ANTIBES, France – It was a rare sight these days: Two men having pastis at the bar and excitedly watching the Tour de France on television. They were clapping, even, when Tour leader Michael Rasmussen allowed Alberto Contador to pass him just before the finish line and win yesterday’s stage. There had to be some sort of explanation for this odd behavior, and then it came as soon as the men started cheering — in Flemish.

It would take a lot, more than the recent doping inquiries and the ensuing suspensions and early retirements, to tear the Belgians away from their beloved cycling. The French, on the other hand, might be approaching that point quickly.

Once upon a time, well, even just two years ago, these same bars would be filled with gray-haired men clutching the sports daily, L’Equipe and nodding their heads in approval at every uphill attack. Not anymore. Even when the Tour passed through this corner of the hexagon last week, TVs in a few bars were tuned in to game shows. Yesterday, during one of the Tour’s most critical stages, the natives were gathered in the park across the street, playing a game of petanque without even a radio to be heard.

“I just don’t have time for it anymore,” said Valerio Tomasino, as he crossed his legs on the park bench and watched an elderly man slowly crouch over the boules with a tape measure. “I used to watch all the mountain races and the time trials. This year, I haven’t seen a single stage.”

“I suppose the doping has had some influence on that,” continued Tomasino, who is originally from Varese, Italy — coincidentally, a breeding ground for professional cyclists just north of Milan. “But there’s no Indurain anymore,” he said. “No Armstrong, no Pantani. This Tour doesn’t have any great champions.”

It certainly doesn’t have any great Italian champions. The highest-ranked is 51st-placed Cristian Moreni, whom few fans from his own country had heard of before, and he’s hardly a national hero now.

There are no Frenchmen in the top 20, either, which is the explanation most Frenchman interviewed in the park offered for their fading interest in this race. Christophe Moreau was their last great hope for a French winner since Bernard Hinault in 1985, but Moreau suffered in the tail end of the Alps and has tumbled to 42nd place.

The Spanish have dominated this contest with four riders in the top 10, and nine in the top 20. The other countries most likely to produce the winner this year are Denmark, Australia, America, and Germany.

Few Germans are likely to see Andreas Kloden vie for that honor unless the two state-owned channels from his country that regularly show the Tour decide to resume their coverage. Executives from the broadcasters decided to drop it on Friday after a T-Mobile rider, Patrik Sinkewitz, was suspended from the German team. His blood samples from before the race tested positive for high levels of testosterone.

Sadly, the dark cloud of drug-use allegations still hangs over this edition of the Tour, and grew darker when the man in the yellow jersey, Rasmussen, was warned last week that if he missed a third drug test, he would be suspended.

That likely would be the last straw for his Danish fans, who are still reeling from the repeal of their only victory in Tour history. On the eve of this year’s edition, 1996 champion Bjarne Riis admitted to blood-doping, and officials struck his victory from the record.

And so the Tour, mercifully, now takes its show to a place where people definitely will be tuned in: along the Spanish border. The Spanish regularly pour out in big numbers along the steep climbs of the Pyrenees, but this year, they have even more to cheer about. For one thing, Oscar Pereiro is the presumed 2006 champion, pending Floyd Landis’s appeals. And with Contador leading the charge against Rasmussen, the Spanish have a decent chance of seeing the yellow jersey pass into their hands in familiar territory.

The Spaniard was straightforward about his plans for those stages, speaking in his post-victory press conference. He remains 2 minutes and 23 seconds behind the Dane, but the duo’s spectacular breakaway earned Contador more than two minutes on Cadel Evans, surpassing the Australian for second place, at 41 seconds ahead. The American Levi Leipheimer, Contador’s teammate on the Discovery Channel squad, finished close behind, and now sits in fourth place overall, eyeing a 4-minute-and-29-second deficit.

“That was a very important day for me, but there are three more that are just as hard, with two Pyrenees stages and the time trial,” Contador said. “At the moment, the leader is Rasmussen and he showed himself to be very strong. Today, I managed to make up the difference on Evans. Now I have to try to attack Rasmussen, and I will.”

The 196-kilometer haul from Foix to the ski areas in Loudenvielle-le-Louron has five tough climbs, two of them first-category and one, the Port de Bales, is beyond-ranking. They need to be just as worried about the downhills, a crash on which can end a Tour, or worse.

On the second descent, the Col de Portet d’Aspet, the riders will pass a group of flowers that mark the spot where Fabio Casartelli was killed in 1995 when he struck his head, crashing at about 60 mph.

Then, just before the riders cross the Garonne river, on the descent from the Col de Menté, the riders will pass a memorial to Luis Ocaña, a former Tour champion who survived a frightful crash there in 1971 when he skidded into a sprawled-out Eddy Merckx and then a retaining wall.

jmoretti@nysun.com