Tour Leader Is Kicked Out of the Race
Leader Rasmussen Out of Tour De France
Italian Rider Taken Away by Police
I really can be ridiculously naive at times…and it really pisses me off. Just when I’d thought that the disclosure that Alexandre Vinokourov was booted from the Tour de France for doping was as bad s it could get…wait for it…it gets even worse.
Rasmussen, who was set to win the Tour when it rolls into Paris on Sunday, was pulled from the race by his team, for “violation of internal team rules”. Uh, unless you’re living under a rock these days, that’s code for “this guy’s blood has more chemicals in it than Lindsay Lohan behind the wheel of a Mercedes.” He supposedly lied about his whereabouts during training and missed several scheduled drug tests. Of course, his Rabobank team was in possession of this information before the Tour de France even started; why it took them this long to take action defies credibility.
How absurd is this scenario? Well, let me put it in terms the average American can understand. Imagine that your team is about to win it’s first Super Bowl title. There are five minutes left in the fourth quarter, and they’re up by two points. So what do they do? They pull their starting quarterback and put in one of the assistant trainers. Hard to imagine, eh? That’s pretty much what Rabobank’s team management did.
Moreni, a relatively anonymous middle-of-the-pack rider, was not only tossed from the tour, but was detained by police and his hotel room was searched. His Cofidis team pulled out of the Tour altogether. By the time the Tour gets to Paris on Sunday, it appears likely the only competitors left will be three guys on tricycles crossing the finish line while reciting the collected works of Karl Marx in Sanskrit.
This is what the Super Bowl of professional cycling has become- the European equivalent of “Stupid Criminal Tricks”. Nice work, DUMB@$$E$….
Moreni’s case fueled the deep sense of crisis already hanging over the race and sport. It came one day after star rider Alexandre Vinokourov and his entire Astana team were sent home after he tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.
French riders staged a protest at the start of Wednesday’s 16th stage to express disgust at the repeated doping scandals that have left cycling’s credibility in tatters.
Uh…it’s a wee bit late for this sort of outrage, don’tcha think? The time to get mad and do something about the doping problem would have been at least a few years ago when the problem began to explode. Of course, it wasn’t really even perceived as a problem among riders until increasing numbers of them began getting busted for ingesting more chemicals than a freshman during Rush Week.
Professional cycling has officially gone tits up, and I can’t imagine that there’s anything that will be able to save it. Every record, every championship, every race, every rider has been tarnished. Everything about the sport has lost it’s credibility because of it’s inability to follow the rules and play fair. Cheaters not only prosper in professional cycling, they’re apparently the only ones with a reasonable chance of wearing the maillot jaune on the Champs Elysees on the last Sunday in July.
