Tour is worst among tainted sports
From the sure-thing files, words you should never be surprised to hear:
“We apologize for the flight delay and thank you for your patience…”
“State university officials announced today a 6 percent hike in tuition costs for next year…”
“Lindsay Lohan was arrested last night and charged with…”
“The Tour de France has been rocked with a new doping scandal…”
That last one might ring a bell. It currently shares the deflating sports pages, next to the NBA official who might have fixed games for the mob, the imminent home run king who might have padded his total with steroids and the quarterback who might have turned his backyard into a death row for dogs.
Welcome to the merry escapist world of sport, which at the moment has just about everything any 11 o’clock newscast would want, except maybe kidnappings for ransom.
It is hard work to look conspicuously grubby among such heavy competition, but cycling might be the foulest of them all. More trouble there than you can shake a syringe at.
In the past, various misdeeds have been assigned to the 1996 Tour de France champion … the 1997 champion … the 2005 runner-up. Floyd Landis is still trying to convince people that he did not pull his 2006 title out of a bottle. Even – pause for a hallelujah chorus from the choir – Lance Armstrong has had his accusations, though never validated.
But all that is old news. A new Tour means new shadows.
One of the idols of the sport, Alexandre Vinokourov, was just sent home after testing positive for a banned blood transfusion.
A German, Patrik Sinkewitz, left the race after his pre-Tour test turned up positive.
The leader for much of this Tour, Michael Rasmussen, has been kicked off his own national team because when it came time for a couple of recent drug tests, he was harder to find than Osama bin Laden.
A former mountain bike racer from Colorado was quoted by the Associated Press as saying Rasmussen tried to trick him into transporting some doping material into Italy a few years ago. Rasmussen allegedly gave Whitney Richards a box of cycling shoes to carry, but Richards said when he opened the box, he found 14 IV bags of human blood substitute.
The head of world cycling said the other day that a Rasmussen victory in France would be a lousy thing for public perception of the sport. Somewhere, planning his next trip to see Barry Bonds hit, Bud Selig had to be nodding in sympathy,
And dozens of riders refused to start on time for Wednesday’s 16th stage in protest of the repeated doping scandals – just as news of another positive test result broke.
The cycling optimists out there propose that the newest rash of bad news reflects tougher testing measures, and the sport might actually be getting cleaner. A few high-profile falls are the price that must be paid.
Maybe.
For those of us on the outside looking in, all we know is that the Tour de France seems to have a line of doping scandals from Val d’Isere to the Champs Elysees. A large chunk of the sport – including some of the most glowing names – would seem to feel compelled to cheat, with no intention to stop.
Perception or reality? That is up to cycling to prove. As David Stern said of his suspected referee, once you gamble, you lose the benefit of the doubt.
Too bad. In terms of athletic feats, few sights are purer than a man attacking a mountain on two tires and one heart. There is no halftime break, no call to the bullpen for relief.
The Tour de France is unique and charming. But there is a point where an event becomes so tainted, it no longer seems relevant. The biggest star in the Super Bowl of cycling is a guy named Testosterone.