What a bunch of cycling dope(r)s

Go to the Tour de France's official website and check out the standings after the 11th stage, which ended Wednesday.

The first thing you will see is a roll of honor, listing the leader by the various categories of jersey that rider would be wearing at the start of Thursday's 12th stage -- yellow (overall leader), green (sprint points), red polka dot (climber) and white (best young rider, up to 25 years of age.)

By Thursday morning, that list had become a roll of dishonor in a sport that brings shame on itself with relentless stupidity.

The rider who would have been wearing the polka dot and white jerseys, Riccardo Ricco of Italy, was booted from the race after an "A'' sample tested positive for EPO. His entire Spanish-based team, Saunier Duval, immediately withdrew from the Tour.

Two Spanish riders, Miguel Manuel Beltran of Liquigas (a teammate of Lance Armstrong during his final three triumphs), and Moises Duenas Nevado of Baroloworld, also are gone from the race after EPO positives.

So the excitement I was beginning to feel, in spite of knowing better, for the achievements of an old friend, Christian VandeVelde of Lemont, Ill., has turned to my usual disgust over a sport with far too many athletes whose stupidity surpasses belief.

Christian took Chicago Tribune readers along for the ride with a wonderfully insightful insider's diary in 1999, when he rode on Armstrong's team in the first of his seven straight Tour wins.

I edited his diary every day, and by the end of the Tour, the editing consisted of a few commas and periods, so skilled had Christian become at describing melting roads, meals eaten on the fly, the daily routine of a rider and the staggering difficulty of the task.

After an entire career spent as a domestique -- a servant -- for other riders, Christian became the leader of his Garmin-Chipotle team during the 2008 Tour, and he once again is filing dispatches to the Tribune.

With the Alps and a final time trial ahead, he is in third overall, just 38 seconds behind leader Cadel Evans of Australia.

Garmin-Chipotle, formerly Slipstream until the high-profile sponsors arrived this year, has made its reason for being an attempt to show elite cycling can be clean.

But Saunier Duval's leadership also had consistently said it was committed to cycling without doping.

Although apparently not cycling without dopes like Ricco, who was second in the 2008 Tour of Italy before winning two stages and standing ninth overall in the Tour de France.

Now the team has been forced to issue a statement announcing its suspension of activities until the Ricco case is clarified.

And people undoubtedly will question how VandeVelde has gone from a Tour also-ran whose past finishes in Tours were 85th (1999) 56th (2004), 24th (2006) and 25th (2007) to podium contender at age 32, even if some of the difference obviously comes from his changed stature in the team pecking order.

And the dynamic of the final mountain changes likely is dramatically changed by Ricco's absence, since he won the first stage in the Pyrenees and finished sixth in the other.

So here we are, watching another Tour with serious credibility issues, leading me to two more issues:

1.)  The Tour began with 198 riders trying to shake a decade of doping scandals.  Three have tested positive for EPO.  So everyone says, "Here they go again.''

Baseball began the season with 750 players trying to shake a decade of doping scandals. Not a single active Major League player has tested positive this season.

Think baseball is any cleaner than cycling, which is making the Sisyphean effort to combat doping?  Or do you think, as I do, that its doping-control efforts remain farcical, but fans just don't care?

2.) Two of this year's EPO positives at the Tour were leaked to the French newspaper, L'Equipe. This has been a pattern for several years, despite anti-doping rules about confidentiality until officials reveal a positive.

While I applaud the French journalists' reporting skills, I cannot help but wonder about the ethics of the French anti-doping officials and lab doing the testing.

Defrocked 2006 Tour champion Floyd Landis made the same argument, and while I am convinced he is guilty of doping (for reasons my colleague, Alan Abrahamson, laid out clearly in his nbcolympics.com blog), something clearly is wrong with the way the French are handling these cases.

I just asked the World Anti-Doping Agency for its feelings on the leaks, and this is part of what WADA CEO David Howman said in an e-mailed statement:

"The only organization that can match the anonymous sample to an athlete is the one under whose jurisdiction the test was conducted.  WADA is disappointed by any breach of confidentiality that may occur during the results management process. Any breach is unacceptable."

Just another reason why what once was cycling's greatest event has become nothing more than the Tour de Farce.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Riccardo Ricco (center) of Italy is taken away by French police earlier today after testing postive for EPO at the start of the 12th stage of the Tour de France from Lavenalet to Narbonne. Credit: Papon/Presse Sports via US PRESSWIRE

Comments

[Dr Foulkes]

Read the validity of the test being used to make this sport a laughing stock.

http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/90529.2008v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Lundby%2C+c&fulltext=epo&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

The Landis case demonstrates what is confirmed by this study that WADA is not interested in bringing their labs up to hospital standards. They do not have a system for standardizing testing technique. Do not police labs for accuracy, Are not interested in pier reviewed study of their methods. Do not pursue false positive error methods like differences in how samples are handled. They use tests that are not appropriate like testing for transfusion. This led to Vinikorovs outing last year. Evidence in the Hamilton case revealed arbitrary and untested and pier reviewed methods.

WE CANNOT TRUST THESE ACCUSATIONS BASED ON LAB METHODS THAT ARE SO POOR. Even if there is cheating WADA is not providing us with the kind of credible lab analysis to make us ever feel confident in their accusations. They have ruined the careers of some innocent athletes.

A complete over haul of WADA by university experts is now required. With the Olympics just around the corner they are clearly not ready to act as our watch guard.

[Lindsay Haylock]

Its ridiculous to slam the French for trying to clean up their sport. At least le tour is re-gaining credibility unlike MLB, NFL, Athletics etc etc.
The fans don’t care? Dont kid yourself.

[Dr Foulkes]

Phil I would like to see you ride one stage of the "Tour de Farce". EPO or not this is a brutal race and your conviction of the validity of testing seems a little un vetted. Expert testimony in all of the controversial recent cases points to non pier reviewed methods and usage of tests that are known to have false positive rates that are unacceptable (not to mention false negative). The calibration is not standardized between labs as an example and there is no independent oversight of methods and training. The inventor of the machine used to detect exogenous testosterone testified that the set up of the machine was improper and the result not acceptable.

Look at this study Phil!

http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/90529.2008v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Lundby%2C+c&fulltext=epo&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

Being accused of doping by these "labs" is like being accused of being a sex offender, you are painted by most for life!

The system needs a conservative leader that is a real blood scientist and would start with standards. Without this we cannot trust that young Ricco is not another victim cut down in the midst of his chance to show the talent he has devoted his life to attain.

Easy to sit at your computer and wag your finger Phil. Face some of those French cols clean and then have it all taken away.

We need to do better.

[DrFoulkes]

Phil your belief in these these labs defies reason. The inventor of the mass spec used to convict Floyd said the set up, calibration and methods used could not produce a valid test. Yet you are convinced of Floyds guilt.

Read this link,

http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/90529.2008v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Lundby%2C+c&fulltext=epo&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

Does look like a career breaking test to you? Then you need to join WADA.

Complete overhaul begining with standards is the only hope for this to become anything more than a witch hunt.

[Brad Rose]

What a load of crap!!! Most cyclists complete clean as do most professional athletes. There will always be cheaters that is a sad fact of life when money or fame is on the line. At least cycling does make an effort to catch the cheaters. By the way how many olympians test positive every 4 years. Are the olympics a sham as well since they try to catch cheaters.

[Justin]

So you say yourself that "mainstream" sports (i.e. the ones that Americans watch while the rest of the planet doesn't care whatsoever) are probably dirtier than cycling, and yet because of a few positives and a loose lipped lab worker, the entire Tour is a farce?

Cycling is perhaps the ONLY sport making an effort to combat doping. One might argue Track and Field is a distant 2nd place... But when sports like Baseball and Football are so chronically doped that the clues are impossible to ignore (such as players' HEADS being too big, or aging men maintaining an unstoppable fastball or gaining 40lbs of muscle in the twilight of their career), nobody says "Baseball is dead." Why? Probably because Americans prefer blissful ignorance and would rather romanticize pro sports than be faced with the reality of what happens when corporations descend upon athletes with million dollar do-or-die contracts.

Go stick your head back in the sand and leave this sport alone. You're too shortsighted to recognize it's probably one of the few sports that isn't dead yet.

[Brant]

I think to attack cycling alone is not right, athletics, baseball, cycling, swimming, weight lifting and many other sports are being caught doping - The issue for the TDF is it is a 3 week event and everything comes to the surface during the event. The TDF at least deals with it's doping. So the real issue is society and why do athletes have a win at all cost attitude - SIMPLE THE MONEY!

We need to educate our children about right and wrong - and to work for a goal and not be given without sacrifice and hard work, we to often here it's not my fault and the give me generation!

Take responsibility for your own actions - work, sacrifice to achieve your goals is good for your soul!

[Tommy Boy.]

Pro Soccer, NFL, NBA, Track and Field, Swimming you name it. Those guys dope, cheat, and give a air of pure athletics. Give me a damn break.

You know nothing about the sport of cycling other than what you read from two years ago. If you weren't so scared of getting kicked out of the club houses of other sports you would be the same drug abuse. You might would also want to add, drug abuse, rape, and complete disregard for the public.

Go cover college football. Hack.

[jim]

lance was beating all of these people who are/were using perf. enhancing drugs, yet he was clean???

[steph]

Wow. You might brighten your life by believing some riders out there aren't really into doping. A little faith in some fellow humans might do you some good. One might say all sports writers are bitter and cynical.