Tour de France starts after doping storm

STRASBOURG, France, July 1 (Reuters) French rider Cedric Coutouly gave the first pedal push of the 93rd Tour de France, speeding down the ramp at the start of the 7.1-km prologue today.

The peloton is down from 21 to 20 teams and only 176 riders out of the 189 who had entered the race were waiting to start the 'Big Loop' of 3,657 km and 20 stages.

The race was stripped on Friday of three of the main pretenders to succeed seven-times winner Lance Armstrong, who has retired, after Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Francisco Mancebo were implicated in a doping investigation in Spain.

The Astana-Wuerth team, formerly known as Liberty Seguros, also announced their withdrawal from the Tour. Five of their riders were on a list of nine Tour competitors provided by the Spanish police to an investigating magistrate.

This crisis and the retirement of Armstrong mean that the five riders who topped the final overall standings in 2005 - Armstrong, Basso, Ullrich, Mancebo and Astana-Wuerth's Alexander Vinokourov - are not taking part this year.

Levi Leipheimer of the U.S. was sixth in 2005 but the honour of the final competitor in the prologue was given to another American rider, George Hincapie, new leader of Armstrong's Discovery Channel team.

The purpose of the prologue is to establish who will wear the yellow jersey, particularly in the absence of the previous year's winner.

The first indications of the new Tour hierarchy will probably come after the seventh stage, a 52-km individual time trial, on July 8.

REUTERS PM KP1717