With only the final few days of Wimbledon and the Women’s World Cup going on (congrats to German punters for their awesome support of the event; 73,000 spectators at their home sides opening match is phenomenal), it was inevitable that we’d be turning our thoughts to Le Tour. Indeed, in our absence of the last few weeks the Comments Team has been taking up positions strategically around France as we prepare to provide you with comprehensive coverage of the 98th staging of the greatest cycling event in the world. And in our first Tour posting, we’ve decided to get the ugliness out of the way as quickly as possible.
Tainted Love
Unfortunately, whatever takes place on the 21 stages and 3,430 kilometers of this year’s Tour, it is very likely that the true winner will not be known until sometime in August. This is due to the ongoing doping case against the world’s number one racer, the Spaniard Alberto Contador. We’ll go into the specifics of the case and a generally libelous rant at Spanish sport at a later date, but as it stands the Court of Arbitration for Sport will not hear his case until a few weeks after Le Tour is completed. This is a truly disastrous state of affairs, as anything that occurs during the actual race may be negated in a courthouse less than a month later. Much as we love to see him ride, undoubtedly the best thing for this year’s Tour would be if he pulled out of the race with some kind of illness or injury before the first stage on Saturday. And by injury we should quickly state that we mean a muscle strain of some kind, not a crash. We don’t wish cycling crashes on anyone, not even the man recently voted The Most Boring Person To Have Ever Ridden A Bicycle In The History Of Humanity, Australian Cadel Evans.
But were Contador to go down with some sort of stomach virus or tweaked hammy, this year’s race would be perceived as a great deal more pure right from the get go. Because, face it, many many hateful and foolish people out there still equate cycling with doping, and a situation such as this does little to dissipate their ignorance. So today we want to address the doping situation, be done with it, and leave us all free to enjoy the greatest sporting event on the planet.
Yes, cycling has a problem with performance enhancing drugs. There are two closely related reasons for this. The first is that it is part of the cultural history of the sport, dating back for more than seventy years. Back in the early days of racing, right through until the 1970s, many riders would openly admit to various forms of doping. Their perspective was, “well how the hell else do you expect us to survive these hellish events?” To race bikes is to suffer, generally for very little financial reward or public recognition- and that is if you are one of the top riders. For the workmen in a team, known as ‘domestiques’, the situation is even bleaker. So in the early days of the sport, drug taking was not only rife, but also relatively openly acknowledged.
Once drug taking became stigmatised however- and with good reason given the terrible effects it was taking on rider’s short and long term health- the second reason alluded to above came into being. Suddenly a whole underground network of drug procurement sprang up. Because riders could no longer openly obtain the little pills and needles they felt they needed to get through brutal days in the saddle, various people began attaching themselves to cycle teams. ‘Doctors’, ‘masseuses’ etc became part of every team’s traveling entourage, and ensured that the riders had what they wanted, when they wanted it. This has persisted through until recent times, and is a big part of the reason why doping continues to be an element of the sport.
Imagine if you will that you a young rider who has just secured a contract with a professional team. You are desperate to maintain your employment, and to break into the elite squad that competes in the Grand Tours. If your team doctor wants to shoot you up with something at various times of the year, or transfuse blood, or any of the other tactics that are employed, you are likely to say yes, especially if your team mates are doing the same thing. Combine peer pressure with financial pressure with competitive pressure and what you get is a hell of a lot of pressure. Which is when people tend to make choices that they will regret.
So.
So cycling has had a culture of doping. But, along with Olympic competition, cycling has done the most to eliminate this culture. Some teams, such as Kiwi rider Julian Dean’s Garmin Cervelo, are absolutely fanatical with their drug testing. Without going into boring technical detail, the controls that cyclists face are beyond stringent. And it works, which is why people get caught. In fact, we’d go so far to say cycling no longer has a doping problem- it has a doping solution. If you want a sport with a doping problem, we would suggest football.
Think about it for a minute. Top professional football players can play anywhere between thirty to sixty matches of high paced, high pressure, high intensity and high stakes soccer in a season. The wear and tear on player’s bodies is incredible. The money and fame on offer is beyond the comprehension of any of us. And yet nobody ever tests positive for anything (the five Mexican players who recently tested positive for the same drug Contador is under suspicion of using were cleared by the Mexican Federation when their ‘B’ Samples came back negative.) It is impossible to believe that of all the major leagues around the world, comprising of literally thousands of players, that nobody is abusing anything. When you compare football to most other endurance-style pro sports and find a complete absence of players testing positive for anything, you must believe that something very fishy is going on, particularly when you add money-hungry dodgy-as player agents into the equation, and huge international sponsors with plenty to lose.
Go one step further and look at the Premier League. You’ve got hundreds of vastly overpaid, (generally) undereducated, deified, macho young men running loose; in any other strata of society these are the prime types for dabbling in the Devil’s Dandruff. Barely a fortnight goes by without some Prem player writing his sports car off whilst driving several times over the speed limit in the early hours of the morning, or getting into relationship infidelities, or a punch-up at some exclusive night club: can you honestly believe that there aren’t lines of Jazz Salt being racked up and hoovered down while all of this is going on? What else would lead you to physically assault a DJ because he wouldn’t play Genesis for you???
And yet nobody (aside from renowned munter Adrian Mutu) ever even tests positive for recreational drugs. How is this believable? Well, the answer is very simple. It is the acronym that has become a byword for corruption, lies, back-door dealings and rampant self-interest: FIFA. They are constantly at loggerheads with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and remain one of the few remaining bastions of performance enhancing substance deniers. For funks sake, even the roid-raging NFL is falling into line. But not FIFA.
So if you want to accuse sports of having doping problems, look towards football. A total absence of positive tests in this day and age doesn’t indicate a ‘clean’ sport, it suggests an extremely corrupt system. And don’t fall for the bullspit knee-jerk all-cyclists-are-drug-cheats crap that you will hear constantly over the next month, because it is outdated sensationalist buy-my-newspaper rubbish. As a sport, yes cycling still has many problems. But it is also at the forefront of the efforts to eradicate this form of cheating, which is why riders get caught. Think about that when your local news agency begins frothing at the mouth. The situation this year with Contador really sucks, there is no disputing that and it is why we wish he wasn’t competing. But don’t let it overshadow for you what will still be a marvelous event.
Right, that’s that out of the way. We’ll be back with a real preview of the racing later this week, including a look at this year’s route which climbs the magnificent Col du Galibier twice, and we’ll run our eyes over the entry list and who to watch out for in the weeks to come. In the meantime, here is a link to the greatest piece of cycling journalism we’ve ever read anywhere ever, featuring Julian Dean’s Garmin team.
Cheers.
You make a compelling case, one which I am grateful for. Thank you sir.
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