Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme insisted cycling's doping crisis belongs in the past.
Prudhomme instead tried to focus on unveiling detailed route plans for the 2014 Grand Depart in Yorkshire.
The first three stages of the Tour were revealed on Thursday, with two running in Yorkshire and a third from Cambridge to London, finishing in front of Buckingham Palace.
The announcement came just hours before seven-times Tour winner Lance Armstrong, who has been stripped of his titles owing to his drugs past, made a keenly-awaited appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
The Armstrong case was only one in a series of scandals that has affected road cycling but Prudhomme insists the sport has changed.
"It's not just a subject that affects cycling, it affects many other sports as well and we are trying now to move on from what has happened in the past," he said. "Although it has happened in the past 20 years, we are looking forward to the future when things will be much cleaner.
"Armstrong is the past - Yorkshire is the future."
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