Tour de Farce

Cheating in cycling.

    I’ve had it.  I love cycling but the sport has become so dirty I just can’t take it any more.  The Tour de France is now nothing more than a showcase of tricks and scientific sleight-of-hand for a bunch of lying money-hungry hairless prima donnas.  A farce is what it is.
    Consider the one-balled boy wonder Lance Armstrong.  The man is diagnosed with stage 3 testicular cancer with metastases to his brain, abdomen and lungs, has surgery and chemotherapy and makes a miraculous recovery.  He then goes on to win what is arguably the dirtiest sport on the planet not once but 7 consecutive times.  He beats a handful of champions who now admit they were doping …and he claims he was clean.  And I believe in fairy tales.  Give me a break!  I know a feel-good story is great for the morale and god knows Americans need a super-hero in their midst considering the state of their late great nation.  The bad news is that miracles don’t happen and fairy tales are for kids.  Grow up.
    And then you get the man who has taken denial to new heights.  Floyd Landis, the new American hero who would take the torch from his countryman Lance Armstrong and go on to win the 2006 Tour de France.  In stage 17 of that race and after “bonking” in stage 16 falling from 1st overall to 11th, the man girds his loins and in a demonstration of shear courage explodes into a 120 km solo breakaway attack that many have called  "one of the most epic days of cycling ever seen."  Imagine that.  Now, consider that at the time of this amazing athletic feat, Landis’s right hip was undergoing avascular necrosis; the femoral head of his right hip was crumbling, literally.  To quote the man himself (you might shed a tear here)  "It's bad, it's grinding, it's bone rubbing on bone. Sometimes it's a sharp pain. When I pedal and walk, it comes and goes, but mostly it's an ache, like an arthritis pain. It aches down my leg into my knee. The morning is the best time, it doesn't hurt too much. But when I walk it hurts, when I ride it hurts. Most of the time it doesn't keep me awake, but there are nights that it does."  He wasn’t lying.  I saw his x-ray and most of my patients who have an x-ray like his can’t walk to the corner store, never mind compete in a world-class event.
    Then, a doping control shows him to have a testosterone/epitestosterone ration of 11:1.  The maximum allowable is 4:1.  Oh, and the samples also tested positive for synthetic testosterone.  So what does our American hero do?  Denies, denies, denies of course, and then hires the best lawyers money can buy: José Maria Buxeda of Spain who defended Roberto Heras when he was suspended for two years after testing positive for EPO and Howard L. Jacobs of the United States, the guy who defended 2 of the most famous cheaters in American sport, cyclist Tyler Hamilton and sprinter Tim Montgomery.  Nice. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.
    In this year’s Tour, you have Michael Rasmussen, the current leader.  He’s been excluded from September's world cycling championships and the Olympic Games in 2008 by the Danish Cycling Union for dodging doping controls…but he claims he’s clean.  I have to stop before I puke.
    And on and on it goes.  The public service German television channel has dropped its coverage of the Tour stating, "We signed a broadcasting contract for a sporting event, not a show demonstrating the performances of the pharmaceutical industry."

    These are some of the reasons I have not watched one second of this year’s Tour de Farce.  I can't stand cheating and lying.  Where has the honor gone?  What kind of role models are these guys?  What do you tell your kids? They’re all going down sooner or later, Lance and Floyd included, mark my word, and that will be a great day indeed.

Joseph Froncioni

Comments

[Joseph Froncioni]

Although I can't agree more that doping is everywhere in sport, I can assure you that I am fully sighted. Rather than calling the post hypocritical, a better term might have been topical especially considering today's developments on the Tour.

[AndyF]

It's pure hypocrisy to single out cycling, while turning a blind eye to soccer, tennis, football, golf, hockey, baseball, and virtually every other sport.

The problem is not confined to just professional sports. Recent data -- and the shear size of the hGH industry -- indicates that this problem has now filtered down to children.
https://www.theathlete.org/doping-in-sport.htm

Why cycling?

Cycling is simply the most vulnerable of sports. Its fan base is considerably smaller, and it is considered a very seasonal sport.

If you boycott this year's Tour de France because of its doping scandals, then prepare to never again watch any another athletic event, too.