Tour De Farce
Amid almost non-stop doping scandals, the Tour de France bicycle race is continuing along its merry way. But they are seriously losing any semblance of dignity and are now facing what may be a fatal blow: the media is losing interest in the race. The scandals, one upon another, have taken a huge bite out of the credibility of the race and the business - it is not a "sport" - of bicycle racing.
GENEVA (AP) — One of Switzerland's biggest newspaper stopped writing about the Tour de France because of the recent doping scandals surrounding Tour riders.
The daily Tages Anzeiger said on its Web site Wednesday it will no longer report on the Tour stages and will limit its coverage to results and doping stories.
The move comes a day after Kazakh rider Alexandre Vinokourov and his Astana team were disqualified because he tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.
The newspaper has a circulation of about 231,000, reaching an estimated 550,000 readers.
And the beat goes on. The Dutch Rabobank team has just fired the tour's leader, Michael Rasmussen for lying about his training. Rasmussen will not start the next stage.
GOURETTE, France - One of it's biggest stars is already gone, and now so is the leader of the Tour de France. Michael Rasmussen was removed from the race by his Rabobank team after winning Wednesday's stage, a day after Alexandre Vinokourov and his team withdrew when the star cyclist tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.
"Michael Rasmussen has been sent home for violating (the team's) internal rules," Rabobank spokesman Jacob Bergsma told The Associated Press by phone.
The expulsion, which Bergsma said was ordered by the Dutch team's sponsor, was linked to "incorrect" information that Rasmussen gave to the team's sports director over his whereabouts last month. Rasmussen missed random drug tests May 8 and June 28, saying he was in Mexico. But a former rider, Davide Cassani, told Denmark's Danmarks Radio on Wednesday that he had seen Rasmussen in Italy in mid-June.
Only once before in the history of the 104-year-old Tour has the race leader been expelled. In 1978, Belgian rider Michel Pollentier, trying to evade doping controls after winning a stage at the Alpe d'Huez in the Alps, was caught with an intricate tube-and-container system that contained urine that was not his, said Tour historian Jean-Paul Brouchon.
Rasmussen, who has led since July 15 and looked set to win the race which ends on Sunday in Paris, could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
But just hours before he was kicked out of the Tour, the 33-year-old told the AP he was being victimized.
Actually, its the fans who are the victims, I suspect. This year is a mess, isn't it?
World news | Gaius Wednesday, 25 July , 2007
By Bill Franklin, Thursday, 26 July , 2007 @ 6:26 am
Tennis and cycling are the biggest abusers of steroids of all the sports. The farce is attempting to fool the public into believing that the sports are “clean.” The tests that they use check the blood for the presence of the specific substance, instead of the body’s hormonal response to that class of drug. This allows anyone with a biochem degree to alter the drug’s structure enough to not trip the test, but still be efficacious. The truth is, they’re afraid to test properly, because they know no more world records would be broken, because all the current record holders most likely “juiced” at some point in their training.