Alberto Contador, the 24-year-old surprise winner of a dope-scarred Tour de France, represents the hope of a "new cycling," Spanish media wrote Monday.

"Champion of hope," wrote sports daily AS on its front page below a photo of the cyclist wearing a red and yellow Spanish flag around his neck taken after he won the three-week race on Sunday.

"Contador was crowned in Paris as the symbol of the new cycling," it added.

The rider for the American Discovery Channel team was the first Spaniard to win the crown since the last of Miguel Indurain's five titles in 1995 and the ninth Spaniard to win cycling's biggest event since 1959.

"The triumph of the dream," wrote daily newspaper El Mundo. "Alberto Contador wins a Tour de France that was plagued by scandals," the paper said, adding the Spaniard "is at the head of a new cycling that needs to get rid of these permanent cases of doping.

The 94th Tour de France was hit by four doping scandals, including one which led to the forcible exit of Danish race leader Michael Rasmussen, leaving Contador in front with four days left to race.

"Contador 'the savior'," wrote conservative daily newspaper ABC which said the rider "had become a reference of the new cycling after the doping scandals."

"Contador becomes a legend," wrote sports daily Marca, adding he "has become a new pearl of the worldwide platoon of riders after winning his first Tour de France.

"I hope my victory will breathe fresh air to cycling," Contador said after the race in comments splashed on the headline of El Pais.

Doping expert levels charges against Contador
A leading German expert in the fight against doping claimed Monday to have evidence indicating that Tour de France winner Alberto Contador had used drugs.

Twenty-four hours after the Spaniard donned the winner's yellow jersey on the Champs Élysées the expert, Werner Franke, described the 24-year-old's victory as "the greatest swindle in sporting history."

Franke bases his claim on documents he says are in his possession from the Spanish police's Operación Puerto inquiry into Eufemiano Fuentes, the doctor said to have masterminded doping programs for athletes. Contador was cleared last year by both Spanish investigators and the UCI.

"The name of this Mr Contador appears on several occasions on the court and police documents," Franke told German television station ZDF. "All of this has been simply concealed and hidden under the carpet whilst the name Contador was erased from the list of suspicious riders.”

Franke claimed to have a detailed list of banned products used by Contador which appear in sworn statements following the raid on Fuentes' medical practice. "He took insulin, HMG-Lepori, a hormone to stimulate the secretion of testosterone and also a product for asthma called TGN - in brief I have before my eyes a protocol for doping," he told ZDF.

"All of this has been covered up, at least in Spain," added Franke.

Contador, who inherited the lead in the Tour de France last week upon Michael Rasmussen's expulsion in a dispute over missed drug tests, denied he'd had any links with Fuentes' drugs program.

Speaking after Saturday's penultimate time-trial in Angouleme about why his name had been linked to Fuentes he told reporters: "I was in the wrong team at the wrong time and somehow my name got among the documents, but the UCI corrected the mistake and now I've got no link to Puerto."

Among the cyclists associated with Fuentes were Jan Ullrich, the former Tour de France winner and former Giro d’Italia winner Ivan Basso.

Astana fires Vinokourov
Astana team officials announced on Monday that they had fired team leader Alexander Vinokourov following his positive test for blood doping on the Tour de France.

The Kazakh rider was suspended by the team last week after failing the control following his win in the 13th stage on July 21.

His sample revealed the presence of "two distinct blood populations," a result confirmed by a B-sample test over the weekend. He also tested positive in a second test taken on July 23.

Vinokourov has contested the validity of the results of both the A and B samples and has hired American attorneys Howard Jacobs and Maurice Suh to defend him.

Klöden says riders just pawns in UCI/Tour battle
Astana’s Andreas Klöden claimed Monday that the Tour de France organizers’ running dispute stand-off with the sport's governing body the UCI had reduced cyclists “to the role of puppets.”

ASO, the company that runs the Tour, maintains that the blame over the Michael Rasmussen debacle when the Danish rider was expelled from the Tour after lying about his whereabouts for a missed random drugs test lies with the cycling authority.

Klöden’s own Tour ended prematurely when his team Astana were expelled after team leader Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for blood doping. And the German, in an interview on a German sports website Monday, reckons it's cyclists who are being damaged in the row.

"When I hear the Tour de France boss say that the UCI wants to damage the credibility of the race and destroy it I get the impression that we, the riders, are only puppets in this fight for influence,” Klöden said.

The Tour runner-up in 2004 and third in 2006 repeated his insistence that he's "never used drugs" even if riders close to him like Jan Ullrich, Vinokourov and Mattias Kessler have either tested positive or are under suspicion of using banned substances.

"I've never had so many tests in my career as this year,” Klöden said. “I've never missed a test… all the cases talked about have come as a real slap in the face for me but everyone is proclaiming their innocence and I no longer know who to believe."

The former Telekom/T-Mobile rider who joined Astana at the start of the year added that he is uncertain what the future holds for him.

"I'm not sure what's going to happen to Astana. For me personally I've decided to restart training once people close to me had helped me overcome my disappointment,” he said. "I'm going to try to be part of the German team competing at the world championships in Stuttgart in September and to compete at my top level in front of my supporters."

Stuttgart a beacon of hope?
The president of the German Cycling Federation (BDR), Rudolf Scharping, told the media on Monday he believed that the World Cycling Championships in Stuttgart could be the turning point in the struggle against doping.

"The world’s could mark a turning point in the history of cycling. There will be an unprecedented number of spot-check doping controls before and during the events," said Scharping, the former defense minister to Gerhard Schroder.

"Stuttgart could even be an example for other disciplines," he said.

The president of the BDR also highlighted that the cancellation of the 2007 World Championships, demanded by certain politicians, would send the wrong message.

"This would penalize the honest riders and the spectators. The strongest message, is the one sent out by teams such as T-Mobile and Gerolsteiner, along with the French teams, who do everything with transparency and who have a clear position on doping," continued Schroder.

The organization of the Stuttgart World Championships, which take place from September 25-30, is still subject to the setting up of a strict anti-doping program sought after by the German authorities.

The BDR, the International Cycling Union (UCI) and German anti-doping agency (Nada) are committed to finance and establish this program.

A meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday between the parties and should put the doubts surrounding the go ahead of the World Championships to rest.

The cancellation of the World Championships was had been called for mainly by the German Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schauble, at the beginning of July, even before the recent string of doping scandals hit this year's Tour de France.