“It is going to be a big fight,” was how Christian Prudhomme, the general director of the Tour de France, put it. He may as well have rubbed his hands together in glee. He was talking about the race next year, which marks the centenary of the Tour’s first trek through the Pyrenees, but which is also doubling up beautifully as Lance Armstrong versus Alberto Contador, round two.

The stage-managing of the 2010 Tour was given such attention to detail at its launch at the Palais des Congrès in Paris yesterday that not only did Prudhomme give us a killer of a route that should keep Armstrong in the fight until well into the closing stages, but it also had the American sitting at the front of the massive auditorium, one seat away from his Spanish rival.

Body language experts would have loved it. Suffice to say that Armstrong looked comfortable and Contador looked the other way.

In between them sat Andy Schleck, the Luxembourger who may well challenge the pair of them, and in front of them, on the big screen, unfolded the details of the 2010 route that Armstrong claimed, pretty quickly, would give him a welcome edge.

The seven-times winner did not say it quite so specifically, he tends not to. But he did tell anyone who cared to listen — and the crush was monstrous — about how important a good, strong team would be for anyone challenging for the yellow jersey and how pleased he was that one of the good, strong teams would be his own.

The point, of course, is that Armstrong is leaving Team Astana and taking pretty much anything of value with him. The sporting director, Johan Bruyneel, is following him to the new Team RadioShack, the best riders are going, too, all of them apart from Contador, who is looking horribly exposed.

The Tour route will return, for the first time in six years, to a series of cobblestone road sections that are notoriously hazardous and who will be there to help Contador across them is anyone’s guess. Contador may well be the best rider in the world right now, but in the politics of the peloton, Armstrong is president and he is outmanoeuvring the Spaniard at will.

Furthermore, despite the large number of climbs, Armstrong was confident yesterday that the ascents would not give Contador too much of an advantage. The Tour next year will not be shy to celebrate its love for the Pyrenees; indeed, in a gruelling final week it will twice crest the summit of the beast of the mountain range, the Col du Tourmalet. However, Armstrong’s point is that though there may be 23 serious mountain climbs — compared with 20 this year — and though Contador may now have the credentials as the best climber in the world, only three of those 23 are stage finishes.

Downhill finishes extract the advantage from the likes of Contador. “Those stages are almost non-events,” Armstrong said, perhaps relishing the joy of exaggeration.

One hundred years ago, the first rider to complete the Tourmalet climb did so on foot, carrying his bike, and famously slandering the race organisers by calling them “assassins”. This may be how the majority of the peloton feel next year; Mark Cavendish, the Briton who won six sprint finishes this year, took no time in pointing to the first Tourmalet stage as the one that he was looking forward to least.

“It’ll be harder than this year,” he said of the route. He could see five sprint finishes — “possibly eight” — almost all early in the race. “I’ll target the first week and then I’ve got to survive,” he said.

And yes, next year he will be gunning for the green points jersey. As he said: “I should have won it this year.”

It was a little strange yesterday to hear Armstrong hailing Contador’s abilities as a climber. Armstrong’s modus operandi always used to be to put the opposition to the sword on the first significant mountain summit.

He is having to play a cannier game now and conceded that his tactics had not been helped by the absence from the 2010 route of a team time-trial. At present, a team time-trial would mean Contador riding pretty much solo.

A key representative of another team in Paris yesterday was Dave Brailsford, the leader of the new British outfit, Team Sky. Like Contador, Brailsford is looking to settle his team, in this case by completing the signing of Bradley Wiggins.

Nevertheless, even without Wiggins, Brailsford was confident in the riders he had assembled. “It looks harder than last year,” he said. “But there are certain elements of this Tour we believe we’d be very strong in.”

The subject of doping took no time to be aired yesterday. Jean-Etienne Amaury, the president of Amaury Sport Organisation, which owns the Tour de France, opened the presentation by talking about “credibility” and “the fight against doping”. He made no specific reference to the latest controversy: the investigation into syringes and other materials possibly used for doping that were discovered in the waste of three of this year’s teams, one of which was Astana.

This investigation comes after a year in which controversy has haunted Armstrong on a number of occasions. His response is now delivered in dismissive abbreviation form on his Twitter feed, “SSDD”, apparently standing for Same S***, Different Day.

Campaign for transparency given a bumpy ride

On February 11, five months after announcing that his comeback was to be monitored with a transparent individual anti-doping programme carried out by Don Catlin, a leading anti-doping scientist, Lance Armstrong announces that the deal with Catlin is off. Too complex and costly, he explains.

An anti-doping official arrives at Armstrong’s house near Monaco in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, on March 17. The rules say the athlete must not leave the tester’s sight, but Armstrong takes a 20-minute shower. An investigation by AFLD, the French anti-doping agency, is dropped.

During the Tour, AFLD reports that Astana are given preferential treatment by testers and allowed to sleep in when testers arrive at hotels for out-of-competition testing.

A leaked AFLD report on October 5 repeats the allegation that Astana received preferential treatment by testers. The International Cycling Union dismisses the claim and questions AFLD’s professionalism.

French newspapers report this week that syringes and material possibly used for doping on the Tour are being investigated. Astana are one of three teams connected, but a team statement reads: “The riders use no forbidden substances.”