Pun intended.

For those of you who do not know — and there should be maybe one of you — tomorrow beginneth 2009’s contribution to the long and storied history of the Tour de France. And storylines abound.

Lance is back, Valverde is out, Boonen got in at the last possible moment, the opening round team time trial is supposed to be full of surprises, Astana is stacked and Alberto Contador is everybody’s favorite.

Of course, it’s the Tour, and thus it there will be controversy too. Doping aside (the last few years have left me safe in the assumption at least three riders will be flagged for doping before the Champs-Élysées), it’s the gentlemen in Kazahk blue who might provide the best show off wheels.

Astana is absolutely bleeding big names — Contador, Leipheimer, Kloden and of course, Armstrong.

Cycling, more than any other mainstream sport save perhaps (and inexplicably) baseball, is one that breeds arrogance. Usually healthy arrogance, but arrogance nonetheless.

There’s just something about being able to do something every five-year-old can do except 45 times faster that makes it so. Or maybe it’s the shaved legs.

So when Lance Armstrong announced his comeback a few months ago, it was easy to assume he was doing it under the belief that he could in fact win another Tour de France. One problem: He joined a team in Astana already heavy at the top.

Everyone’s played nice so far, and Armstrong even went so far as to say that, were things to unfold in Contador’s favor, the American would work for his Spanish teammate to win later this month.

And yet, the questions just keep coming.

Speaking as a journalist, sometimes we just don’t let up. We refuse to believe that things are just as they appear, and we poke and press and prod without ceasing.

That said, we only do that, because more often than not — much more often than not, in fact — where there is smoke, there is fire. One person doesn’t know everything, but if everybody just knows one little bit and refuses to accept that their piece of the puzzle is the only one out there, then it’s only right to keep on asking.

Exhibit A: Smoke.

“When we made selection of the team, we made it clear that the leader is Alberto. He’s wearing No. 21 – because of his last three big tours, he’s won them all,” Bruyneel said Friday. “There will be a lot of questions and attempts to divide the team, to create some polemics within the team. We will try to answer those questions. We will stay focused on the Tour, our biggest goal of the year, we are here as a team. We don’t have any rivals within the team, the rivals are the other teams.”

Now again, this might just be nothing. A bag full of innuendo and he-said-she-said that really has no basis.

But where there’s smoke, there’s almost always fire. And given his answer to what should be, by now, a pretty basic question, Johan Bruyneel certainly smells smoke.