Scrap the Tour until it’s actually drug free
Event has strict testing standards, but they’re clearly not deterring cheaters
 Christophe Ena / AP Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen was sent home after winning Wednesday’s stage "for violating (the team’s) internal rules,” Rabobank team spokesman Jacob Bergsma said. |
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Throw the bikes onto the roof racks of the vans and buckle them down. Place the helmets back in their boxes.
Most of all, give the riders an escort to the airport. And make sure their tickets home are one way.
It’s time to shut down this laboratory on wheels masquerading as the world’s most prestigious bicycle race.
The Tour de Fraud, er, France, is officially the biggest gathering of dopers on the globe.
In Colombia, government forces are hard at work trying to clean up the cocaine trade. In Afghanistan, police are cracking down on poppy growers. In Mexico, the federales have their hands full with rival narco gangs. In the United States, the Drug Enforcement Agency is trying to root out methamphetamine labs.
But somehow, the intrepid cyclists entered in the Tour de France have stolen the spotlight from those other rather amateurish drug epidemics. Not since a massive shipment of heroin served as the basis for the movie, “The French Connection” has France been so tarnished by illicit chemicals.
It seems that with just about every turn of a bicycle tire another rider is being kicked out. On Wednesday the leader, Michael Rasmussen of Denmark, was removed from the race because he gave “incorrect” information about his whereabouts when he was absent for a scheduled drug test.
This follows Tuesday’s ouster of Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan, who was tossed for testing positive for a banned blood transfusion. Early in the Tour, German rider Patrik Sinkewitz had been provisionally suspended by his T-Mobile team for testing positive for high levels of testosterone; he eventually left the race after a collision.
Jan Ullrich retired in February after being implicated in the Spanish blood-doping scandal called Operation Puerto. Right before this year’s event, Joerg Jaksche admitted to blood doping.
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The International Cycling Union and those with a vested interest in the sport might have you believe that all this is good, that it stands as proof that the testing procedures in place are working, and that it’s sending a message to riders that cheating is forbidden.
But really, it’s having the opposite effect. This is akin to watching a mob of 100 or so rioters loot a shopping mall and then boasting later, “Well, we caught six of them.” Naturally, the public might be concerned about the ones who weren’t rounded up.
The Tour de France is fast becoming the dirtiest event in the world. And that’s coming from someone who is living in the United States during the peak of the steroids era in baseball. I thought for sure that we Americans would have bragging rights over anybody on the globe, considering that we have produced battalions of juiced muscleheads capable of superhuman feats who are almost as good at beating tests as they are at smashing baseballs into the stratosphere.
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But it’s almost as if the Tour de France is in another league. BALCO would be considered a quaint little mom-and-pop operation compared to the fiendishly cutting-edge European scientists who each day seem to chart new territory in the war on clean competition. I’m surprised guys like Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Gary Sheffield, Barry Bonds, et al, haven’t made pilgrimages across the Atlantic to study with the masters. The Tour de France is the Sorbonne of performance enhancement.
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