Tour de France: Final Thoughts and a Changing of the Guard

The most difficult Tour to watch in the 20-plus years I've been watching them finished yesterday. I was on vacation for the final nine days of the race and limited to one or two hurried checks of the cycling sites each day, when I had time and a wi-fi connection. This turned into a daily pattern of turning on the computer, hoping to read race results but instead seeing a headline of another huge name going down in a doping scandal, feeling physically ill, then half-heartedly checking the standings of the riders still in the race. Happened again today, actually, when the news broke that Iban Mayo—a one-time Tour hopeful who had enjoyed a resurgent season after several underperforming years and was challenging for the yellow jersey in France—tested positive for EPO during the Tour. Guess we know how the resurgence happened.

During Lance Armstrong' reign, the talk on the final day of the Tour always turned to questions of whether or not he could come back and win again next year. During the 48 hours that Floyd Landis was a scandal-free Tour champion last summer, everyone was talking about whether or not he'd be able to come back from hip-replacement surgery to defend his title. But there hasn't really been much talk of next year in the wake of the 2007 Tour. When every day brings news of another rider getting banned from the sport, and when we still don't know the official winner of last year's Tour, talking about next year seems a little premature.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m optimistic. Guardedly so, sure. But still optimistic. Riders who were around in the drug-fueled '90s—riders who have dominated cycling until this season—still stick to the script when talking about drugs in the sport. But there’s a wave of younger riders who are more outspoken about the problem than any of their predecessors. And, to their credit, they do not seem to hold the veteran racers beyond reproach. It's great to see 24-year-old riders talking candidly about the damage Alexandre Vinokourov, Michael Rasmussen, and their blood-boosting cohorts have done to the sport. The young guard of the sport even staged a protest during a late stage of the Tour, stopping in the middle of the road and forcing the veterans—including soon-to-be-fired yellow jersey Rasmussen—to ride around them.

If you ask me, there are way too many men who raced in the doping heyday of the '90s now in management positions within the pro teams. Men with secrets shouldn't be running teams full of men with similar secrets. I wish more squads would follow the example of T-Mobile and hire as their managers people from outside the cycling world, men who have never been in Michele Ferrari’s motor home or ridden for Jan Ullrich.

Still, it truly does seem like things are getting better. A few teams have begun instituting internal doping controls that are nearly impossible for their riders to evade, the UCI and WADA are catching more cheats than ever before, and Rasmussen didn’t fail any tests at all. He was kicked out of the Tour and fired by his team—while wearing the yellow jersey!—simply because people didn’t trust him. That is unprecedented in sport. Any sport. Imagine a zero-tolerance policy like that in baseball. If the Majors banned players they didn’t trust, Hank Aaron’s home-run record would be plenty safe.

Yes, this Tour was hard to watch. But it was hard to watch like it would be hard to see your close friend go through an intervention. It’s messy, but it’s for the best. And if the message sticks, everything will get back to how it should be. I think we’ll look back on this Tour as a necessary and successful changing of the guard in cycling. That may sound naïve in light of the past two weeks, but that’s what I honestly believe. Plus, the alternative would just be too painful. Because, at the end of the day, I still love this sport too much to walk away. So congratulations, Alberto Contador and Linus Gerdemann; congratulations, Cadel Evans and Tom Boonen; and congratulations, WADA and all your anti-drug chemists. We're counting on you.

—John Bradley

(Photo by Beth Schneider)

Comments

[Stephane]

Since the very beginning of sports, men have tried to enhance their performance. I have read that greek athletes were eating goats meat to supposively jump higher??? and at the time they were running for free. Now with the sums at stake, doping seems inevitable..I would love to believe that all these young athletes will race clean and presumably a lot of them do..but will they be able to resist media and sponsor pressure, not to talk about this necessity to be famous.

I wonder if we should not opt for 2 tour de France..part of the peloton would be genetically enhanced riders sponsored by pharmaceutical groups and following would be the clean riders..at least we would know where we stands...

[John]

WADA and its "chemists" should have to clean up their act as well. Dick Pound needs to keep his lips closed until tests are confirmed, and stop making gratuitous and wild staements like saying he was surprised there were any virgins left within 100 miles of the Tour de France when referring to last year's winner Floyd Landis (before his hearing). As for the chemists, they should not be required by WADA rules from pointing out problems with an athlete's test procedures. And as far as the French lab goes, they should be required to stick to the same testing protocals as the best WADA labs like the one in LA. It would also be good for the sport if the French lab would refrain from leaking A test results to the press (at least until the B test confirmation results come back).