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A Wooga Wooga Woo-gahhh: The Tour Stumbles Home
Jul 27, 2007 – 8:40 AM
That's a terrible song about doping in sports, a bit of Euro-pop with a Carlos Santana guitar solo and unfortunate "A WOOGA WOOGA WOOOGAAAHHH" chorus that will stink up your brain for at least the next three hours. You're welcome.
Doping is yet again the story of the tour, prompting outrage ranging from Greg Lemond's suggestion that no one be awarded the yellow jersey this year to French papers' assessment that "Le Tour Est Mort." None of these seem to take into account the real love for the race itself and the fun surrounding 20 summer days spent rolling around the most beautiful parts of France: the tour will go on, and with the controls in place, Alberto Contador of Discovery Channel is the winner. Give the man his champagne, albeit not before testing it for synthetic testosterone and amphetamines.
The Tour, in truth, is fighting a battle against technology, particularly pharmaceutical technology. Cheating remains one step ahead of enforcement, even with the draconian standards put in place by some sports. (Take college football, where giving three cups of coffee to a player could, in theory at least, place a coach in jeopardy of a "providing an unsanctioned supplement .")
The standards will become more drastic, but the Tour's problem is the problem for all sports: as time goes on, in order to preserve the illusion of fair competition. everything from Ping-Pong to yes, even golf will have to test for an ever-evolving spread of supplements and medications. Why? Because if just one person is caught cheating, no matter the degree of infraction, the sport suffers as a whole. In an age of increasingly competitive sports with ever-growing budgets, the people bankrolling the sport simply can't afford the loss of audience.
The other option is just refusing to look. Crap on professional cycling all you like, but at least they're looking. Cycling's supplement bandits are being caught. Major league baseball's steroid warriors are deified as heroes. Think about that when Tiki-headed Barry Bonds gets a round of applause for breaking Hank Aaron's mark. If he were a cyclist, he'd be on his way back to Kazakhstan covered in shame.
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