From the Rafters

If you are a sports fan and by now you do not pay a little attention to the Tour de France you need to have a CBC (Complete Blood Count)to check for ice in your veins. Look, there is no other athletic event as challenging as this; period. It is colorful, beautiful, dramatic and full of culture. Where have you been for the last seven years? Where were you for the last five when OLN bridged the thousand miles between the US and France and brought it to your TV, not once a day, but multiple times a day. And tomorrow, and for 21 days, cyclists from all over the globe will be taking their bikes around the country of France and some adjacent countries.

Ok, so maybe you have heard of a texan named Lance Armstrong. After 7 years of doing what it has not done before, and what it was thought to be impossible, winning this tour, Lance has retired. And tomorrow 199 athletes were slated to line up at the first stage of the tour ready to compete for something that might have been more difficult in years past. For many of us fans, that can talk about any stage during the last 7 years, we had been waiting for this day. Some of us rooted for Lance every single minute during the last seven years. But we were excited waiting to this year to see who was going to take Lance's place. Just for this year.

And now in the eve of the start of the 2006 Tour De France, a big doping scandal arises. The top five finishers from last year wont be suiting up tomorrow; Basso, Ullrich, Mancebo, Vinokorouv. For us fans, this is a very sad moment. Having Lance, and Lance's "Le Train Blue" strong team in the mix, forced other teams to create stratergies that in the long run might have kept other strong competitors from performing at their best. The stratergies these year promised to be wide open. And the personal competition intense among some of those competitors banned.
Now the tour is really up for grabs, and while we mourn the situation, the other reality is, a much wide open competition, and the ability to see which 'young' riders emerge.

Some of the cycling news are reporting a mortal shot to the sport of cycling. Not necessarily. The sports faced their worst scandal and their one possible mortal shot in 1998. Since then, the sports have been ridden with doping scandals ever since. Lance Armstrong himself has probably been the number one target of doping rumors. Yet, nothing proved. Interesting that in this day that the race loses its biggest names in the race, a court in England made a ruling against the London Times in a libel suit from Lance Armstrong. The 'Times" reposted the words from a book entitled "L.A. Confidential", which accused Lance of using enhancing drugs. And therein lie the failure of the "Times"; accusing rather than raising questions.

Since that scandal, better methods and tests have been developed not only by the cycling federations but also by all the federations in all other sports, all around the world, to detect cheaters. So we owe the cyclists for that. Yes, they might have been the early settlers, the ones that kept unscrupulous scientists developing better enhancing drug performance. But because of them we have a little better control today.

At this time we do not for sure if the 'top' names that were kicked out of the Tour De France are innocent or guilty. Still, we have to applaud the stance taking by the team managers who were the ones to decide they were not going to taint their sport by taking 'suspects' into the competition. This is another reason why the sport will survive this scandal.

Once again in this cynical life we live we do not know what is real or what is not. But wouldn't be interesting that after all the doping accusations against Lance, it was really his competitors who were cheating trying to keep up? If the accusations are real, would Basso have kept up with Armstrong the last 3 years in the mountains? Would Jan have been a finalist in every tour he competed against Lance, and would he have won it in 1998? Or were those two just trying to compete against each other in this defining year? And how interesting is the fact that no one from the Discovery Team, Lance's old team was caught up in this scandal. Yeah, there have been old teammates who have been caught; Tyler Hamilton, Roberto Herras. But is that the reason why they were not a part of Lance's team anymore? Or did they feel they had to regain that competitive edge by taking chemically made human growth hormones?

While sad, the competition should keep me glue to my TV for the next three weeks.