NICE, France — When cycling was still a provincial affair in which riders changed clothes behind middle schools before races, the news that its most recognizable star had doped to win the Tour de France would probably not have mattered. And it would have been unthinkable to imagine an investigation — undertaken in the United States, no less — revealing the sport to be in structural disarray, ruled by dysfunctional leadership and a code of silence.

But the stakes have clearly increased and the geography broadened. Riders in the 100th edition of the Tour de France, which ends July 21 in Paris, are now transported in plush buses and housed in luxury hotels. Participating teams are backed by major sponsors like British Sky Broadcasting, whose Team Sky has a budget of more than $24 million. The Tour’s television feed is being broadcast in 190 countries.

And after the investigation last year by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency into Lance Armstrong’s use of performance-enhancing drugs, which led some sponsors to rethink their support for cycling, many in the sport now see a need to change the way cycling operates as a business.

That call to change the business side of the sport is a topic that nearly a decade ago seemed as taboo as singling out dopers. Now it is almost de rigueur.

Numerous plans for securing the sport’s future have emerged in the past year. The ideas include the development of revenue sharing between teams and race organizers, the implementation of a Formula One-like racing calendar and the overhaul of the sport’s governing body, the International Cycling Union, known by its initials in French, UCI.

Repairing the UCI’s image is perhaps the biggest challenge that cycling faces in the immediate future. USADA’s investigation, the nearly 1,000-page dossier that supported its ruling to bar Armstrong for life from cycling and strip him of his seven Tour de France titles, included details of questionable decision-making by UCI officials in the past two decades. In one instance, officials accepted two donations totaling $125,000 from Armstrong, which his former teammates Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis said were to cover up a positive test for the banned blood booster EPO at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland. The UCI president, Pat McQuaid, agreed to form an independent commission last fall to investigate the claims, but that has still not occurred.

McQuaid, who was in office at the time of the second Armstrong donation, said in an interview last week that he was “still committed to the process.” McQuaid has not been known for self-reflection in his eight-year tenure at the helm of UCI; he has used leadership tactics criticized as draconian, even turning to legal action to try to silence critics.

McQuaid defended his leadership style. “You don’t make omelets without breaking a few eggs,” he said. “I don’t profess to be soft and easygoing.”

That attitude may leave him without a job. The UCI presidential election is in September, and McQuaid, who is Irish, had been running unopposed for a third term until Brian Cookson, the president of British Cycling, announced his candidacy in early June.

“His bullying and haranguing style seems designed to antagonize everyone who does not share his approach to the governance of world cycling,” Cookson said of McQuaid recently.

Cookson, also a UCI board member, oversaw a revival of cycling in Britain. His credits include developing Team Sky, with whom Bradley Wiggins last year became the first Briton to win the Tour de France.

In a news conference June 24 in Paris, Cookson unveiled a campaign plan aimed at “restoring trust” in the UCI, highlighted by a reform of anti-doping measures. McQuaid said last week that cycling’s drug testing was as independent as possible.

The UCI still finances and supervises its anti-doping efforts, however. And although measures appear to have become more effective since a “biological passport” was implemented in 2008 — stars like Alberto Contador have been suspended for doping, an unlikely proposition during the Armstrong era — the cycling union’s proximity to testing remains problematic.

“At the moment, the anti-doping service within the UCI headquarters is just down the corridor of the president’s office, so that can’t be right,” Cookson said in Paris, adding on his blog the next day: “There is a fundamental conflict of interest for an international federation if it is promoting its sport on one hand, but policing it on the other.”

I

ssues beyond doping

Yet doping is not the only issue giving sponsors pause.

The UCI WorldTour, cycling’s top level of racing, which includes all the Grand Tours and less prestigious events like Paris-Nice, does not have the structural stability offered by other pro sports.

The teams that compete in the WorldTour are not permanent members but face an annual review by the UCI. It is often a formality, but admission is not guaranteed.

And riders are not guaranteed to be at every major race. The racing calendar — this year, it includes 29 events over 10 months — has become a game of choice for many riders and teams. Vincenzo Nibali, the winner of the Giro d’Italia in May and the third-place finisher in the Tour de France last year, is skipping France this month in favor of the Spanish Vuelta, which begins in August.

“For a really sort of lightweight fan, learning about the sport is complicated,” said Jonathan Vaughters, the general manager of the Garmin-Sharp team. “It’s like, ‘Is this the cool race? Or is it this one?’ It has got to be simplified.”

Organizers of World Series Cycling think so, too. Last year, the group was in talks with UCI to apply a makeover to the sport, developing a season of 10 four-day “Grand Prix” events, the three Grand Tours and a handful of spring classics. After traditionalists scoffed and others wondered what would happen to smaller but traditional races like the Tour of the Basque Country, McQuaid now says the UCI will “not have anything to do” with the proposed format. Like Cookson, however, he is in favor of changing cycling’s calendar.

“Everyone wants one main Tour, with the best teams and best riders where there’s a narrative that takes place over the course of a whole season,” McQuaid said. “No clashes of schedule, no races overlapping.”

Consensus is elusive

These structural overhauls will almost certainly take time. If anyone knows this, it is Vaughters. Before Luuc Eisenga led the teams association, Vaughters was its president, advocating for teams to have more bargaining power in the sport.

Teams have long had little influence in cycling, save for an occasional in-race demonstration over drug testing or dangerous road conditions. Vaughters, a Colorado native who raced professionally for a decade and was a member of Armstrong’s U.S. Postal squad, worked hard to change this, in part by repairing vital relationships in a teams association that had fallen apart. During his two terms spanning the past several years, he met frequently with other WorldTour team officials, often in airport lounges across Europe, to build a coalition that would stand together on long-term goals such as seeking television revenue-sharing deals and, eventually, developing permanent franchises.

Although their ranks have grown to more than a dozen, finding consensus has been often difficult — a potentially groundbreaking television-revenue-sharing negotiation last year with Giro d’Italia organizers collapsed at the last minute.

“It didn’t happen at the end, but not because the Giro didn’t offer it, but because some teams dragged their feet,” Vaughters said. “There was a lack of understanding over what this means, and there still is a lack of understanding to what this means a lot of times.”

This July, the Tour de France organizer Amaury Sports Organization, or ASO, will haul in at least 20 million euros (about $26 million) from its French TV contract alone; the rider wearing yellow on the Champs-Élysées will make 450,000 euros, about $580,000, which he will divide among his eight-man team. Although the ASO is reluctant to disclose its revenues, a glance at the French company’s cycling holdings — Paris-Nice, Critérium du Dauphiné and, since 2008, the Vuelta — shows that it is certainly the sport’s biggest power player. Any changes that will be made to cycling will have to be done with the cooperation of the ASO.

“They effectively have control of the direction of the sport,” Vaughters said. “They think, ‘Oh, if the teams and athletes get together, we would lose a lot of our TV rights revenue, and it might devalue our business model.’ They have the biggest piece of the pie right now, so why change anything? But my argument would be: How about we make the pie bigger?”

Next up at the Tour de France

Riders got the day off Monday before embarking today on a mostly flat stage that should favor sprinters. Britain’s Chris Froome holds the yellow jersey ahead of Spain’s Alejandro Valverde.