The Tour starts today.

Another Tour, another revelation on the eve of it.

These are generally happening every year now, but the latest revelations from Floyd Landis, which appear in the Wall Street Journal are making lots of things slip into place about the Armstrong phenomenum and the high possibility that 7 Tour wins was all a giant fraud.
The article is linked here: http://tinyurl.com/3xftw94
Landis alleged that bikes were sold off to fund the teams doping programme, in the article Trek do admit that some of the bikes went missing, apparently half the number they supplied to the team. These were seen for sale on the internet, during the early part of 2004 Landis was seen riding an old Trek bike while Lance was on his new Trek Madone. So I expect there are hundreds of Armstrong fans who have a team bike at home, unwilling to face the fact that they may have been part of the funding process for their hero's doping programme.

Whatever the outcome, Armstrong is damaged, but he's the biggest cash cow the sport's ever seen, the authorities and race organisers seem unwilling to remove him from the event, they have TV viewing figures and sponsorship deals to worry about. Teams and riders have been removed in the past for being under investigation, a policy which the Tour organisers ASO seemed to be employing the last few years, there is enough evidence in this case for the US to have started a federal investigation into the allegations from Landis, so I expect the cash cow can't be removed, that's bad for business.

We're about to witness one of the most incredible Tours in history, Radio Shack (Armstrong's team) are going to under a huge amount of scrutiny, they won't be able to stop the bus on a mountain road and get a blood transfusion. So what's going to happen, will he flounder in the last week without his normal boost, will we get an unexpected Tour champion if the survielance is hightened and the 'real' grand tour riders come to the top.

So my predictions are that we'll see some unusual names in the top ten, riders will have bad days again, like they used to back in the day, I also expect Armstrong not to finish for some reason, at this point I don't know what the reason will be, but expect him to come out all guns blazing. He may be a sporting fake and a generally unpleasant human being, but he's a fighter and this is going to be one spicy Tour.