24 July 2007
Le Tour de Who Cares
It should be noted that this writer is not exactly a fan of cycling. Chris Boardman, Victoria Pendleton and of course Graeme Obree have a certain charm about them and were certainly worth watching as they beat the world.
The Tour de France however, is a competition so rife with cheats and so inextricably linked with performance enhancing drugs that no feat of endurance of courage can ever be viewed without great cynicism. Add that to watching a group of lycra-clad men cycling and I have to ask; who cares?
Athletics has suffered in a similar way where its great feats - particularly in the sprints - are also tainted by previous scandals. Asafa Powell is the current 100m record holder with a time of 9.77 seconds. But to talk about that time is to talk about drugs even though Powell it seems (at least for the time being) is clean. Powell is in fact only the co-record holder with Justin Gatlin who is currently taking an enforced 8-year sabbatical (read: the drug cheats career is over) hence the world record is still not entirely held by a fair runner.
Powell set this mark in 2005 by beating Tim Montgomery’s time of 9.78s. Where is Tim Montgomery now you ask? I think you can guess.
Montgomery himself had initially drawn praise for bettering not the world record but for “legally” beating Ben Johnson’s infamous 9.79 in the 1988 Seoul Olympics thereby allowing us to say - albeit temporarily - that the fastest time ever run by a human being was a legal one.
Athletics continues to hope and pray that Asafa Powell is as clean as he says he is (it should be noted that Gatlin spoke eloquently about the blight of drugs before he was caught) since the taint of previous scandals casts enough of a shadow over the sport enough without every record holder being found out as a cheat.
Le Tour however is so rotten to the core that quite how it could ever attain respectability is unclear. Indeed whether it ever could is unclear.
Yellow jersey wearer, Denmark’s Michael Rasmussen is currently embroiled in two fights. One for the Tour title and another to clear his name.
Last week the Danish Cycling Union announced that they had warned Rasmussen for missing two random, out of competition drug tests and banned him from the World Championships and 2008 Olympic games.
It then emerged that he had also been warned by the Union Cycliste Internationale (the world governing body) for missing another two tests in the past 18 months. This is pretty major stuff…
This is not a major problem for the Tour however; beyond reproach has been replaced by plausible deniability, sporting integrity with damage limitation.
Sport, with farce.
From the BBC,
“Pre-race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for blood doping after winning Saturday’s stage of the Tour de France, his Astana team have announced.”
Colour me shocked and amazed.
more from the BBC,
“Astana said two distinct types of red blood cells were found in Vinokourov’s sample indicating he had had a blood transfusion from a compatible donor shortly before Saturday’s stage.”
That is just nasty…
“Vinokourov had been an outspoken critic of current Tour leader Michael Rasmussen, who was dropped by the Danish Cycling Union team after missing two out-of-competition tests earlier in the year.”
Gatlin anyone?
“Italian rider Cristian Moreni has become the second rider in a week to fail a Tour de France doping test.”
Oh oh, but this is GOOD because another cheat has been caught…
Race leader Michael Rasmussen has been kicked out of the Tour de France and sacked by his Rabobank team.
“Michael Rasmussen has been sent home for violating the team’s internal rules,” confirmed a Rabobank spokesman.