The 2007 Tour de Farce (France)
I find it very difficult to believe that anyone who hasn't been Lost for the last ten years finds the events in this year's Tour de France to be even remotely surprising. Let's review:2006 Floyd Landis: need I say more? Ok I will. He was doing something unbelievable, riding the Tour well with a bum hip. I have a bad hip and let me tell you it can hurt like heck and be very very performance impairing. He blew up and lost tons of time one day and then returned the very next day to smash faces. It seemed impossible and if we remember good old theologian Occam, the simplest explanation is the most likely one, namely it is no surprise that he turned back a positive test as the story was just too good to be true.
1999-2005 Lance Armstrong. Dogged by doping accusations, he never tested positive. Ok. I used to believe in the Easter Bunny, and I suppose it is possible that he exists, but chances are he is just a myth. My point is simply that as more and more of his close competitors are outed as drug cheats, it becomes progressively more difficult to believe that he raced clean. I want to believe. But the thick corruption in the sport makes it so difficult to conclude that he was the exception to the rule that the Tour winner doped. Is it possible. Sure. But I'm skeptical.
1998 Marco Pantani - who died of a cocaine overdose recently. If I remember correctly, though he didn't test positive during that Tour, he was caught with performance enhancing drugs at other times. In this case (1998) he was simply not caught red handed with EPO and steroids in his room like so many others were. Again, the answer Occam would give: the winner doped.
1997 Jan Ullrich. Caught up in Operation Puerto (OP) he was forced out of last year's tour and out of the sport this year. Ullrich was a teammate of Bijarne Riis in in 1996 and 1997. Riis won the 1996 Tour. Riis admitted this year to taking EPO and famously invited officials to come take his yellow jersey, which is in a box at his house. It is more than reasonable to assume that Riis's protege, 1997 winner and 1996 runner up Jan Ullrich, was dirty all those years he chased Armstrong, which again makes it even harder to believe Armstrong was clean. It does seem to me that the dedication of Armstrong exceeded that of Ullrich, but it is possible that is simply a bill of goods that I've been sold by the media. Other riders who finished just behind or around Ullrich and Armstrong such as Joseba Beloki and Alex Vinokurov have since been discredited in drug scandals. 1996 & 1997 Occam would say: The winner doped.
It always seemed strange that Riis, a guy who was simply a domestique for Super U/Castorama for so many years suddenly started winning Tour stages late in his career and then dethroned Big Miguel Indurain. With the confession of Riis, we realize that it was in fact unbelievable. The winner doped. A product of the East German system if I remember correctly, can anyone truly be surprised that Ullrich followed the path of Riis?
1991-1995 EPO was around but couldn't be reliably tested for. Many cyclists died in those days from EPO related problems. As I recall from an ABC TV report, 14 Dutch and Belgian riders died suddenly while the doping doctors were working out how to deal with the side effects of EPO on cyclists around the year 1989 or 90. A young Dutch widow of one of those men wondered why in a wrenching interview. The winner of those five tours was Miguel Indurain. He was a very very big talent and a very big man. I always found it a bit more than human that in addition to winning time trials by 3 minutes, a 6' 2" guy @172 lbs could stay with the best climbers in every single mountain stage. Despite the fact that there is no evidence and that he never returned a positive test, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that what he did was impossible to explain without the addition of drugs. Just following Occam here that the simplest explanation is the most likely. The winner doped. If you see something that seems unbelievable, it probably is unbelievable.
In this year's Tour I found it amazing to watch Rasmussen winning the final mountain stage while not even looking tired. If you have read through the Book of John, you remember the story of the doubting Thomas. Thomas couldn't believe that Jesus was risen from the dead until he saw the wounds that Jesus bore. Jesus told the Eleven that a man who could see and believe was blessed, but a man who could believe on faith was even more blessed. I don't think Jesus had ever seen the Tour de France...I'm through believing things that I see that just don't seem possible. If somebody can ride almost an entire Tour and not even look fatigued at the end of the final uphill test, it is simply unbelievable. If I big man can destroy small men in time trials and keep up with them over the biggest mountains I call BS. As W.C. Fields said, a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.
Until I'm convinced the Tour and professional cycling at large is clean, I will not believe what I see if it seems inhuman. I will not waste my time on what is essentially a reality show. The things I'm seeing appear to be real, they are really happening, but they just can't be believed. Suspension of disbelief is for movies, not sport. I invite all cycling fans everywhere to adopt The Kerlin Axiom: The Tour winner doped unless there is a compelling reason to believe otherwise.
You have to understand how much it pains me to say this. Until this year I had seen almost every broadcast minute of every stage of the Tour de France going back to 1989. I borrowed videos from the four or five years prior to that. I used to tape 30 minute or one hour broadcasts on ESPN 2 at 1:30 AM. I went to Paris on my honeymoon and saw the final stage of the 2002 Tour, the elbow of some guy pressed hard into my ribs for hours in the hot sun so I could be on the barrier and see Armstrong lap the Champs while a French secret service cop cursed and kicked the curb when Jalabert's break was caught in his final tour. When the Tour is losing fans like me, the sport is in big, big trouble. At this point, asking Jesus to do something may not be a bad idea, because the mortals seem to be at a loss for a fix.
posted by Mark @ 10:37 AM
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