Even after the biggest anti-doping sweep in cycling in years, few at the Tour de France are convinced the sport is now clean.
The house-cleaning on the eve of the Tour's July 1 start removed some of the favorites in the race's first edition of the post-Lance Armstrong era.
If there's any time when riders may be tempted to rely on blood doping to boost performance, some experts say, it's now -- when they begin three days of grueling climbs in the Alps. It will be the toughest part of the three-week race.
The recent doping expulsions won't remedy the sport's imbedded doping culture centering on suspect doctors, unscrupulous team coaches and riders hoping for an extra edge.
"It's not because there was a big kick to their ant hill that we can let ourselves think it's finished, and that everything has been solved," said Jerome Pineau, a French rider with the Bouygues Telecom team.
The question is how to step up the battle.
Scottish rider David Millar favors an amnesty for cyclists who come clean. The German T-Mobile team, after the scandal broke, told its riders to avoid seeing trainers or doctors whose reputations have been called into question.
Armstrong used to boast that he was the world's most tested athlete. And cycling's rulebook is already among the strictest in pro sports against performance enhancers.
All cyclists are subject to surprise year-round anti-doping tests, and many must tell the sport's authorities where they are at all times -- often by fax or via the Internet.
Doping tests are often ineffective, said Francaise des Jeux rider Carlos Da Cruz of France, because punishment is only meted out if sport officials are convinced that wrongdoing has occurred.
Patrick McQuaid, the head of cycling's governing body UCI, says no other sport ousts competitors from its events when their names turn up in doping investigations -- even before proven guilty or innocent.
That's just what happened to nine riders -- including 1997 Tour winner Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, who won the Giro d'Italia in May -- after their names emerged in a doping probe centering on a Spanish doctor.
The doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes, was arrested in May after Spanish police seized drugs and frozen blood at a Madrid clinic -- samples thought to have been readied for blood doping. He has denied any wrongdoing.
"I'm sure there are still other Dr. Fuentes' in the world," Pineau said. "One store has been closed, but others have been opened ... I think there are still riders trying to slip through the net."
The allegations were the biggest to rock the Tour since a scandal involving the Festina team nearly derailed the race in 1998.
Millar, a Saunier Duval rider, returned to the Tour this year from a two-year doping ban -- and says he is now clean. He's urging others to join him.
"In the next few years, the big guys in cycling have to say they are doing it clean -- They have to actually say it," he said, adding that many are afraid to do so because "they have skeletons in their closet."
Riders cover more than 3,000km in the three-week Tour. Every stage strains muscles, burns huge amounts of energy, and drains massive amounts of water from the body through sweat.
"So there's more drive to do that [doping] when ... you know it only takes small steps to get to the highest level," said T-Mobile team doctor Lothar Heinrich.
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