Chris Writes.

What can be said of the state of the Tour de France, other than it’s been a tough couple of days? Well, we could start with “this is necessary” and, I hope, “this too shall pass”. What we’re witnessing right now is something rather unique, and I think because we’ve never actually seen precedent for this, we don’t quite know what we’re looking at. Cycling is a sport that is actually trying to clean itself up, but the process is creating a lot of emotional shrapnel. It’s a tough, bitter break-up, but drugs and cycling were never meant to last. And I’m pretty sure this sad story ain’t over yet.

If they were making a big deal about doping but not catching anyone, that’d be another story altogether. There are people being caught, people being fired, and two entire teams have left the tour. And no doubt, there will be lots of backtalk about how *terrible* the sport is, and how it’s a terrible role model for kids, and a$$hats like Dick Pound, soon-to-be-former chairman the World Anti-Doping Agency, will likely delight in the news, given the propensity of such people to conclude that convictions are proof of a faulty sport. They are not. They are proof of doping, and the dopers. The sport itself is not at fault. To conclude it is the sport’s fault is to say that a bicycle requires a drugged pilot.

So why then must this process take so long? We’ve been at this for years now. The trouble seems to stem from the fact that the dopers are often more sophisticated in their methods than the labs are. If someone doesn’t test positive, that no longer exonerates their public image, and does not seem to mean they’re innocent in the current public view. That is what most needs to change, and hopefully will. We need a non-positive test result to actually mean ‘innocent’. As the Landis case has shown over and over and over, lies and a lack of transparency/accountability within the testing methods are as disastrous to the sport as are lies and opacity from athletes claiming to be clean. I’d love to think the sport has the power make this happen, but I wonder, given the fractured nature of the governing bodies, if it’s a functional impossibility in the current structure. Just one example, the World anti-doping body, WADA, on Thursday called for a high-level summit to discuss the current situation, but the UCI, cycling’s governing body, refused to participate, calling the summit a “masquerade”.

Meanwhile, though certainly not an excuse for cyclists to use performance enhancing elixirs, other major sports (Baseball, Hockey, Soccer, etc) make no efforts to discuss or curtail drug use (a metaphor for corporate transparency, perhaps??). Cyclists are the most tested athletes in the world. Now that they’re actually catching people and teams & sponsors seem to be taking responsibility for their rosters, we might be seeing the true natural athletes rising to the top. Meanwhile, elsewhere, doping remains invisible because it’s kept hidden. Not because it’s not there.

For now, I’ll still follow the tour, and I’ll still ride my bike. And I’m clean, in case anyone was wondering.

If you ever get a chance to do this ride, I’d highly suggest doing so. If you’re lucky enough to do it with Nikane and Bingen, that’s even better. I spent a weekend riding and enjoying the Basque Country in Northern Spain, and it’s absolute paradise for cycling. Hills, hills, and more hills. The food is incredible, the people are nice (though Spainish is tough here, as most prefer to speak Basque), and the coastline is incredible. If anyone still wonders why Europe was so much more into cycling than North America, just go over there with a bike.