The Tour de France has been on. We’ve been somewhat focused on it. It has been a remarkable year for the sport of professional cycling which is racing to re-establish credibility as the cyclists themselves turn over the pedals up every mountain and through every shoulder to shoulder sprint. Cycling, for many years, has been plagued with accusation, secrecy, cover-ups and penalties surrounding the use of performance enhancing drugs and other “illegal” actions.
It came to a head earlier this year just weeks before the Tour started. Lance Armstrong, who claimed 7 Yellow Jersey wins of the Tour de France, was caught in an unescapable vise of accusation and indictment. After years of standing on the claims of never failing a drug test and no real evidence that could taint his record he was caught in a conspiracy outlined by former team mates and others closest to him. Coercion, power, drugs and even blood transfusions and alleged payoffs all came upon Armstrong like the peloton chasing down a failed breakaway.
Seven Tour titles stripped away. Endorsements removed and lawsuits in place for breach of contact and false pretense. The biggest names behind Armstrong from that same time frame were either caught up earlier or threw in their own towels for the sake of salvaging what they could of their names. As a result, with the cap being Armstrong’s toppling, the sport of cycling has taken it in the gut for the allegation that everyone on a bike and competing at the highest levels is somehow “using”…
To be fair, it often seems that cycling is singled out. Drugs and “cheating” are not uncommon in sport. We here about when the big names are involved but it doesn’t seem to taint the sport involved as it does for cycling. Football, baseball, basketball… Even motor racing… All have had their share of accusations and sanctions but the sports themselves don’t seem to catch that “everyone is…” to the point that cycling has. Cheating to win is not winning at all on a bicycle, on the field or in a race car.
That said, there will always be ways that teams find, within the rules or their “interpretation” of the rules, to find advantage. Is ingenuity and creative engineering considered to be “cheating”? Some say it is. Some say that is the nature and the foundation of the sport itself. Look at NASCAR just this season. Teams have been sanctioned for the weigh of a penny inside the engine to the width of two pennies on ground clearance. The angle of the suspension or the engineering of a new connection. Infractions over fractions. Teams have been caught and busted and indicted or challenged or cleared based on interpretation.
On this day, however, we sit and watch the premiere bicycle race in the world. As we do, accusations fly quietly through the internet and eluded to in commentators’ language as the Tour de France turnd the final laps around the Champs-Elysees in Paris. This comes on the back of the Sky Racing Team and one Chris Froome who has worn the leader’s Yellow Jersey up and over mountains and into the final day. Some of his climbs up familiar mountains have rendered times remarkably similar to Lance Armstrong which has lead some to say “doping”. Armstrong was “juiced” to get those times, they say, so Froome must be also…
Forget the two or three or four or whatever that also crossed with similar times. They aren’t in Yellow so the eye of scrutiny turns away from them. So… Do we trust in the mechanisms set in place to insure a clean ride and clean riders? Do we take the scandals of the past, including the big fall of Lance Armstrong, and put that into the determination of the officials for the 100th anniversary of The Tour to make this a “clean” race? Do we take it on the shoulders of the current cyclists themselves who have said repeatedly they want to redeem the sport and the name of cycling?
What else can we do? On the line is our trust in ourselves and those who we cheer for. They are our champions. They are our inspiration. We will continue to hold our champions a little higher but, as so many have found, we are even quicker in this day of instant knowledge to toss them aside like discarded tissue when they let us down.
Under the French blue sky, among the crowded sidewalks lining the Champs-Elysees, we see the color and pageantry and the speed of wheels and muscle that is the Tour de France. For three weeks they have ridden more than 2100 miles over mountains and through scenic history to cross the line in Paris. If we can take it upon ourselves to believe just a little we can certainly trust, just enough, that the sport and the cyclists have turned a corner for better racing.
As the teams go their separate ways and the Yellow Jersey goes home with Chris Froome and Sky Racing, here’s to hoping we aren’t re-addressing the 2013, 100th anniversary, Tour de France when they are lining up for the 101st.