Neither Lance Armstrong nor the No. 1 jersey traditionally worn by the defending
champion will be seen at this year's Tour de France. Those two things aren't
linked, but the absence of both hint at just how tough a hill cycling must climb
in a bid to restore its credibility.

Two years after Armstrong's retirement, the sport has yet to find someone who
even looks capable of replacing the popular and controversial seven-time
champion. More troubling, the 2,200-mile, 23-day race launches Saturday in
London without 2006 winner Floyd Landis. His nearly yearlong fight to retain
that title in the wake of doping charges has been the most visible but hardly
cycling's only scandal.

And talk about bad timing: There's a very good chance Landis' appeal will be
decided by an arbitration panel in plenty of time to steal some thunder from the
race.

"I'm not making a statement, not by any means. I have sponsor and charity
commitments, and I've got kids. There's nothing more to it," Armstrong said
about his planned absence during an interview Thursday with The Associated
Press.

The Discovery team he once commanded and still owns a piece of will be led this
time around by Levi Leipheimer, a 33-year-old regarded as America's best hope.
Asked to pick a favorite, Armstrong named Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan and
Andreas Kloeden of Germany, both members of the Astana team.

Armstrong, though, said he wouldn't offer any help or so much as meddle in
Discovery director Johan Bruyneel's business. He warned against reading anything
into that, either.

"I'm not one of those guys who say the sport has no credibility, that it's like
pro wrestling ... or any of that garbage. I don't believe the 'organizers' are
truly organized," he said. "But the Tour is not a farce, and it's not a gimmick.
It's hard. I believe it's still a great event, and I'll watch every day. I still
love what it represents."

Yet Armstrong knows the number of sponsors and fans who share that view is
falling precipitously. Too many see cycling's showcase event, and the sport
itself, as riddled from top to bottom with performance-enhancing cheats.

Armstrong was hounded by doping allegations throughout his reign. Only two weeks
ago, he defended himself yet again against a new book that he said contained "a
demonstrably false string of sensational, untrue and fabricated allegations"
recycled to cash in on cycling's tumultuous state and timed in conjunction with
the Tour's start.

No other prominent cyclist has matched Armstrong's unbeaten streak in real
courts and the court of public opinion, and a few haven't bothered to try.
Landis' defense against a positive test for synthetic testosterone stumbled
coming out of the gate - when he alternately suggested thyroid medication,
cortisone shots and-or Jack Daniels was responsible - and has taken several
strange detours since.

Over roughly the same span, 1996 Tour winner Bjarne Riis and a half-dozen riders
from a German team acknowledged using the blood-booster erythropoietin, or EPO;
1997 winner Jan Ullrich, who maintains his innocence, retired under a cloud of
suspicion after being banned from last year's Tour; and Ivan Basso, once
Armstrong's most promising rival and the 2005 runner-up, was slapped with a
two-year ban after being linked to the same Spanish doping investigation that
implicated Ullrich.

Tour director Christian Prudhomme told the AP recently that, "Cycling must not
only get its credibility back, but even more its dignity." Toward that end, 189
riders submitted to blood tests early Thursday morning, and none came back
positive. Even if those results remain the same over the course of the 2007 race
and its aftermath, cycling is hardly guaranteed to regain its dignity.

"On the heels of what happened just over the last 12 months in cycling, people
will have questions no matter what," Armstrong said. "If you get a guy who's
considered dirty, everybody will say, 'We told you so.' And what happens if a
guy who's considered clean, comes along and races as fast as anybody ever has?

"Well," he said, not waiting for an answer, "then he's got to be dirty, too. ...
(Doping) goes on in all of world sport; ours just polices itself better than any
other. But getting people to believe that is a lot easier said than done."


Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him
at jlitke@...


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