PARIS (AP)

If he's looking for a reason to skip the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong now has a big one: Mont Ventoux.

In a break with tradition, the notorious mountain ascent will be featured on the race's next-to-last day in a tradition-busting innovation aimed at keeping the suspense going to the very end.

The seven-time champion was notably absent from yesterday's unveiling in Paris of the 2009 route. Close friend and team manager Johan Bruyneel did attend and said there's only a "50-50" chance Armstrong will make the Tour start on July 4, American Independence Day.

"For him, the goal of a comeback is not linked to an obsession to win an eighth Tour," Bruyneel said.

This new route for cycling's 106-year-old showcase race will make any victory especially challenging - even for cyclists such as Armstrong who excel in the mountains.

Ceremonial ride

Ordinarily, the race finishes with a time trial on the penultimate day, deciding the overall results before what is largely a ceremonial ride into Paris on the last day. Next year, Mont Ventoux will be the 20th of the 21 stages. After 19 days of racing, the punishing climb on which British rider Tom Simpson died in 1967 promises to test tired legs and minds, and could possibly decide the winner.

"The route of the 2009 Tour de France strikes me as innovative and very interesting," Armstrong said in a statement. "From its start in Monte Carlo with a 15k time trial, to the reinstatement of the team time trial, to stages in my old hometown of Girona all the way to another visit to my old friend the Ventoux, I could not have hoped for a different Tour."

Winner-take-all

Organisers insisted the selection of Ventoux for 2009 was made long before Armstrong announced his comeback last month. If he races, Armstrong's vast experience could give him an edge on what could be a winner-take-all high-pressure penultimate day. But it may also be that the ascent and toughness of Ventoux - "There is no air, perhaps because there is no vegetation. It is a strange place," Armstrong said in 2000 - could prove too much for his 37-year-old frame after three weeks of hard slog across France, Spain, Andorra, Switzerland and Italy.

Ventoux is a huge moonscape of rock in Provence with little shade or grass. French philosopher Roland Barthes called it "a god of Evil." Armstrong has described it as "the hardest climb on the Tour, bar none." He never won there at his height.

Renewed discussion

In 2000, Armstrong allowed Marco Pantani to pass him at the finish line. Armstrong said it was more important to win the Tour than the stage but just days later regretted giving away victory, saying Pantani was not the best on Ventoux.

In 2002, he placed third on Ventoux behind French favourite Richard Virenque, and then lashed out at fans along the route who branded him a drug user - the same sort of criticism that angers Armstrong again now.

"If I had a dollar for every time somebody yelled 'Dope! Dope!' I'd be a rich man," Armstrong said then.

A less-than-enthusiastic response from organisers to the end of Armstrong's three-year retirement, and renewed discussion in France about whether he doped while building his record string of wins from 1999-2005 - he insists he did not - have given the rider pause. Armstrong says he will race the Giro d'Italia in May and sounds less certain about the Tour.

Race director Christian Prudhomme remained guarded on Wednesday, saying Armstrong's return would be "neither a good nor bad thing" for the Tour.