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Troubled Tour de France Ends in Contador Victory
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Discovery Channel team cyclist Alberto Contador is the youngest rider in a decade to win the Tour, marking the end of a scandal-ridden race that has raised questions about the state of cycling among organizers, riders, and fans.
30 Second Summary
Twenty-four-year-old Spanish native Alberto Contador won a narrow victory on Sunday July 29 to ride away with cycling’s most coveted prize, the Tour de France’s yellow jersey.
His 23-second lead over Predictor-Lotto’s Cadel Evans was the second-narrowest margin in Tour history. However, the race’s close finish has been overshadowed by stories of doping.
The 94th Tour de France was racked with doping controversies that saw four riders and one team thrown out of the race after failed drug tests and suspicions of avoiding anti-doping officials.
The most notable dismissal was that of Rabobank rider and Tour leader Michael Rasmussen, who, it was discovered, had lied to cycling officials in order to evade surprise drug tests during his training.
Now everyone’s pointing fingers. Organizers of the tour blame the cycling union, known as the UCI, for not being diligent enough with its testing. And younger cyclists blame the older riders’ laissez-faire attitude toward doping for the current mess.
Although doping scandals have pained the Tour de France since the 1920s, the incidents of recent years mark a watershed for the sport. As cycling officials look to the future, they are charged with the difficult task of re-establishing credibility in a sport that has become so fraught with controversy that at least one Olympic official is threatening to remove it from the 2008 games.
His 23-second lead over Predictor-Lotto’s Cadel Evans was the second-narrowest margin in Tour history. However, the race’s close finish has been overshadowed by stories of doping.
The 94th Tour de France was racked with doping controversies that saw four riders and one team thrown out of the race after failed drug tests and suspicions of avoiding anti-doping officials.
The most notable dismissal was that of Rabobank rider and Tour leader Michael Rasmussen, who, it was discovered, had lied to cycling officials in order to evade surprise drug tests during his training.
Now everyone’s pointing fingers. Organizers of the tour blame the cycling union, known as the UCI, for not being diligent enough with its testing. And younger cyclists blame the older riders’ laissez-faire attitude toward doping for the current mess.
Although doping scandals have pained the Tour de France since the 1920s, the incidents of recent years mark a watershed for the sport. As cycling officials look to the future, they are charged with the difficult task of re-establishing credibility in a sport that has become so fraught with controversy that at least one Olympic official is threatening to remove it from the 2008 games.
Headline
Disqualified cyclists included the Astana team, whose leader and early Tour favorite, Alexandre Vinokourov, failed two doping tests; the Confidis team, who voluntarily withdrew after team rider Cristian Moreni also failed a drug test; and T-Mobile rider Patrik Sinkewitz, who was banished from the race for the same reason.
Source: The New York Times
There were a number of doping controversies even before the Tour began. In May, Bjarne Riis admitted to doping from 1993 to 1998, including during his Tour victory in 1996. USA Today offers a timeline of all the doping incidents leading up to and during the 94th Tour de France.
Source: USA Today
Background
Commentators around the world are drawing comparisons between this year’s scandal and the Festina fiasco of the 1998 Tour. The affair began when a Festina team car was found to contain large amounts of various performance-enhancing drugs. The following investigation saw six teams drop out of the Tour in protest, reducing the number of riders to finish the race to fewer than 100 from the original 189.
Source: The BBC
Reactions
Tour de France Director Christian Prudhomme and president of the Tour’s parent organization Patrice Clerc derided the UCI for its failure to inform race officials of Rasmussen’s missed doping tests. Prudhomme told Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily that the Tour “will no longer be working together with the UCI, there will be special rules for the Tour de France. The UCI never wanted a clean tour.” Clerc called for UCI head Pat McQuaid to resign: "In any society, public or private, those responsible would have no choice but to resign.”
Source: ESPN
Although the Tour de France has ended, the scandals and heated organizational infighting are far from finished. Tour officials are blaming the UCI for the doping scandals, threatening to abandon the cycling union and create their own organization. It’s not certain how these events will shape the future of the Tour, but for now the race’s reputation has again been tarnished. A poll in the French newspaper L’Equipe asked, “Can cycling be saved from doping?” Of almost 52,000 people polled, 71 percent answered no.
Source: The International Herald Tribune
The Tour’s scandals have led Swiss member of the International Olympics Committee Rene Fasel to tell the Associated Press that “if cycling doesn’t resolve this problem, I’d go as far as saying it should be excluded from the Olympics … The heads of cycling need to know that if they don’t clean up the sport, and really clean it up, then it’s goodbye.” However, IOC president Jacques Rogge has dismissed the idea of excluding the sport from the Olympics.
Source: ESPN
Bradley Wiggins, a teammate of disgraced rider Cristian Moreni, wrote in an essay in The Observer that the older, veteran riders are responsible for the acceptance of doping in the cycling community: “There is a generation gap developing between the old guys like [Moreni], for whom doping is embedded normality, and the young ones … The sooner they are gone the better.” The Confidis team, of which Wiggins and Moreni are a part, voluntarily withdrew from the race after it was discovered Moreni had tested positive for boosted levels of testosterone.
Source: The Observer
Newspapers all over France reeled after race leader Michael Rasmussen was kicked off the tour for lying about his whereabouts during pre-Tour drug tests. The newspaper France Soir ran a fake obituary on its front page that said the Tour had died “at age 104, after a long illness,” and another paper said the Tour had become a joke and deserves to be cancelled.
Source: USA Today
The International Herald Tribune examines the drug testing procedures during the Tour de France, and concludes that there are probably a lot more riders getting away with doping than are getting caught: “The riders who dope are taking a calculated risk, and the odds may be in their favor. Only the race leader, the stage winner and two or three riders selected at random are tested every stage of the Tour, leaving most of the field of about 200 untested.”
Source: The International Herald Tribune
Historical Context
The Tour de France has a long history of cheating scandals. In 1904, the Tour’s second year of existence, it came dangerously close to being abolished after the four top leaders were disqualified for riding trains and hitchhiking to its finish. Doping isn’t new to the Tour either; in 1924 the Pelissier brothers quit the race and revealed that the rigors of the tour had forced them to take strychnine, cocaine, and other stimulants.
Source: The Observer of London
Reference Material
The Tour de France began in 1903 as a marketing scheme for the L’Auto newspaper. The first race saw 60 riders traveling over 1,500 miles in 19 days. The Tour had only six stages, and cyclists were expected to ride throughout the night. After that year the Tour only got longer and more strenuous with the addition of routes through the Pyrenees Mountains in 1910. The BBC offers a comprehensive history of the tour from 1903 to 2000.
Source: The BBC
The official Web site of the Tour de France has rider press conferences, footage of the tour, and synopses of each of the race’s 20 stages.
Source: The Tour de France official Web site
ESPN offers an interactive slideshow of the 94th Tour de France’s most memorable moments.
Source: ESPN
Related Topics
The 2006 Tour de France remains without an official winner because the first place finisher, American Floyd Landis, tested positive for synthetic testosterone during the race. During an arbitration hearing, Landis contested the charges, claiming that shoddy laboratory work was at fault for the failed tests. Although closing arguments were made in late May 2007, the three-judge panel has yet to decide if Landis will get to keep the Tour’s yellow jersey.
Source: Bicycling Magazine
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