So, yet another Tour de France has ended in farce and acrimony. Three riders failed drug tests during the race, another failed one before they even started and the one time leader was sacked by his own team for allegedly lying about why he missed two tests in the months before the race.
Arguably this is actually an improvement on last year, when the winner was disqualified for drug taking, but it is scant consolation to a race and a sport now vanishing under the weight of its own excrement. Someone needs to start digging their way out, and fast.
Unfortunately, the evidence of the past three weeks is that you can't rely upon the cyclists to wield the shovel, because they'll just dig down deeper. Consider the five dimwits referred to above:
All of this happened despite the cyclists signing up to a charter against drug taking. Which means that if pro cycling wants to get drugs out of the sport, the last people they can rely upon to do it are the riders. The evidence clearly shows that, whatever is enhanced by EPO and the like, brain power isn't.
The solution to the problem surely lies in the reason why there is a problem. It is not that there is too much money in the sport, or that commercial teams need to be taken out of it, it is the way that the races are organised. There are three elements that every cycling fan loves about the Tour and its kin - the time trials, the sprints and the mountain climbs. Cycling teams consist - usually - of four distinct groups of riders. There are the leaders, the ones who are thought to have the best chance of winning and the best all round set of skills. At the other end of the spectrum are the domestiques, good riders in their own right but lacking the necessary quality to do much more than support their leaders, acting as windshields and basically sacrificing their own chances to promote the lead man. Alongside and often among these are the other two groups, the sprinters and the climbers, whose role is to try and win the sprinting and climbing elements of the race. This is, of necessity, a simplistic view, but it will suffice for now.
It shouldn't take too much imagination to realise that, on the sprint stages, the climbers are at a disadvantage, in the mountains the sprinters struggle and to cap it all everyone has to try and protect and keep up with the team leader. But, having established that everyone on each team is at a disadvantage compared to each other at some point in the race - save for the star, of course - the race organisers decide to make things even harder for them. First of all, the big sprints and mountain stages all either come at once, or come at the end of a 200km+ ride. Then, as a double whammy, any rider who finishes a certain time behind the stage winner is eliminated.
To summarise, if you are a rider in a major road race you are going to be tired, desperately trying to keep up with your team and to cap it all running the risk of elimination if you don't. IS IT ANY WONDER THEY TAKE DRUGS?
The people that run these things need to have a long hard look at how they organise them. Is it really necessary for cyclists to ride hundreds of kilometres through open countryside when the only interested spectator is the odd stray dog whose only desire is to end it all by hurling himself Emily Davidson-style under the wheels of a bike? Is it not better than one clean cyclist comes home hours before the rest than one doped up one finishes in the pack? Where does the entertainment in these things lie? Any half decent marketeer knows that if you have a major product, you sell it in the smallest chunks you can get away with - so why have four major climbs in a day when you can have two over two days?
At the moment, the money and the format of the racing are incentives to take drugs. Reduce the stamina and speed elements needed each day, and instead spread them over more days and what do you get? In theory, cleaner riders and more money. Is that really so hard to do?
Unfortunately, the evidence of the past three weeks is that you can't rely upon the cyclists to wield the shovel, because they'll just dig down deeper. Consider the five dimwits referred to above:
- Cristian Moreni failed a drug test during the tour. In some ways he's been the most sensible about this, saying nothing of any substance and quietly crawling into a hole away from the spotlight. The guy gambled, lost and knows it;
- Iban Mayo is arguably the dimmest of the five. Having gotten away with a failed test during the Giro d'Italia he surely must have known that he, of all people, was going to be targeted this time, yet he still did it and was caught at the end of Stage 18;
- Patrik Sinkewitz was the rider who failed a test before the tour even started. He has now admitted that he used a testosterone cream on his arm. Accidentally. Which is like Prince Charles saying that he 'accidentally' screwed Camilla whilst married to Diana. You knew it was there, you knew you shouldn't have used it and there was no accidental about it. And why put testosterone on your arm anyway?
- Now for the big two on our ride of shame. Alexander Vinokourov and Michael Rasmussen. Vino, as he is known to the cognoscenti, had a bad fall early on, took illegal drugs to recover and when caught out came out with the most incredible excuse ever, claiming that he had too much blood in his thighs. One can only assume that this is the cycling equivalent of "Sorry darling, wrong hole". Rasmussen, on the other hand, did nothing wrong during the Tour itself. The problem is that he shouldn't have been in it anyway, having missed two tests in the 45 days before it started, so he should have been suspended, but for an administrative error. Having had a stroke of luck to be in it, he made the most of it and was the clear leader before being sacked by his own team, who claimed that he lied about his whereabouts for those tests. That the evidence on this is flimsy - a cycling journalist claims to have seen him in Italy when he said he was in Mexico - is probably irrelevant. The luck that got him into the Tour turned and saw him thrown out.
All of this happened despite the cyclists signing up to a charter against drug taking. Which means that if pro cycling wants to get drugs out of the sport, the last people they can rely upon to do it are the riders. The evidence clearly shows that, whatever is enhanced by EPO and the like, brain power isn't.
The solution to the problem surely lies in the reason why there is a problem. It is not that there is too much money in the sport, or that commercial teams need to be taken out of it, it is the way that the races are organised. There are three elements that every cycling fan loves about the Tour and its kin - the time trials, the sprints and the mountain climbs. Cycling teams consist - usually - of four distinct groups of riders. There are the leaders, the ones who are thought to have the best chance of winning and the best all round set of skills. At the other end of the spectrum are the domestiques, good riders in their own right but lacking the necessary quality to do much more than support their leaders, acting as windshields and basically sacrificing their own chances to promote the lead man. Alongside and often among these are the other two groups, the sprinters and the climbers, whose role is to try and win the sprinting and climbing elements of the race. This is, of necessity, a simplistic view, but it will suffice for now.
It shouldn't take too much imagination to realise that, on the sprint stages, the climbers are at a disadvantage, in the mountains the sprinters struggle and to cap it all everyone has to try and protect and keep up with the team leader. But, having established that everyone on each team is at a disadvantage compared to each other at some point in the race - save for the star, of course - the race organisers decide to make things even harder for them. First of all, the big sprints and mountain stages all either come at once, or come at the end of a 200km+ ride. Then, as a double whammy, any rider who finishes a certain time behind the stage winner is eliminated.
To summarise, if you are a rider in a major road race you are going to be tired, desperately trying to keep up with your team and to cap it all running the risk of elimination if you don't. IS IT ANY WONDER THEY TAKE DRUGS?
The people that run these things need to have a long hard look at how they organise them. Is it really necessary for cyclists to ride hundreds of kilometres through open countryside when the only interested spectator is the odd stray dog whose only desire is to end it all by hurling himself Emily Davidson-style under the wheels of a bike? Is it not better than one clean cyclist comes home hours before the rest than one doped up one finishes in the pack? Where does the entertainment in these things lie? Any half decent marketeer knows that if you have a major product, you sell it in the smallest chunks you can get away with - so why have four major climbs in a day when you can have two over two days?
At the moment, the money and the format of the racing are incentives to take drugs. Reduce the stamina and speed elements needed each day, and instead spread them over more days and what do you get? In theory, cleaner riders and more money. Is that really so hard to do?
No comments:
Post a Comment