A crowd of 2000 poured into the cavernous Palais des Congrés in Paris Thursday for details on the 2006 Tour de France route, but the race’s directors first gave them a lecture on doping. In fact the majority of the early presentation focused on combating the problem in order to preserve the sport’s integrity.

“We hope and pray that we can solve not only the problem of doping, but also the suspicion, which severely damages the sport,” said Patrick Clerc, president of Tour organizer ASO. “Doping remains the number one enemy.”

After showing a 2005 Tour highlights video, Clerc and Tour directors Jean-Marie Leblanc and Christian Prudhomme spoke at length on the necessity of denouncing doping and urged cooperation with cycling’s governing body, the UCI, and the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“The UCI and WADA must define as soon as possible the rules, procedures and sanctions with doping,” Clerc said. Even though we do not have an agreement today with the UCI, we hope to have an agreement by the end of the year. Otherwise we will do it by ourselves.”

“Even though I am being deliberately alarmist, I don’t want to be a pessimist. We all need courage, determination and shared convictions,” he said.

Riders will be subject to more out-of-competition tests, “especially in the weeks before the Tour,” Clerc said, adding that “the elite of pro cycling cannot expect to live in a closed vessel.”

“The Tour de France must be beyond reproach in this area. We need to preserve the credibility of our sport,” he said. “The sponsors, the media and the public are expecting this of us.”

Outgoing Tour director Leblanc was more subdued in his language. “Cycling is suffering from some internal difficulties,” he said, defining the anti-doping efforts as a “war against excesses.”

However, he too stressed the importance of regulations aimed at keeping the sport as clean as possible.

“We are at a crossroads: ethics or chaos,” Leblanc said. “I am pleading with the riders, but particularly with their doctors and managers that they take them in the right direction.”

Speaking after the route presentation, Clerc said Lance Armstrong was largely left out of the 2005 highlights video because of the ongoing investigation regarding his allegedly positive EPO samples from the 1999 Tour.

“Until we know the results of the doping investigation we should not take a position one way or the other,” Clerc said, declining to answer what options exist were the investigation to conclude that Armstrong had cheated. “We must let the laboratory do the work and draw the conclusion.”

But Clerc did take a position on the testing of dated samples.

“The post-race test is a good weapon. And weapons are what we want to fight the enemy,” he said.

Clerc argued that progress has been made against doping in the last decade, but said sport officials must not be naïve or turn a blind eye: “If you want to fight an enemy, first you have to face him.”