Tongue in cheek look at the Tour De France

Tour de France leaders dig deep into drug supplies

ABSINTHE-SUR-OPIATE. As the Tour de France enters the mountains south of Baguette, race leaders face an intensive two-day doping ordeal, pushing their livers to the limit and leaving their arm-veins in tatters. Meanwhile team doctors say they are well on track to deciding the ultimate winner, with only a dozen more urine samples to tamper with and several million dollars left to launder.

The Tour, or Le Tour as it is known in French, meaning "The Tour", was founded in 1903, when a battalion of bicycle police gave chase to mounted heroin smugglers, finally ending in Paris's Boulevard de Poseur, where an ensuing gun battle took the lives of four mimes and an expressionist painter.

Those early narcotic traditions are still cherished in France, where much of Paris comes to a halt to cheer the first pelotons of junkies as they and their collapsed veins pedal over the finish line, a replica of the line of cocaine originally snorted by police chief Marcelle du Cabbage in thanks for cracking the heroin smuggling syndicate.

According to pundits, this year's elite riders are more closely matched than ever before, with only a few milligrams of amphetamines separating the top three-dozen cyclists.

Tour legend Alphonse Croissant, who won the coveted yellow jersey in 1984, 1986 and 1987 before pawning it to buy cough syrup, watched the Tour pass through Baguette this morning and said he had been impressed by the huge advances the sport had made since his heyday.

"When I was racing the needles were huge," he told reporters.

"They were like crochet hooks. It was very difficult to disguise the puncture marks because you needed a skin-graft, and there's only so much skin they can take off your buttocks before they start having to sew your lower back to the top of your thighs, and it's incredibly uncomfortable to ride like that."

Asked if he had put money on a favourite, he said that he no longer bet on sports since losing a finger and one testicle to a Russian debt-collector, but said that current race leader Remi Hashish was looking good.

"He got passed yesterday near St. Areola, and I think that really gave him a shot of adrenalin in the backside."

Doctors confirmed that Hashish had received a shot of adrenalin, but that it had been injected through the breastbone and straight into his heart rather than via his buttocks.

Meanwhile team doctors confirmed that they were very close to naming the final wearer of the yellow jersey.

"We've got four or five names at the moment," said a spokesman for the group.

"Now it's pretty much a case of who comes through first with the suitcase of cash."