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TOUR DE FRANCE Cycling's shame
PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2007.07.27 PAGE: A14
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Young athletes shouldn't have to put their health at risk to compete in the sport they love. But to have a realistic chance of winning in elite international cycling, especially in the Tour de France, where drug use has been endemic for years, many have chosen (or felt obliged to choose) to take that risk. At last, the cheating seems to be catching up to the sport. A tipping point has been reached, as sponsors and fans grow tired of the long run of scandal. If this sport is ever to undertake the massive cleanup it needs, now is the time.
The Tour de France may be the most brutal of all sporting competitions, a test of endurance, speed and resilience in which riders climb mountains at speeds that ordinary cyclists reach on flat roads.
The race occurs over 20 stages and is 3,550 km long, or roughly the distance from Halifax to Winnipeg. Two teams have withdrawn, the overall leader has been booted off his team by its Dutch sponsor for skipping drug tests and lying about his whereabouts, and other racers have been caught cheating - a star Kazakh racer was discovered to have someone else's cells in his blood.
Cheating, often with the help of team doctors, has been an open secret in the cycling world for years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, 18 European cyclists died, most of them in the Netherlands and Belgium, and some North American analysts blamed erythropoietin (EPO). It boosted the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, giving athletes more endurance and faster recovery times. It also thickened the blood, forcing the heart to work harder to pump it out. "He had a good race," someone would say, and the sardonic response was, "He had a good pharmacist." Even apart from the health risks, cheating spreads cynicism and defeats the purpose of sport.
Major League Baseball has had a similar integrity problem; as a result, no great joy attends Barry Bonds's attempt to break one of the great records in sport, Hank Aaron's 755 career home runs. (Mr. Bonds is not a confirmed cheater, but is widely suspected of being one.) Major League Baseball has cleaned up its act, however, with a new drug-testing regime.
Cheating in cycling is no longer any kind of secret, and major sponsors such as Adidas AG of Germany seem no longer inclined to tolerate drug scandals. With a hard enough push from the sponsors and fans, the Tour de France may finally be rescued from the pharmacists, and given back to the athletes.
PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2007.07.27 PAGE: A14
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Young athletes shouldn't have to put their health at risk to compete in the sport they love. But to have a realistic chance of winning in elite international cycling, especially in the Tour de France, where drug use has been endemic for years, many have chosen (or felt obliged to choose) to take that risk. At last, the cheating seems to be catching up to the sport. A tipping point has been reached, as sponsors and fans grow tired of the long run of scandal. If this sport is ever to undertake the massive cleanup it needs, now is the time.
The Tour de France may be the most brutal of all sporting competitions, a test of endurance, speed and resilience in which riders climb mountains at speeds that ordinary cyclists reach on flat roads.
The race occurs over 20 stages and is 3,550 km long, or roughly the distance from Halifax to Winnipeg. Two teams have withdrawn, the overall leader has been booted off his team by its Dutch sponsor for skipping drug tests and lying about his whereabouts, and other racers have been caught cheating - a star Kazakh racer was discovered to have someone else's cells in his blood.
Cheating, often with the help of team doctors, has been an open secret in the cycling world for years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, 18 European cyclists died, most of them in the Netherlands and Belgium, and some North American analysts blamed erythropoietin (EPO). It boosted the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, giving athletes more endurance and faster recovery times. It also thickened the blood, forcing the heart to work harder to pump it out. "He had a good race," someone would say, and the sardonic response was, "He had a good pharmacist." Even apart from the health risks, cheating spreads cynicism and defeats the purpose of sport.
Major League Baseball has had a similar integrity problem; as a result, no great joy attends Barry Bonds's attempt to break one of the great records in sport, Hank Aaron's 755 career home runs. (Mr. Bonds is not a confirmed cheater, but is widely suspected of being one.) Major League Baseball has cleaned up its act, however, with a new drug-testing regime.
Cheating in cycling is no longer any kind of secret, and major sponsors such as Adidas AG of Germany seem no longer inclined to tolerate drug scandals. With a hard enough push from the sponsors and fans, the Tour de France may finally be rescued from the pharmacists, and given back to the athletes.
周末愉快！
周末好! :)