Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Two years after Lance Armstrong climbed off his bike, cycling has a mess on its hands. Positive tests, doping allegations _ nobody, not even Armstrong, has been immune. The Tour de France, cycling's premier event, is less than two months away, and we still don't know who won last year.
That's because 2006 Tour winner Floyd Landis is huddled with his attorneys in a Malibu courtroom trying to prove his innocence on doping charges. So far, it's been less-than-scintillating stuff unless you're a nut for carbon-isotope ratios, 5-alpha adiol and abnormal testosterone profiles.
But the dirt doesn't stop there. Cycling's problems began long before Landis got busted.
Tyler Hamilton had just finished serving his penance for one offense when his new team suspended him when additional allegations come to light. Jan Ullrich hasn't been able to shake the cloud of suspicion even in retirement. Ivan Basso recently confessed to "attempted doping," but said he never actually went through with it. Entire teams have been decimated by doping allegations.
"I don't think it's a positive image for the sport, but it's there and you can't just move away from it that easily," said Jim Ochowicz, president of the board for USA Cycling.
"It's a problem that obviously needs some addressing, and I think a lot of people are trying to and are making good attempts at trying to resolve this."
Cycling isn't the only sport in need of a good scrub. Barry Bonds will replace Hank Aaron as home run king sometime in the next few weeks, yet most baseball fans think the San Francisco Giants slugger is a cheat. A former New York Mets clubhouse employee gave steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to "dozens" of players, past and present, and is telling authorities everything he knows.
Some of track and field's biggest names _ Tim Montgomery, Justin Gatlin, Kelli White _ have been busted.
Yet these are considered, for the most part, isolated incidents, not enough to taint the entire sport.
Not so with cycling. Anyone who puts on spandex and a bike helmet is suspect right now.
"We're taking the hit. But because of taking the hit, it's actually being cleaned out," said Jonathan Vaughters, director and CEO of Team Slipstream, a young, U.S.-based professional road racing team.
"In the overall tilt of things, I don't see it as a bad thing."
Doping is hardly a new phenomenon in cycling. A British cyclist's fatal heart attack during the 1967 Tour de France was blamed, in part, on amphetamine use. The 1998 Tour was almost derailed when a stash of banned drugs was found in the Festina team's car.
But Armstrong gave cycling a reprieve from its seamy side. His inspirational story, charisma and utter dominance spawned millions of new cycling fans, endearing him to folks who thought a sprocket was something on a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
Sure, Armstrong was hounded by doping allegations, including the use of EPO. The doping crisis didn't stop during his reign, either, but none of the allegations against him was ever proven.
Armstrong is retired now, but the doping scandals go on.
And the scandal du jour is Landis.
He made a spectacular comeback to win last year's Tour, on a bad hip no less, only to be busted for elevated levels of testosterone to epitestosterone. Instead of cashing in on that yellow jersey, he spent the last year playing defense.
"I have heard, anecdotally, that people are bummed about (the scandals)," said Carry Porter, spokeswoman for the Cascade Bicycle Club in Seattle, the largest recreational cycling club in the United States.
"On the larger scale, people still want to know who's racing and who's going to be fun to watch. But they might take people's successes with a grain of salt."
Sports will never rid itself of doping. There's always going to be somebody looking for an edge and not caring about the details.
But there's a difference between the occasional scandal and a flood of them. If cycling doesn't find a cure for its drug problem quickly, it's going to succumb to it. If it hasn't already.
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Nancy Armour is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to her at narmour@ap.org
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