake of his own money a few years back, he started a developmental team that is now called SlipStream. Despite being the equivalent of a Triple-A squad, the SlipStream boys have created serious buzz, not only because of their jerseys -- I think, with that argyle, they're going for a kind of preppy look -- but because of a forward-thinking anti-doping ethos that looks even smarter in the wake of recent events.

Slipstream riders voluntarily submit to blood-profiling by an independent agency. They don't know when, or how often, the tests are coming. Not that it's much of an issue: Vaughters is careful to only sign riders who share his passion for clean sport.

SlipStream took a giant step on Sunday. A few hours after finishing the Tour, David Millar dropped by Vaughters' hotel to announce that he was signing with the squad. (Vaughters also said that elite American riders Dave Zabriskie and Christian Vande Velde would be donning the argyle next year).

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