The Tour de France is back in the Vendée and back at Madman's Hill. Yet again. This week, the region south-west of Nantes will host its fourth Grand Départ of the Tour in 18 years, after 1993, 1999 and 2005. That is astonishing given the demand from cities and regions all across Europe to host the five-day junket that brings in millions in revenues from the Tour and its vast caravan. There is, however, a good reason for this.

It boils down to a partnership going back 20 years between a politician, Philippe de Villiers, and a former professional cyclist, Jean-René Bernaudeau, who was chief lieutenant to the five-times Tour winner Bernard Hinault in the late 1970s and early 1980s. De Villiers, president of the Vendée general council from 1988 until his resignation in 2010, wanted to promote his region. Bernaudeau, who is now 55, wanted to set up a cycling club that would nurture young riders, as he himself had been nurtured in his youth.

Symbolically, next Sunday's stage two will start and finish in front of the Manoir de Saint Michel, an attractive 19th-century manor house in the village of Les Essarts which is the headquarters of Bernaudeau's project. On Thursday, the riders of the Tour will be presented to the public at the Puy du Fou – Madman's Hill – theme park, dreamed up by De Villiers as a way of simultaneously bringing the public to his region and promoting his "traditional" view of French history.

In a sport that has been buffeted by drugs scandals for a dozen years, it is a success story and possible role model for cycling in the future. The amateur club founded by Bernaudeau, who twice finished sixth in the Tour, ran for 10 years before he founded a professional team to sit at the top of the structure; now, sponsored by Europcar, they are France's most successful Tour team, having taken two stage wins in last year's race with Thomas Voeckler and Pierrick Fedrigo, and the King of the Mountains title with Anthony Charteau. Bernaudeau and his riders are the régionaux of this weekend's racing, and will be warmly supported.

Below the pro team sits the 20-rider strong Vendée-U amateur team, a feeder squad sponsored jointly by the Vendée département and a supermarket. The bottom of the pyramid is the sport-études project, also known as Pôle Espoir which has two full-time staff overseeing 50 young cyclists combining cycle training and studies.

"The goal was to create a philosophy of cycling which combined education and work and cycling," Bernaudeau says. Among the centre's intake are cyclists from outside the sport's mainstream: France's Pacific and Atlantic islands.

Three-quarters of the Europcar team have come through the structure, notably the team leader Voeckler, probably the most popular cyclist in France. "The advantage of the Pôle Espoir is that you can combine study and sport and come away with a qualification," Voeckler says. "It's important because in sport you don't always make it."

Bernaudeau's project was founded in 1991, seven years before cycling woke up to its endemic doping problem but it clearly offers a solution. His pro team has never had a positive test, which speaks for itself. "The key to preventing doping is education," he says. "It's a matter of the way people are raised and nurtured. Someone who dopes is just as capable of stealing from a shop. After all, they are riders who steal results and glory from others. They are hooligans."

Bernaudeau believes cycling has taken the wrong approach. "I tell my riders that I could have won a Tour de France stage at l'Alpe d'Huez; I made a mistake with my gears but today, that hasn't changed my life. Cycling doesn't need to be about winning at all costs. It's not boxing. It's a sport where you can race 100 times a year but that doesn't mean you have 100 chances to win."

He is known for having trenchant opinions on some of his fellow team chiefs but says: "I don't believe some of the other managers can get the pleasure I can take in what I do. Where is the satisfaction in having a rider like Riccardo Riccó [who tested positive for EPO in 2008] in your team? I pity those guys. For me, the satisfaction is in seeing a rider come through from the beginning, seeing a rider go to another team, then come back to me and begin winning."

The problem, as he sees it, is that it is hard to know how to measure success in cycling because of wave after wave of scandals. "We need to wipe out 10 years because we have lost our reference points. Some of the results in the last 10 years are simply meaningless. There are riders who make sense to me: [Thor] Hushovd, for example, hasn't come from nowhere. Bradley Wiggins has been fast since he was 18 or 19. You can't wipe out 10 years of the sport, but in my mind I don't use those years as a measure of reference.

"We are on the right road. We are seeing things that make sense again. You can see the riders grimacing as they ride up the mountains. I don't like seeing riders climbing mountains with their mouths closed, or the same guys riding super-strong on the flat and in the mountains."

With that return to normality, he believes, the French will again begin to shine in their home race. And the chances are that Bernaudeau's riders will play a lead role in any French renaissance.