Most Americans are aware that pro cycling took yet another severe credibility hit when the Floyd Landis scandal broke after the 2006 Tour de France. That was far from the most damaging scandal in cycling in 2006 though, as Operation Puerto in Spain recovered more than 1000 doses of anabolic steroids and over 100 packets of blood products - a veritable performance enhancing factory. Many of the biggest names in cycling were implicated, including superstars like Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, decimating the field of the 2006 Tour de France before it even began. Puerto has been front page news all over Europe for the better part of the past year, and has done nothing but further the perception that the peleton is more of a rolling laboratory than a collection of athletes. With important sponsors such as T-Mobile and Liberty Seguros bailing out and the financial future of the sport in serious danger, even tougher anti-doping measures were put in place and promises were made that the doping culture that pervades cycling was going to be eliminated. 2007 was going to be a new year, a year that would show off the tremendous collection of new young talent in the the pro ranks and put a fresh (and clean) face on cycling.
Instead, 2007 has seen nothing but a continuation of the bad news from 2006. More cyclists either admitted to doping or were caught doping. The bad news continued to pile up. Great races during the classics season and the Giro d'Italia were seemingly buried under a continual storm of allegations, confessions and positive tests in the press. The final blow came not long before the 2007 Tour de France when 5 former Telekom riders confessed to past doping. This included stars Jorge Jaksche and Erik Zabel, as well as former TdF winner and Team CSC owner and coach Bjarne Riis. Along with the arrest of Liberty Seguros director Manolo Saiz in 2006, this made it two of the biggest directeur sportifs in cycling who had been directly tied to systematic doping in the past year. It was as if Lou Piniella and Bobby Cox were tied to steroid rings being run in their team clubhouses, and has made it impossible for cycling to pretend that the doped up riders were just renegades breaking rules on their own.
All of this has contributed to make the 2007 edition of the Tour de France one of the most important races in years, a chance for cycling to show that the past 12 months had been a blood letting of sorts, a necessary cleansing of the ranks and airing of laundry that would lead to clean riders in the future. The International Cycling Union (UCI) and the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the Tour de France organizers, took tremendous, and some have said desperate, measures to insure that the public image had faith in a clean peleton. All of this seemed to have worked early in the tour as the race was unpredictable, entertaining and competitive. The cloud of doping had not been lifted, but at least people were talking about the racing for the first time in a while. There was hope that pro cycling was finally slowly crawling out of the EPO induced haze it had been floundering in.
Instead, today's news that race favorite and multiple stage winner Alexander Vinokourov has tested positive for homologous blood transfusions has shattered whatever little ray of hope that was starting to peek through. Despite all the testing, despite all the investigations, despite the police raids, despite the draconian testing practices ... one of the very biggest stars in the sport was still pumping someone else's blood into his system to artificially increase his capacity for carrying oxygen. And to be clear, this isn't Barry Bonds rubbing some cream on himself, blood doping of the type 'Vino' tested positive for is a potentially lethal medical process that requires systematic medical attention to perform.
Where does cycling go from here? I really don't know. The culture of doping has so deeply penetrated the entire cycling community that I am not sure that anyone associated with a professional team over the past 10-15 years can be trusted. The UCI has established testing procedures that US athletic unions would meltdown over if they were even discussed. Can you imagine Bug Selig getting the MLBPA agree to force every baseball player to notify MLB of their wherabouts on a continual basis (even when on vacation) so they could be subjected to random testing at any time? Yet that's what cycling has in place. European police have far greater freedom to randomly search doctors, riders and team managers and their homes than you would ever see here in the States. In the face of all this testing and even with the constant threat of law enforcement hanging over their heads, riders, teams and their doctors are still performing complex and systematic doping procedures.
Fans like myself have to face the facts that this sport is just rotten to it's core and that it might almost require a complete failure of the system to rebuild properly. Some (such as the excellent Podium Cafe) are holding out hope that as the "doping generation" of the mid to late 90's continues to age it's way out of the sport we will see a generation of young clean riders take their place. While I admire the optimism, I still find it hard to believe that young riders coming up into such a pervasive culture of doping as obviously exists will somehow manage to keep clear of the needles and transfusions. What I do know is that I'm one of the biggest cycling fans you will find and my faith in the sport is badly shaken. I can't imagine what the average fan thinks, outside of "oh, they all dope - what a joke of a sport".
Scottish rider and former convicted doper David Millar might have said it best today when he was asked about Vino's positive test and answered, "Given what we have done, with our current situation, we may as well pack our bags and go home". He later modified that statement and commented that the Tour should continue, but he's not alone in feeling that way tonight. If this sport can't keep it's premier race clean in a year where it desperately needed something scandal free to celebrate, then maybe it is time to pack up and go home.
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Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. It is frustrating to hear all the fans of the major American sports dismiss cycling as a bunch of dopers. It is even more frustrating when the media only proves them right. I think the root of the problem is that cycling actually has an effective drug testing system in place.
I'm sure the same percentage of MLB players are using performance enhancing drugs as are cyclists, but for years, MLB turned the other cheek. Only recently, and reluctantly, has MLB started to (slowly) go after dopers. Solid facts show the MLB players have had drugs mailed to their house, yet these players face no repercussions.
The major credibility blow cycling has taken in recent years would happen in most any other major American sport if it's testing procedures where as through and effective as cycling's. I can't say I blame the other sports for doing their best to ignore the problem.
Posted at 10:06AM on Jul 25th 2007 by speed
2. Are any of our athletes clean these days?? Word just came out that another cyclist was busted using testosterone...Can check it out here:
http://www.sportsnipe.com
Posted at 10:24AM on Jul 25th 2007 by fate
3. I am absolutely devastated.
I was at the TdF in 2005 for the final stage when Vino won and he's been one of my favorites for years (at least since Kivilev died at Paris-Nice).
The fact is, and now it is absolutely undeniable, everyone dopes. They have for years and it's pervasive.
The scandal, while truly devastating, does not affect my love of the sport.
Posted at 11:07AM on Jul 25th 2007 by JennT
4. You can watch any sport and be appalled at the cheating. NFL players try to injure their fellow professionals in a way that is unthinkable in cycling (as well as abuse steriods and HGH in the most obvious fashion). Footballers dive to win penalties and have opponents sent off. Cricket is riven with gambling scandals, as is the NBA.
Pots -v- kettles.
Posted at 11:17AM on Jul 25th 2007 by Colnagoman
5. Is it the cheating that is ruining these sports? Or the obsession about cheating? It is time for a major paradigm shift on the subject. We are rapidly approaching the time when the results of a contest won't be known until the chemist weighs in a week or so after the contest has been held.
If the issue is public health, then I fail to understand our existing policies on tobacco, alcohol, trans fats and other dietary nightmares, the prohibitive cost of health insurance, and, of course, let's not forget our legal semi-automatic hand guns.
If we really want to police these sports, then the governments of the countries that sponsor the sports should take on the burden of the testing, not the sports themselves. And samples should be retained for as much a five years to be re-tested for substances that were undetectible at the time of the original testing.
What we have now is an imperfect system in which performance-enhancing substance technology continues to be light years ahead of the technology that is available to the doping police, and some cheaters are getting caught and others are skating away undetected. This serves no purpose at all other than to provide hypocritical journalists with the fodder for yet another sensational story.
The Tour de France is an exciting sport that is being ruined by the positive drug tests and the inconsistent and ineffective policing. These guys who are getting caught thought they could get away with it. How many more are there who actually are getting away with it? I shudder to think.
The system is broken.
Posted at 11:51AM on Jul 25th 2007 by stanfordfan
6. I am absolutely devastated.
I was at the TdF in 2005 for the final stage when Vino won and he's been one of my favorites for years (at least since Kivilev died at Paris-Nice).
The fact is, and now it is absolutely undeniable, everyone dopes. They have for years and it's pervasive.
The scandal, while truly devastating, does not affect my love of the sport.
Posted at 11:57AM on Jul 25th 2007 by JennT
7. Sorry about the double post.
Posted at 11:58AM on Jul 25th 2007 by JennT
8. The last few days of this TDF have been devastating to both the fans and the teams. Maybe I'm naive but I can't help believing that this much testing will eventually if not this year then certainly next year achieve what we desire, a race fair to all.
I also feel that a sport that tries this hard to rid itself of drugs deserves something better than the ridicule heaped on it by sportscasters here in the U.S. These are the same ones who point out that baseball had no steroid rule when Bonds may have taken them so it was okay. Illegal, you say? That doesn't count in world of baseball.
Posted at 10:13PM on Jul 25th 2007 by Claire Lea
9. David Millar isn't a "former convicted doper" he is a convicted doper, his conviction stands.
Vino's blood doping is no more dangerous than receiving a blood transmusion for a medical reason. Provided the blood is of the correct type and basic cleanliness standards are adhered to it is a procedure carried out thousands (millions?) of times a day. It does suggest that the team were involved, I can believe Landis applied a testosterone patch or injection without others knowing (though given the endemic drug use in Phonak why would he hide it) but this is more involved and time consuming than that.
Posted at 6:26AM on Jul 26th 2007 by Colnagoman
10. Maybe they should let women compete in it like the Boston Marathon. Then the testosterone factor would be eliminated.
Posted at 8:11AM on Jul 26th 2007 by mjhes
11. Can I just be the first to point out that Contador was a team-mate of Vinokourov's at Liberty Seguros when Manolo Saiz was disgraced for systematic doping and Heras busted? He was then implicated in Operation Puerto though no charges were brought.
Boonen implied the other day that he thought Evans was the only clean GC contender.
Posted at 11:08AM on Jul 26th 2007 by Colnagoman
12. It's not that the Tour de France has changed in the last decade from a truely heroic, clean sports event to a rotten disaster. It's society getting more and more concerned about drug abuse. From all Tour de France winners since Anquetil, only three (Hinault, Lemond, and another one I forgot) have NOT been tested positive for doping at least once in their career. Merckx was ejected from the Giro, just to be allowed to win the Tour a few weeks later. Doping is a part of the Tour de France, it's the way it has always been. But nobody really cared until, well, until 1998, when abusing drugs in sports became a criminal offence in France and Italy. In a politically correct, black-and-white society, journalists and fans cannot tolerate doping anymore, as they have done it for decades. Again: Not the Tour has changed, not the rider have changed (which explains their surprise and their feeling of being innocent when get caught). The society has changed its approach to drugs. In a way, you can directly link the doping scandals to the DEA drug raids and the strictly enforcement of drug laws in the UK and elsewhere.
Legalize drugs and everyone is happy, including cyclists.
Posted at 5:31PM on Jul 28th 2007 by Aleks