Precisely a week ago, Floyd Landis produced a miraculous ride on the last stage in the Alps of the Tour de France. He took the stage to Morzine with an epic lone escape, hauling himself back from 11th to third place — within striking distance of the overall lead, which he duly took on Saturday and held into Paris to become the first winner of the Tour in the post-Lance Armstrong era. His performance that day immediately acquired the mythic quality of great Tour exploits. And that extraordinary comeback turned around the story of the Tour — until then dominated by the ghastly debacle of favourites Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich being forced to withdraw on the eve of the race because of their implication in a doping scandal.

Now, one week on, it is Landis who teeters on the brink of joining the ranks of disgraced and discredited riders. His team, Phonak, has confirmed that it has been notified by the international governing body, the UCI, that Landis’s test after Stage 17 showed “an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone” — an anabolic steroid which can be used to aid recovery. If the fail-safe B sample shows the same result, then Landis faces disqualification from the Tour and suspension from racing. It might well end his career, but that’s collateral damage compared to the ruin of the prestige of professional cycle sport and the Tour itself.

Already this year, viewing figures for the Tour were well down. People voted with their fingers on their TV remotes and went elsewhere. Frankly, sponsoring a professional cycling team seems such a liability these days, it’s amazing any company will part with the necessary millions of Euros it takes to keep a squad on the road.

After the removal of those implicated in the Operation Puerto investigation, some of us naively thought that this might now be a somewhat cleaner Tour. One team manager was quoted as saying that he believed only 7-8% of the peloton might now be doping. More fools we, it seems, for even countenancing such vain hopes. Landis’s performance on the road to Morzine will now be remembered not as heroic, gutsy and inspirational, but as phoney and boosted. That cleverly-timed release during the Tour of the news about his hip problem (requiring a hip replacement op) now seems such a cynical ploy to win publicity and sympathy. We’re all entitled to feel horribly cheated.

And it’s hard to see any way out of the jam we find ourselves in. There have been calls to get the doctors out of the sport, but all that would achieve would be a return to the bad old days when riders doped themselves, ruining their long-term health by overdosing. Then there are those who say we need to reinforce the anti-doping regime. In fact, it has been improved in recent years; it has become harder to cheat. But the testers are always in a race with the dopers and usually playing catch-up. In practice, doping is endemic in the sport, even down into the amateur ranks in Europe. It is difficult to see how it will ever be totally eliminated.

Is there any chink of light in this dark picture? Two, I think. First, it is better that the cheats get caught and exposed. In the long run, that short-term pain is worth enduring: fear of getting caught is the only effective disincentive. Second, one striking thing about Operation Puerto and now Landisgate is that the team managements have been united and tough in dealing with dopers. The offenders might be their star performers, but if they’re caught, they’re out. There is some value in that unity and consistency.

Many will feel, though, that the teams face both ways — demanding the top results, but then freezing out the riders who feel they have no option but to dope in order to deliver them. The riders’ attitude is that they are always the poor bloody infantry — used, abused and ultimately expendable.

There is some truth in this, but it’s time they got past that ancient sense of grievance. We’ve seen the riders exercise their power in the past with sit-down protests and the like when there’s something they don’t like — such as dangerous racing conditions. Tackling doping is, if nothing else, about their livelihood and their health. The one thing that might change the present dismal vista of pro cycle sport would be for the riders themselves to organise and take a collective stand against doping. Declare an amnesty now, by all means, but then exercise zero tolerance; create a culture of whistle-blowing; and end the code of silence, the omerta, that protects the dope-cheats.

Source: Read Full Article