It’s been a tough go for the tour for the last few years. Despite Lance Armstrong’s ability to capture the attention of the American sporting viewer, the Tour by and large has been plagued by one central issue: doping. It’s been inescapable. Even Lance’s phenomenal achievement was/is (depending on who you talk to) tainted to some degree by allegations of illegal drug use. Of course the whole ugly mess peaked with Floyd Landis’s positive test for elevated testosterone after his Tour win. I can’t really think of a sport more impacted by the presence of doping allegations than cycling. Even the current state of Baseball seems to pale in comparison to the reactions of cycling fans to the issue of doping. For whatever reasons the average Baseball fan seems to accept the fact that a great number of the game’s stars have been using performance enhancing drugs of some kind at some point in the careers. This acceptance may stem in part from the fact the doping wasn’t actually illegal in Baseball until relatively recently. Cycling however has always been highly vigilant regarding the purity of the sport. All of which brings me to this conclusion: there are good cyclists out there, young cyclists, who are willing to shoulder the responsibility of making the tour a believable clean event again. That is an enormously good thing.
