When the Tour de France visits London in July, it will do so at a time of unprecedented crisis for cycling. The previous year's Tour winner is unlikely to be known, unless Floyd Landis, who finished first then tested positive, is cleared of using testosterone. It is, however, likely that Landis's version of events will be widely known, as he announced last week that his autobiography will be published just before the Tour starts. Its title, Falsely Positive, is magnificently hubristic.
Landis is merely the tip of the iceberg. It is impossible to predict whether previous Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich, and the 2005 runner-up Ivan Basso will be at the London start. That will depend on the fallout from Operation Puerto, the Spanish blood-doping inquiry that led to both men's exclusion from the 2006 race.
Behind the scenes, the men at the top of the sport cannot even seem to agree how it should be run, let alone how to deal with the doping problem. The big-race organisers and the governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, are bogged down in a turf war over the UCI's controversial ProTour calendar - UCI want it, the organisers do not - that is set to go to the European Court.
'I can see why people have lost faith in cycling, because there are so many problems,' acknowledges Bradley Wiggins, the Olympic pursuit champion and Britain's most successful cyclist. 'I'm a fan as well [as a rider], and always have been. The events of the last six months have made me think twice about whether I still love it.'
By the end of last August, after Landis's positive test was announced, Wiggins was a demoralised man. 'It was one of the best Tours for many years, to be part of it made me proud, but a few days afterwards the whole thing evaporated,' he says.
If there is one reason why people should go to the Tour when it visits London for the first time this summer, it is because of the presence of men such as Wiggins, who have publicly, proudly turned their backs on the needle and the blood bank. 'There are a lot of people like me, not just a few of us,' says the Londoner. 'A lot of the guys are open about being clean. You have guys in my team [Cofidis] like David Moncoutie who simply loves his sport, but isn't prepared to go to the lengths it might take to win the Tour. He was twelfth on the Tour on bread and water and is something special.
'The tour was my childhood dream. When you start riding, every kid dreams of riding the Tour when you are training, sprinting for road signs and so on. For that to be reality and to happen to me was amazing. As someone who grew up as a club cyclist it's something to be proud of for the rest of your life.'
The birth back in September of his and wife Cath's second child, Isabella, has helped Wiggins to put his sport's struggles into perspective, he says. 'That's increased my belief that it's just sport, that there are more things in life than winning in sport. I'm happy with where I am, what I've achieved. If I were to have to do things other riders might do to win a yellow jersey, or a Tour de France, that's not for me. I'd rather bow out and do something else.'
In some ways,the Beijing Olympics is nearer at hand for Wiggins than the Tour, even though there are 18 months before he defends his Olympic individual 4,000 metre pursuit title. In competitive terms the 2008 Games are just around the corner. Which is why next weekend's World Cup track meeting in Manchester suddenly has such importance.
'There isn't much time to play with. In terms of competitive pursuits there is this week, the world championship in March, and next year's Worlds,' says Wiggins, 26, between training sessions at the Manchester velodrome, where, on Friday, he will take to a track for a world-standard competition for the first time since the Athens Games.
'Beijing isn't that far away. It's less than two years and that goes quickly. My priority is a double of golds, in the team pursuit and the individual, at the Worlds and Olympics, and Manchester is a bit of a dress rehearsal.' Already, he is eyeing possible rivals for his Olympic title; the good news is that only his old foe Bradley McGee of Australia seems to be in the frame.
The only hiccup in Wiggins's progress this winter was a freak training accident last Thursday when he fell off a treadmill, cutting his forehead and, the physios suspected, straining his groin. He should be fit for the World Cup, however. The good news is that Wiggins is stronger and faster than he was at this time in the last Olympic cycle. In training last week he and his three team-mates in the team pursuit squad were on a time of 3min 58sec for the 4,000m, faster than they managed in taking silver behind the Australians in Athens.
Part of his increased strength can be put down to physical maturing, but the road programme he has followed since leaving the track at the end of 2004 is also responsible. 'I feel a different athlete to the one I was in Athens. I feel stronger, more mature, and having done the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France puts [the track] into perspective.
'In terms of effort and difficulty this is easier to do. The Tour is tougher mentally; a four-minute pursuit is awful to ride in the last kilometre, the team pursuit the same, you hurt so much, but in the Tour you are up against the scale of the thing, mental challenges every day. You get to thinking, "I'm hurting and I've two weeks to go here.'"
Wiggins has spent the winter building up for his return to the track, and he hopes the form he has found will carry him through the spring and up to July, when he will be among the contenders for that Tour de France prologue time trial in London. 'There's a lot of expectation, not so much pressure, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Win or lose, how many guys ride the Tour prologue in their home city? It's an honour and a privilege for someone who set out to be a professional cyclist as a kid. I can treasure that experience for ever.'
Bradley Wiggins will be writing for The Observer during the coming season