Only half the riders finished this year's race after police investigations into doping. The Festina team were thrown out after a week and others, including all but one Spanish team, withdrew.
Tour chief Jean-Marie Leblanc said the 1999 race would cover 3,680 kms and 20 stages, an average of previous tours during the 1990s, with two rest days.
He added that there was no reason to believe riders took drugs because the Tour was too long.
"It's not up to the Tour de France to make new efforts," Leblanc said.
"Since the Second World War, the time and length of the Tour de France has continually dropped. It has passed from 26 days and more than 4,500 kms to an average 22 days and less than 4,000 km."
Leblanc hinted that if the pressure on riders had to be reduced to lessen the temptations of doping, the shorter races should make the sacrifice rather than the Tour.
"The calendar never stops getting heavier and it's in this direction that we must work," Leblanc said. "There's no reason to believe that if there's doping it's because the Tour is too long. There's no link between the two."
The Tour will start, as in 1993, at Puy-du-Fou, one of Leblanc's favourite spots, with a prologue on July 3 in the rolling Vendee countryside close to the Atlantic coast.
Then, clockwise in reverse of this year's race which began in Dublin, it will wend its way north past the Loire estuary into Britanny then across to the east and southwards through the Alps where Marco Pantani cemented his 1998 victory.
There are four high-mountain stages, two in the Alps and two in the Pyrenees, three with climbs to the finish line, and altogether 23 peaks.
"The Pyrenees will play a big part and the verdict they will give after two weeks' racing won't be far off the final verdict," Leblanc said.
The novelty will be two rest days, one each before the start of the Alpine and Pyrenees mountain stages, while the entry list is down from 22 to 20 teams.
"The Tour has this faculty of revealing its own heroes," Leblanc said. "And those who don't take part fall into the shadow of those who do well.
"The Tour has been through diffcult moments, but the public continues to put its trust in the organisers for it to become again a great popular event."
Reuters
