South African cycling star Robbie Hunter is upbeat about Team Barloworld's chances of repeating their success at the 2008 Tour de France, which gets underway this Saturday.

Team Barloworld made its debut in last year's tour as a wildcard entry, impressing, however with two stage victories and the overall King of the Mountain title. Hunter, of course, grabbed one of those stage wins, with Mauricio Soler claiming the other stage victory along with the King of the Mountain title.

Looking ahead to 2008, Hunter told sport.iafrica.com in an exclusive interview: "Everything's being done according to plan. With the Tour being the highlight of the season, everyone's making sure that they arrive here in the right condition.

"We've done what we've needed to do to put ourselves in a position to achieve our goals for the Tour. In short, everything's on track."

The sprint ace did, however, concede that it was going to be tough to match the team's previous results.

"It's going to be difficult," admitted Hunter to this website. "If you look at Tour de France history over the last ten years, Lance Armstrong aside, very few teams have done what we have done.

"All teams that go to the Tour de France are looking to win a stage and once they've achieved that, they look ahead and try to win another stage. But it's going to be difficult. (But) if we can walk away with a stage win we'll be happy. It's a two-week race and anything can happen."

Two weeks is a long time, with a massive 3554 kilometres set to be covered from Saturday's first stage in Brest until the finish line at Paris's Champs Elysees on Sunday, 27 July.

But as we all know, riding aside, there are plenty of difficulties off the bikes too. In recent years, 'Le Tour' has been dogged by major doping scandals, with 2006 winner Floyd Landis being stripped of his title after testing positive for elevated levels of testosterone. Then, last year, Rabobank's Michael Rasmussen missed a drug test and dropped out of the race.

Tour organisers have subsequently taken a tough stance with drug offenders, snubbing Team Astana for being implicated in a number of scandals over the course of the last year. This, of course, means that last year's winner Alberto Contador will not defend his title, along with teammate and third-place finisher Levi Leipheimer. Green jersey winner Tom Boonen has also been banned after testing positive for cocaine usage earlier this year.

On being asked whether the Tour would escape drug scandals at this event, Hunter was hopeful that the measures that the organisers had taken would be enough to ensure a clean race in 2008.

"Hopefully nothing happens this year, as the sport really doesn't need it," he said.

Follow iafrica.com's 2008 Tour de France coverage in our dedicated cycling section!

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