Tour de France - the end of an era
Long-standing regular readers of this blog will know that during the three weeks of the Tour de France I seldom get to the computer, but I wonder how long that might continue.
In recent years the Tour de France has had many problems related to drug-enhanced-performance, and lots of big name cyclists have been lost along the way. But this year was the year the ruling body of the Tour de France were getting tough, after previous years catastrophes. They knew they had to get the race back on track if it was to survive.
Teams and riders all signed agreements saying they agreed to be hanged, drawn and quartered if so much as an aspirin was found in their hotel, and just for once it looked as if it might be a clean race.
Then up popped a couple of not very well known riders who, surprise surprise, had been cheating. Well OK perhaps that’s to be expected and no-one had really heard of them anyway.
But then today news has come out that Riccardo Ricco has been arrested and his team banished to outer space after a drug test showed positive and more performance-enhancing drugs were found in his hotel room.
Wow, some people learn pretty slowly. Ricco won two stages in the Tour de France last week. Did he really for the briefest moment think he wouldn’t be tested after that? He maintains he is innocent…but I guess we’ve heard that one before just once to often to believe it.
Floyd Landis (winner in 2006, then disqualified and his victory removed shortly afterwards) apparently spent $3million, almost all his money, trying to prove he was innocent, despite all the evidence that his blood test showed he had artificial steroids in his blood at the time.
The companies that sponsor the teams are clearly starting to despair of the whole thing and you can hardly blame them - it costs 7 million euros a year to support a Tour de France cycling team, and only takes one cheating cyclist for the whole expense to have been a complete waste of time.
I almost despair of the whole thing myself as well, but something keeps me watching anyway - sympathy, perhaps, with the enormous amount of effort the other cyclists have made, and their teams and the Tour organisers. Assuming of course that somewhere among the pack there are some young, talented, drug-free cyclists who really are just doing their best.
But really you have to wonder how long an event can keep going when every single year it is riddled with scandals and cheating, and every time someone speeds off ahead of the group you can see the following morning headlines appear before your eyes…’Scandal Rocks the Tour de France….again’
ps I have subsequently just read a fascinating book about the Tour de France drug problems. The book, Bad Blood by Jeremy Whittle (cycling journalist) is recommended reading - see it at amazon.co.uk here: BAD Blood: The Secret Life of the Tour De France
I dispair, I really do. If it’s not the TdF it’s the Olympics. Let’s just cut to the chase and get the drugs companies to sponsor the damn thing and drop the pretence.
The thing that startles me most isn’t that people cheat, that’s human nature for plenty of people I suppose, but they do it when there is such a high risk of getting caught, and knowing they are destroying their team and perhaps the whole tour de france along the way.
Even worse when it’s someone young like Ricco - I had thought (hoped) it was just the ‘old-school’ who were drugged-up but apparently not.
But yes, ’sponsored by epo’ might just be the way forward…
I so hope the Englishman is clean…he did so well this week.
I was given the impression that the boy from IoM wanted to finish the Tour and he was adamant that the Tour comes first and the Olympics second.
Or, was it that the remaining stages were too hilly and not flat/suited to a sprinter?
In any case, I was shocked/surprised that he withdrew all of a sudden…
Certainly the sprinters tend to struggle in the hills, but of course they do tend to carry on as best they can and complete the whole tour if possible. But certainly he would have had no chance of winning the race as a whole which is largely decided in the mountains.
I have just been reading a very interesting book called Bad Blood about the Tour de France and its descent into widespread EPO use over the last 10 years and the enormous advantage that drugs give, especially in the mountains.
Assuming Mark Cavendish is clean (and, ever the optimist, I think and hope that he is) he would have found the mountain stages especially difficult. Not quite in the spirit of the competition to withdraw, I think, but I guess we can’t blame him.
Good luck to him in the Olympics, it’s nice to see a British cyclist doing so well!