Armstrong's swan song likely to be off-key

The 2010 Tour de France, which starts on Saturday in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, will be Lance Armstrong's last appearance in the race he won a record seven consecutive times.

Earlier this week, the seven-time Tour champion told his fans on his Twitter page, "And yes, this will be final Tour de France. It's been a great ride. Looking forward to 3 great weeks." Then he added: "Doh, sorry, meant 'my' final Tour."

Few athletes have made a more indelible mark on an event or a sport, for better or worse, than the 38-year-old American will leave on the Tour when he rolls down the Champs Elysees in Paris for the last time on July 25.

Many people - many of whom live in France - will not be sorry to see the lanky Texan leave the race for good (Armstrong retired from racing four years ago, then changed his mind and returned last year, finishing a very respectable third).

He came to represent something new and not particularly welcome to many Tour aficionados. Brazenly ambitious, aloof, coldly calculating, Armstrong did not fit the mould of past champions, who appeared to ride by instinct alone and only for the love of the race.

The French love an underdog, and they were at first taken by the story of how Armstrong won his fight against cancer against very long odds, and then came back as a high-performance athlete.

But their affection turned to resentment as he changed from underdog to top dog, perhaps not seeing that Armstrong tackled the Tour de France with the same grim determination with which he had faced the disease.

And then there were the suspicions and repeated accusations of doping, despite the fact that he has never been found to have used a banned substance during a race.

Armstrong's blatant superiority over other riders in the Tour and the seemingly effortless way he rode up the mountains could not, the reasoning went (and still goes), have been on the up-and-up.

It is, perhaps, inevitable that Armstrong will be dogged by the same suspicions in his final Tour appearance.

On May 20, the day Armstrong crashed in the Tour of California, the Wall Street Journal carried a story in which his former teammate with the US Postal team, Floyd Landis, accused him and other top riders of having doped for years.

Landis won the 2006 Tour de France but was stripped of the title after testing positive for testosterone following a critical stage win in that race.

Not only did Landis admit to doping and implicate others but, according to a report by The New York Times, he is telling all to federal investigators trying to build a case against Armstrong for fraud.

According to the report, investigators are trying to determine if Armstrong, his former teammates and the managers of their cycling teams conspired to defraud their sponsors by using banned substances to improve their performances and thereby receive more money and other rewards.

Although the investigation will not interfere with the running of the race, it is likely to take up some space on the same newspaper pages, casting a shadow over the Tour and Armstrong's final run in it.

Armstrong would love to bow out of the Tour de France as a winner which would be an eighth title after his reign 1999-2005.

After finishing third last year, he said he had not been in top form and vowed to come back stronger this year.

But his preparation for the Tour was disrupted by an intestinal virus and that crash in May. And he will again be hounded by the doping suspicions.

All in all, these are not ideal circumstances under which to bow out of the greatest bike race in the world.