The 2009 Tour de France will have a tough mountain stage on its penultimate day in a tradition-busting innovation that could complicate Lance Armstrong's possible return. The route, aimed at keeping suspense going to the very end of cycling's 106-year-old showcase race, was unveiled Wednesday in Paris. The steep climb up the notorious Mont Ventoux may pose a particular challenge for seven-time Tour champion Armstrong, who even at his height never won on the rocky slopes of the fabled ascent in the south of France. “The Ventoux will blow things up,” predicted Jean-Francois Pescheux, who helped design the route as director of competitions for ASO, the company that organizes the Tour. Armstrong is making a comeback after three years of retirement, but it's still unclear whether he will race in the Tour. Johan Bruyneel, the manager of Armstrong's team, Astana, said Wednesday there is only a “50-50” chance that the American would race the Tour next year and that it would depend on whether organizers make him feel welcome. Ordinarily, the Tour finishes with a time trial on the penultimate day, deciding the race winner before what is largely a ceremonial ride into Paris on the last day. But next year, Mont Ventoux will be the 20th of the 21 stages. After 19 days of racing, the climb on which British rider Tom Simpson died in 1967 promises to be a test for tired legs and minds, and possibly decisive in selecting the winner. “It's a really hard climb and at the end of the Tour de France can give us big, big surprises,” said defending champion Carlos Sastre. The course should suit climbers like Sastre and fellow Spaniard Alberto Contador, the 2007 Tour champion, both because of the Mont Ventoux hurdle and because the time trials – which tend to suit more powerful riders, not climbers – will not be hugely long. The first time trial comes on Day 1 in Monaco, on a snaking 15-kilometer route with climbs, tricky hairpin bends and some of the same fast curves and straights used by Formula One at the fabled Monte Carlo Grand Prix. It should offer an immediate gauge of the favorites' form. From that point on, the three-week, 3,445-kilometer route will offer few opportunities for respite. The 20 major mountain climbs this year - which compare to 17 last year and an average of 22-23 in the four years before that - are spread over much of the race. “The classification is going to be fought from the start right to the finish,” said Australian Cadel Evans, runner-up in 2007 and 2008. British rider David Millar added: “it's a lot different to previous years. It's a lot more spectacular, changing all the time.” The course innovations come as the Tour is again reeling from doping scandals. Seven competitors last year were caught by dope testers - four of them for using a new advanced form of the endurance-boosting drug EPO. They included third-place finisher Bernhard Kohl, and three others - Italians Leonardo Piepoli and Riccardo Ricco and German Stefan Schumacher - who combined had won five of the 21 stages. In 2009, from its July 4 start in the principality of Monaco, the Tour will go across flatlands of the Mediterranean coast to Barcelona, Spain, for the first week and then head sharply uphill into the Pyrenees. The first Pyrenean stage, to the Arcalis mountain station, is also the longest of this year's Tour, at 224 kilometers. The steep uphill finish may give a solid early indication of possible overall favorites. After two more trying but likely not decisive days of ascents in the mountains that form the border between France and Spain, the Tour then goes through central and eastern France before tackling the Alps. Three days of climbs in those mountains, including the Tour's high-point at 2,473 meters on the Grand Saint-Bernard pass, followed by a second longer 40-kilometer individual time trial should further separate the field, ahead of the final Mont Ventoux nail-biter.
