It’s over, I’m pretty sure that my fascination and affection for the Tour de France, and road racing in general, has left me disappointed for the final time.. The long string of dopers over the past few years (many of them former riders for USPS) has been disillusioning, but still hope prevailed. Well, hope is dead. Not only has Vino been busted and sent packing, today The Chicken flew for the last time. Doping will never be stopped by testing (Armstrong was, by his own estimation, the most tested cyclist in the world), it will only be stooped when clean cyclists (is there such a cyclist in the pro peleton?) don’t allow dopers to race anymore. What’ll it take to reach this point? More draconian measures for sure. Suspend the entire team for a team member’s transgressions, unless the team turns him in. Cancel major races when ONE cyclist runs a-fowl (not so subtle reference to Rassmussen) of the rules. Then only positive of the Rasmussen (who seemingly won the Tour after today’s stage, unless he had another ITT meltdown) incident, is that his own team sent him packing, for lying to them (and missing a few out-of-race controls) about his whereabouts. So far, he doesn’t seem to have been caught doping, but some of his behavior is suspicious, and Rabobank appears to be more concerned about the fate of pro-cycling then they are about wearing the mallot jaune. Good for them, although, they along with Discovery and T-Mobile did decide not to participate in the short protest at the start of today’s stage to show solidarity among teams that have had enough..
for a much more in-depth and elegant treatise on doping in pro-cycling, check out Tarik’s blog
The best that we can hope for is cleanly managed teams, and that is something that appears to be an entirely new concept with the pro-peloton. The teams have betrayed their sponsors and only now do they realize that the systematic doping was something that if caught could lose their sponsorship. I believe that with the direction Slipstream and T-Mobile are going that sooner or later we will have a situation where when the riders get caught they lose their livelihood – such as what has happend to the Chicken and Ulrich.
For whatever reason big name stars are getting cold busted lately. A seven-figure penalty times 2 years of no contract is a big financial risk. I think that now that they are hitting these guys in the wallet we are going to see changes.