Don't be a dope!

Many of my dedicated readers know that I am an avid cyclist, and some of you have asked me what my thoughts are on the ongoing doping problems in professional cycling. Here are my thoughts.

Doping really came to the forefront in cycling during the 1998 Tour de France. The TDF that year was marred by doping scandals throughout, starting with the arrest of Willy Voet, a soigneur in the French Festina team. Voet was traveling into France when he was arrested and found with large quantities of doping products. As a result, repeated police raids found drugs in the rooms of the TVM team, and as a reaction the riders staged a sit-down protest of the treatment.

The years 1999 - 2005 were the Lance Armstrong years. He was constantly dogged by accusations of doping after his miraculous recovery from testicular cancer. Many of his rivals faced their own doping accusations during this time period, and some of those rivals failed doping tests during that time period.

2006 saw the rise and fall of Floyd Landis as well as the beginnings of Operación Puerto. The Operación Puerto doping case (meaning Operation Mountain Pass) is a Spanish doping case against doctor Eufemiano Fuentes and a number of accomplices, started in May 2006. He is accused of administering prohibited doping products to 200 professional athletes, to enhance their performance. Whilst the clients of Dr Fuentes include a number of high profile tennis and football stars, media attention has focused almost exclusively on the relatively small number of professional road cyclists that were named in the investigation. As of May 2007, fifteen have been acquitted and three have admitted doping or have had overwhelming evidence of blood doping placed before them.

Landis tested positive for extrogenous testosterone and is currently challenging the validity of the test in court.

The 2007 TDF saw the positive test of a number of high profile riders such as Alexander Vinokourov. It also saw the early withdrawl of race leader Michael Rasmussen due to his missing out of competition dope tests earlier in the year. The ultimate winner of this year's TDF, Alberto Contador, has links to the Operación Puerto case noted earlier, and has a cloud of suspicion hanging over his head.

So that's a lot of background information to digest for those who do not follow professional cycling. Here are my random thoughts on the matter.

• I think that doping is a big problem and that there are lots of cyclists in the peleton that are doping. That said, I think the sport is getting a bad wrap in the press. I can't think of any other sport in the world that has vigorous testing procedures and harsh penalties as cycling. No NFL team would be able to field a roster if every player that has taken steroids was banned from playing. Heck, I bet there are golfers that are taking performance enhancing drugs!



• Lance Armstrong - I believe that he was doping during the years he dominated the TDF. The fact that he never failed a test is meaningless. The cheaters are always one step ahead of the labs that are testing them. Micro-dosing of EPO and other performance enhancing drugs is a science that numerous cyclists have perfected. Look at all of the former riders that have recently come forward and have admitted to using these drugs. None of these people ever failed a dope test either. It's just too hard for me to believe that Lance Armstrong is clean and yet was able to whip the collective asses of his competitors, many of which have found to have been doping.



• Floyd Landis - I don't think Floyd doped and used extogenous testosterone. They presented a compelling case that the French lab that perfomed the work made serious procedural errors and suffered from sloppy work. Garbage in = garbage out. Unfortunately, Floyd lost the battle in the press and will always be assumed guilty by the public.



• I don't think there's any French conspiracy against the American winner. I do think a different (ie - neutral) lab should be used for dope testing. The current one in France has too many ties to L'Equipe (the French sports newspaper that always seems to be first to provide "breaking news" of the latest doping scandal) as well as to the organization that runs the TDF. There does seem to be a bit of a witch hunt by the race organizers when it comes to testing the riders, and I think there have been some innocent riders that have been caught in the net (Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton).



• I think it majorly sucks that most test results are leaked to the press before the alleged doper even knows the results. There are many riders out there that had their cases dismissed, but now have a cloud of suspicion hanging over their head because of leaks to the press.



• I think that the sport of cycling suffers from a symptom that most other sports suffer from - TOO MUCH MONEY. There are riders that are doing anything to win. There are other riders that are doping "just to keep up". They're not worried about winning. Their trying to keep up so they can keep their job! It's not just the riders. It's the race organizers too. There's lots of fighting between the UCI, the major tours, and other race organizers. This power struggle spills over into the doping arena and further complicates things.



• I think the riders need to unionize because I think their rights are getting trampled on. Yes, there's plenty of bad apples out there, but I believe that the doping net is being cast indiscriminately and they don't care who gets caught. There needs to be an independent organization that takes care of all the doping testing.



• It seems that the teams are starting to take positive actions to clean up the sport and are performing their own testing. They're also putting pressure on the doctors and trainers who are administering these drugs to the riders.



• I think the next few years will continue to be "rough" but I do think that the sport is on its way to cleaning itself up.