Vinokourov Tests Positive for Transfusion: Astana Team Pulls Out of Race
PAU, France (AP) — Tour de France rider Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for a banned blood transfusion after winning last weekend’s time trial, prompting his Astana team to pull out of the race Tuesday…. The Kazakh rider, a one-time favorite to win cycling’s premier event, was tested after his victory in the 13th stage time trial on Saturday…. “Vino has tested positive having to do with a blood transfusion and the team is leaving the Tour,” team spokeswoman Corinne Druey said, using the rider’s nickname.
Alexandre Vinokourov should probably be proud of himself, although probably for all the wrong reasons. It’s not very often that an individual athlete has an opportunity to take down an entire sporting institution, indeed perhaps even an entire sport, through his own dishonesty and complete absence of anything resembling integrity. In a sport marred and perhaps permanently and irretrievably damaged by widespread cheating, Vinokourov may have had the “honor” of finally putting a knife deep into the heart of the sport of cycling. With last year’s maillot jaune winner, Floyd Landis, tarnished by accusations of doping and his reputation permanently rendered hors de combat, cycling is in a world of hurt. And you thought NBA Commissioner Davd Stern had problems these days….
Without a doubt, you could probably have been forgiven for believing that the competitors in this year’s Tour de France would be on their best behavior. Surely, perhaps you’d been thinking, these clowns have GOT to realize that their futures, as well as the future of their sport, is on the line. One more disaster like last year’s dope-a-thon, and professional cycling will rank right up their with professional curling or the International Full-Contact Macrame Association. Well, guess what, y’all? You’re quite likely witnessing the rapid, graceless, and not at all dignified demise of what was once a reasonably respectable sport.
The French sports daily L’Equipe, which first reported the positive test on its Web site Tuesday, said the analysis was conducted by the Chatenay-Malabry lab on the outskirts of Paris. It said two distinctive types of red blood cells were found in the A sample and showed that Vinokourov received a blood transfusion from a compatible donor shortly before the time trial.
A senior French anti-doping official confirmed to The Associated Press that there was a positive test for a blood transfusion taken from a rider at the Tour on Saturday. He said the test found two different types of blood, one from the rider, one from a donor….
“With a guy of his stature and class, in cycling’s current situation, we might as well pack our bags and go home,” said British rider David Millar, who came back from a two-year doping ban in the Tour last year.
Yeah, you might as well beat the rush, because without some radical and immediate changes in the way it conducts business, the Tour de France, and indeed all of professional cycling, is about to circle the drain. There’s simply no way to believe that competitors in what used to be one of the world’s premier sporting events aren’t all needle-scarred fiends riding from one fix to another.
This scandal has even managed over time to drag seven-time winner Lance Armstrong into it’s maw. Armstrong will deny doping allegations to his last dying breath, and the fact that he’s never failed a drug test stands him in good stead. The whispering campaign never seems to fade away, though, and the current stench surrounding the sport he helped to popularize may well drag him down in the end…and who can possibly say with any certainty what the truth actually is? When cheating, dishonesty, and the constant search for a chemical edge is a way of life, how can an honest, clean competitor actually be taken seriously and recognized as such?
I don’t believe that Lance Armstrong is guilty of the doping allegations he’s been accused of. Given the current state of cycling, though, how can anyone make a credible argument for him? With cheating an accepted fact of life, and indeed a de facto requirement for success, what else could one expect? In professional cycling as it exists today, cheaters not only prosper, they’re apparently the only ones with any realistic chance of success.
Alexandre Vinokourov is neither the worst nor the most egregious offender. He will probably be remembered, however, as the rider who put the final nail in the coffin of a once-respected and revered sport.
Nice move, DUMB@$$….
