Christian Prudhomme, the Director of the Tour de France says he is keeping his fingers crossed that the final round of drug testing from this year’s race comes back clean.  In a phone interview this morning, Prudhomme said, “After a long history of positive tests and scandals, including the 2006 incident, I am never sure of the results ahead of time.”  Of course the 2006 incident that he mentions is the test for Floyd Landis that returned positive for testosterone just two days after winning the race.  Final tests will be returned within a week. 

Meanwhile, it has been reported that AFLD, the French Anti-Doping Agency, is undergoing a re-test of 2008 samples from the Tour de France.  Italian and French labs have found that re-testing with new information can sometimes lead to more positive tests.  The labs are saving samples to test for newly discovered drugs or by looking for newly found markers for older drugs.  This practice has been successful in finding cheats in the past.