Rope-a-Dope

You knew it was coming: another big doping bust in cycling.

Just like the infamous 1998 Festina affair, this year’s drama played out about 48 hours prior to the start of the Tour de France. Of course, back then the riders vigorously protested the treatment of the accused riders. Among the fallout was an effort to codify doping controls in every contract. Today every rider and every team must agree to compete ethically and without use of performance-enhancing drugs.

What that means is that unlike 1998, this year the Tour organizers and national and international cycling federations have a solid, explicit justification for excluding both teams and individual riders who are under credible suspicion of doping.

And that’s exactly what they did. When the Operacion Puerto pot boiled over, nine riders, plus two entire teams of riders, were excluded from competition. Of the top five riders in last year’s Tour de France, the only person wasn’t excluded was the now-retired Lance Armstrong.

The discouraging thing about this bust was that it wasn’t the result of rider drug testing; it was an ongoing investigation into a particular physician. What’s that say about the accuracy of all those drug tests the riders undergo, both in and out of competition? Either the tests don’t work, or the system is completely corrupt and broken by design.

Of course, there’s also an open question about where to draw the line. Is sleeping in an altitude tent doping? Is training at altitude? Which products are valid supplements and which constitute doping, and what’s the difference? What products are riders allowed to take to combat chronic or acute symptoms? Remember the complete stupidity of withholding treatment for Jonathan Vaughters’ bee sting in the 2001 Tour?

I, personally, stay away from just about anything that makes claims to enhance performance. I don’t use recovery drinks, protein powders, Cytomax, goo-style products, or even caffeine. I’ll drink Gatorade, but that’s it; I figure sugar and water are respectable enough for me, and that extra half a mile per hour that anything else might give me just isn’t worth the loss of my peace of mind.

Cycling is a sport that uses both strength and endurance in great measures; it’s a sport where doping can make a very real difference. So doping is very common. Even before Operacion Puerto, there were a number of very high visibility doping cases under way: Roberto Heras, Tyler Hamilton, David Millar.

But despite that, it’s sad that cycling is gaining such a strong reputation as being corrupt to the core. The regulatory bodies are trying to do the right thing, but by taking such strong measures when it is found, cycling garners all kinds of publicity about being rife with dopeurs.

And if you think doping is more widespread in cycling than other sports, you’ve got blinders on. Cyclists even make up a small number of the athletes named in the Operacion Puerto files. It’s just that no other sport has admitted that doping exists, nor tried to combat it as aggressively.

The lead-up to this year’s Tour was how wide open the race would be in the absence of Lance Armstrong’s dominant presence. But despite that, there were a half dozen obvious candidates to win, and a couple dozen who might broach the top ten.

Then came the evictions: Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Alexandre Vinokurov, Francesco Mancebo… all of whom were leading podium candidates. Suddenly, all those former top-ten candidates are now battling it out for podium placement, and the race for a top ten spot is a complete free-for-all. The opportunity is there for the taking for a bunch of riders who never expected it, and it’ll be fascinating to see who is going to step up to the challenge.

Personally, I’d like to see good performances from a few riders. David Moncoutie is one of France’s few young riders with legitimate aspirations, and he’s someone who rabidly avoids doping, so it’d be nice to see him do well. Iban Mayo, after the brilliance of his 2003 debut, flamed out, and I’d love to see him return to the form he’s capable of. And David Millar, who admitted to EPO use, has served a two-year ban which expired mere days before this year’s Tour began. I’ll be interested to see how he fares in his return to competition.

And, of course, Operacion Puerto will play out over time. Hopefully it will be another step toward cleansing cycling—and other sports—of cheating, deception, and self-abuse in the name of performance.