October 26, 2006 — The new Director of the Tour de France, Christian Prudhomme, claims that reducing the duration of the three-week Tour “amounts to a witch hunt” according to a recent AFP report. The UCI recently suggested reducing the length of the Tour and the other grand tours as part of an effort to combat doping.

On Wednesday (Oct. 25), the manager of the Pro Tour, Alain Rumpf, declared: “If the duration or the difficulty of the Grands Tours (Vuelta, Giro, Tour de France) should be identified as a factor (for doping), the UCI will not hesitate to act.”

Prudhomme slammed UCI President Pat McQuaid’s recent proposals to reduce the length of the Tour de France. “When you order and audit (as the UCI is doing of the Grand Tours), you don’t announce the conclusions at the same time as the audit starts. It’s the desire for glory and to win that is pushing doping. And I’m convinced that, if there is one sport where participants don’t need to dope, it’s cycling; a sport of relative value.”

In apparent reference to a rumour that Tour organizers were savvy to the alleged use of testosterone supplements by 2006 winner, Floyd Landis, Prudhomme declared that the Tour was not aware prior to the July 25 laboratory analysis showing the American had tested positive. He went on to state his opposition to doping by quoting Albert Londres: “The enemy is doping and it’s causing ravages everywhere. We want to put a sword into its kidneys.”

Meanwhile, Deputy Director, Jean-Marie Leblanc (Tour Director prior to Prudhomme) decried that “cycling is losing its soul” as the size of the teams of the ProTour increases. “There are cyclists who never meet, barely know each other and it seems that perverts part of what the sport is about,” said Leblanc who steps down from his position at the end of 2006.