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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Great news for cycling as we head into the 102nd Tour de France, which begins with Saturday\u2019s flat-as-a-cheeseboard time trial in the Dutch city of Utrecht: It\u2019s someone else\u2019s turn to wear the doping Cone of Shame. While allegations against Alberto Salazar have roiled track and field; while the doping guru behind Operacion Puerto has admitted having numerous clients in the upper reaches of pro soccer and tennis, cycling itself has been enjoying a period of almost-calm, in which the focus has been on the racing, and the controversies relatively benign.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, the Union Cycliste Internationale recently told Team Sky\u2019s Christopher Froome, you may &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; repose each night of the Tour in the five-star motor home the club had designed for you: to do so, ruled the governing body, would give the \u201813 Tour champion an unfair advantage over the common proles forced to bunk in hotels.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\u200BFroome can endure a dash of privation. He is a Kenyan-born Brit whose earliest training rides were in the Great Rift Valley. \u201CWe\u2019d spend the morning going down, and spend the rest of the day coming back up again,\u201D he told &lt;em&gt;SI&lt;/em&gt; last year. Froome is one of a quartet of strong favorites going into this year\u2019s race. Filling out the so-called Fab Four are Tinkoff-Saxo\u2019s Alberto Contador, who has won a jaw-dropping seven grand tours in his career, last May\u2019s Giro d\u2019Italia being the most recent; rising Colombian star Nairo Quintana of the Movistar team, and defending Tour champion Vincenzo Nibali of Astana.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nibali has had less turbulent off-seasons. Since descending from the top rung of the podium on the Champs-\u00C9lys\u00E9es last July, he has seen five riders with Astana ties suspended for \u201Cadverse anyalytical findings.\u201D Yes, we stated earlier that cycling has begun to distance itself from its drug-drenched past. That doesn\u2019t mean, alas, that the entire pro peloton has found the scruples of Ned Flanders. Astana in particular, seems unable to escape its past. With a team manager, Alexander Vinokourov, who was booted from the \u201907 tour for homologous blood doping; with 17 of its former and present riders revealed by the Italian paper &lt;em&gt;La Gazzetta dello Sport&lt;/em&gt; last December&amp;nbsp;to have ties with banned doctor Michele Ferrari, the team in turquoise seems to carry a propensity for doping in its DNA, dating back to its days as Liberty Seguros. Expecting Astana to suddenly hew to the straight and narrow is like expecting Slytherin House to host a fundraiser for stray kittens.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; make defending champion Nibali cycling\u2019s Draco Malfoy. The two look nothing alike. Not only is he clean, Nibali insisted to &lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt; in a recent interview, but his sport is \u201Cthe cleanest sport because of all the doping controls.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CToday we have a biological passport, regular doping control, race controls. If you are doping, you will be caught \u2026 Risking and cheating today is for stupid people.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of the \u201915 Tour\u2019s four pre-race favorites, Nibali has done the least so far this season, muddling through the Tour of Dubai in 90th place, flashing inconsistent form at last month\u2019s Criterium du Dauphine, won by Froome. To deflect attention from himself, possibly, and get inside the Movistar rider\u2019s head, Nibali asked reporters at the Dauphine, rhetorically, \u201CAnd where is Quintana?\u201D While Nibali, Froome and Contador were putting in miles in Tenerife before the Dauphine, Quintana had chosen to train at altitude in his native Colombia. The Sicilian seemed to be implying that his young rival had stayed in South America to elude drug-testers.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pointing out that he\u2019d spent two months racing in Europe earlier in the season, Quintana explained to the Dutch paper &lt;em&gt;Het &lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nieuwsblad&lt;/em&gt;\u2013quite reasonably, it seemed\u2013that \u201CI can not spend a year away from my family, my friends, my world.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Besides, he\u2019d made rather a dramatic impression on Nibali during those two months, particularly on the fifth day of the Italian stage race Tirreno-Adriatico, when Quintana tore the legs off his rivals, attacking five kilometers from the summit of the somewhat dauntingly named Monte Terminillo. Riding into blizzard conditions, the Colombian displayed a sharp climbing punch reminiscent of a young Contador, attacking Michael Rasmussen like a spider monkey on the slopes of the Peyresourde in \u201807.&amp;nbsp;But on this day\u2013last March 17th\u2013the 32-year-old Contador had no answer. Quintana took the stage, and the race.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contador hopes to become just the eighth rider in cycling history to win the Giro and Tour de France in a single season. There\u2019s something profoundly unnatural about riding a grand Tour; tackling two in three months is not a reasonable request to make of one\u2019s body. How will Contador hold up in the final week of this Tour, which ends, cruelly, with four straight days in the Alps, the last of those being the dastardly, iconic, 21-switchback Alpe d\u2019Huez?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A better question might be, How will he hold up in the first week? A year ago, the race was shaken and stirred in Stage 5, which sent the riders over nine sectors of cobbles, resulting in big time gaps and the loss of its defending champion. Froome crashed twice, badly injuring&amp;nbsp; his left wrist, and couldn\u2019t continue. Contador fell heavily five stages later, and was also forced to abandon.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This year, the cobbles come a day earlier. Stage 4, from Seraing to Cambrai, features seven &lt;em&gt;secteurs&lt;/em&gt; of cobbles, for a total of \u201Cjust over 13 kilometers of trembling,\u201D as Tour director Christian Prudhomme put it. All eyes will be on Quintana, who has done relatively little riding on the &lt;em&gt;pave&lt;/em&gt;, and who will be in double trouble if the weather is foul. As it was for last year\u2019s cobbled stage.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Best to tune in early if you have even a passing interest in seeing these four favorites jostle and jockey and play mind games with one another. The cold reality of this cruel ordeal is this: all four will take the start, but it\u2019s unlikely that all four will finish.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/edge/2015/07/03/tour-de-france-preview-christopher-froome-alberto-contador-nairo-quintana-vicenzo-nibali>