It’s not going to be easy.

The French are in a major political spat with the official governing (and dope-testing) agency, the International Cycling Union (Union Cycliste Internationale, or UCI), over drug testing for the upcoming tour. The French asked a third body, the World Anti-Doping Agency, for authority to do around 60 extra tests on this year’s Tour.

WADA has turned down the request, but we doubt the French will go quietly away. This kind of pressure, however, is exactly what’s needed to ensure a clean Tour can actually happen.

The other subtext on this year’s Tour will be the riders themselves. For the first time, a dynamic has been set up for clean riders to be the watchdogs. The ethic has turned from “I have to do it because the Team says so and everyone else does it anyway” to “It’s time to stop the lies and deception.”

Finally, the testing that is being done is more sophisticated this year.

It all adds up to an intriguing side show for this year’s Tour. Bottom line will be: Can we trust the UCI to do proper testing, and will the tenor of the Tour be clearly post-doping as it was in the Giro?

More from Bike Radar.

Bruyneel acted nonplussed after the Giro snub, saying the team hadn’t planned on riding anyway. The Vuelta rejection came out of the blue, though: “I am not only surprised, I am speechless,” Bruyneel was quoted as saying. No one who follows the effervescent and voluble TRS manager on Twitter finds “speechless” a credible adjective, but the point was well taken.

You have to wonder if there isn’t something else going on here. With Bruyneel and Lance implicated by Floyd Landis as a doping cabal, and with both under investigation in the U.S. and abroad, is a message being sent? Might the message be, put bluntly, to prove that you’re bringing a clean game to the event?

Bruyneel said he was told TRS was not asked to Spain because “other teams offered better options on a sporting level.” Bruyneel said he interpreted this to mean TRS was not considered competitive enough. That’s not how we read it. If the director had meant competitive, he would have said so. We interpret “sporting” as “fair,” “above reproach,” “ethical.”

In any case, Bruyneel’s defiant response may not have been the best advisable, given the current cloud over TRS. He and whatever PR handlers he answers to might want to look to the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico for pointers. You’re not going to win any sympathy whining and sputtering under pressure. Nor are you going to endear yourself to event organizers with pointless threats that skirt the real issue.

We may have to live with speculation for awhile. But if there is anything to be read between the lines, it’s that Bruyneel and Lance — whether fairly or not — are considered untrustworthy by at least some influential segments of the cycling establishment.

No change in the general classification: It’s still David Arroyo (Caisse d’Epargne) followed by Ivan Basso (Liquigas), Richie Porte (Saxo Bank) and Cadel Evans (BMC).

The Australian Porte, a genuine surprise in this year’s Giro, doesn’t think he can win but wants the top young rider’s title. Arroyo isn’t on par on the climbs with Evans and Basso so far, but has enough of a cushion that he may be able to hold onto the leader’s jersey just long enough for the overall title. Smart money is on Basso, but Evans has shown some real grit and also really wants to win his first Grand Tour. The other pre-race favorites, Alexander Vinokourov (Astana) and Carlos Sastre (Cervelo), have fallen off the pace and not shown top form in the mountain stages. But they shouldn’t be counted out quite yet either.

It all will make for fascinating racing, particularly on the punishing mountain stages of Friday and Saturday.

More from VeloNews.

What a grand Grand Tour this year’s Giro is proving to be!

The breakaway, which caught No. 1 Alexander Vinokourov and No. 2 Cadel Evans watching each other instead of the split group, put given-up-for-dead contenders Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) and Carlos Sastre (Candil) back in the hunt. Especially given the punishing mountain stages ahead, the Giro officially is a wide open race again.

Sastre took third, behind Russian Evgeny Petrov (Katusha) and Quick Step’s Darlo Cataldo. Petrov took the stage with a dramatic sprint on the final uphill section of the stage. Overall the lead group had nearly 13 minutes on the race leaders at the start of the day.

So now Riche Porte of Saxo Bank is the race leader, by a stunning margin over Vinokourov and Evans, who trail by 10 and 11 minutes respectively. Oh and a headline Vino would like to have back: “Alexander Vinokourov Growing More Confident by the Day of Giro d’Italia Success.” Ouch!

One can only wonder how the two leaders let top-caliber riders in a huge pack take off without them. This isn’t a matter of fitness or capability, it’s simple on-road intelligence.

You know that if the greats of the past were in a similar situation, all the way from Eddy Merckx to Bernard Hinault to Greg Lemond, there’s no way a former Tour de France winner and top contender in last year’s Tour would’ve been allowed to slip off the front.

Heck, if Lance Armstrong were in this year’s Giro, there’s no way it would have happened.

But there you have it. Inexplicable things happen in bicycle racing, and today’s stage will be remembered for a long time as one of those crazy strategic brain cramps that — if it costs Vino and Evans a shot at winning the Giro — prove anything can happen, even in the controlled environment of Grand Tour racing.

VeloNews and CyclingNews will have full results as they emerge.

Not much change in the general classification, where Alexander Vinokourov and Cadel Evans remained Nos. 1 and 2.

Farrar has a lot of fans here in the Pacific Northwest and we’re all waiting to watch him in this year’s Big Dance, the 2010 Tour de France, head-to-head again with the world’s No. 1 sprinter, Mark Cavendish. (Cavendish is racing in the Amgen Tour of California this week.)

Or maybe Cavendish isn’t No. 1 any more. He got a late start to his season due to oral surgery, and hasn’t yet hit the form he showed last season. The big problem for Tyler is Cavendish’s lead-out rider, Mark Renshaw, who pulls Cav almost to the finish. If Farrar had Renshaw leading him out, it might be a different story.

In any case, congrats to Tyler Farrar on his second stage win in the Giro.

Despite the goop, the finish was dry and thrilling as somehow out of the pack we found Cadel Evans, No. 2, and Alexander Vinokourov in the pink jersey battled out the slight uphill finish, only to be passed in the final seconds by HTC’s Matthew Goss and fellow sprinters Filippo Pozzato (KAT) and “Rainboy” (from Wenatchee) Tyler Farrar (GRM) for the top 3 places.

It’s supposed to get colder and wetter around here this week, but nothing will compare to the images of pro racers going 30 miles an hour, bunched together, in driving rain on slick pavement. Thankfully no major crashes, and hopes for better weather to come!

Now it’s off to Versus to await this afternoon’s undoubtedly more pleasant (weather-wise) second stage of the Amgen Tour of California. Flat flat flat (the terrain, let’s hope not the tires)!

The Giro d’Italia, the second biggest stage race in the world, and the Amgen Tour of California, North America’s biggest stage race, will be the source of a lot of channel hopping between Universal Sports and Versus. And downhill followers got an extra dose with the World Cup action from Slovenia, where Rachel Atherton and Greg Minnaar took top honors. You could watch it live, if you were awake, on Freecaster.tv.

This year’s Giro is providing some of the best day-to-day competition any stage race has witnessed in some time. The Amgen race just started earlier today and not much happened apart from a minor late-stage crash. After more than 100 miles, the leader and the rest of the riders finished separated by a whole 10 seconds. The result was understandable: Early stages typically are pretty tame, and hey, we’ve ridden much of Day One’s Cali route and by Northwest standards it is F-L-A-T.

There are numerous marquee racers in the Amgen Tour, however, including Lance the King and Mark the Mouth Cavendish (today’s winner), so let’s hope for some fireworks in days to come.

Full results (Lance is 69th, heh) here.

Watching Chris Sorensen, a 25-year-old Luxembourger riding for Saxo Bank, suffer through his solo breakaway in the final half an hour was something any cyclist who has climbed a long hill could relate to. With doping apparently out of the picture, the pros are starting to show real pain again, and that’s good for the sport. Early on in his break, when Sorensen bridged the gap to catch the much more comfortable-looking Simone Stortoni, it looked like he’d blow up and get dropped. Instead you could see his teeth grind and his face clench as he gritted out his own breakaway and took the win.

More disappointing was a lack of pressure from anyone in the leader pack. The overall classification pretty much remained stable in a setting where things could have been shaken up a bit. But someone’s going to have to make a move at some point, given the close gaps in the general classification.

Ride on!

As we’ve said practically from Day 1, this year’s Giro d’Italia has been a joy to watch, setting a new standard for early-on stage racing thrills and spills. VeloNews provides a nice retrospective of Week 1.

Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong awaits tomorrow’s start of the Tour of California while expressing doubt that 2010 will be a banner year for The King. The problem is simple logistics: He’s not getting into racing form so far this year. He’s missed some big spring classics and not doing the Giro so he can compete in the Tour of California, a far lesser event. And then there’s all the promotional stuff, and a new baby on the way, and on and on…

We’ve all been there. So perhaps Lance can be forgiven if this story is true.

This is what happens when you start the Giro somewhere else than Italy.

Stage winner: Wouter Weylandt of Quick Step.

Overall leader in the pink jersey: OMG it’s … Alexander Vinokourov! of Astana! Making a statement!

Sigh … we’ll never hear the end of this one.