Cycling: Tour de France organisers have designed a balanced route for the 95th edition of the race with a brutal climb up L'Alpe d'Huez in the final week set to potentially decide the eventual outcome.
Starting in Brest on July 5th, the 2008 Tour will run over 3,554km from the Brittany city to Paris with four hilly stages and five mountain stages, including three in the Alps.
"We wanted to put rhythm into the first week," Tour director Christian Prudhomme said. "We wanted to offer different scenarios. There will be possibilities to attack in every stage," he added.
The traditional opening time-trial prologue will be replaced with an opening 195-kilometer road stage from Brest to Plumelec.
Competition director Jean-Francois Pescheux said there would be no time bonuses throughout.
"The first week will not necessarily be the exclusive property of the sprinters," he said. "The end of the first stage, for example, is a two-kilometre slope. So a great finisher can win but also a sprinter or a rider who broke away earlier in the stage."
"We want the Tour to rediscover its romanticism. It means the plot will not be obvious," Prudhomme added.
Organisers also hope to avoid doping scandals.
"We are fed up with the (doping) affairs. Let's go back to sport," Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) president Patrice Clerc said.
In July, then leader Michael Rasmussen and Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov were both kicked out of the race amid doping scandals.