Tour De France 2007
Well the 2007 Tour De France is over. It actually ended Saturday, but officially the riders had to take a slow ride to Paris and then race up and down the main drag 8 times to finish it all off.
There were some incredible riders and rides in this years tour. This was the closest finish for the top 3 ever. Lemond winning by 6 seconds will likely be the record FOREVER!! With the top 3 being barely 30 seconds apart it was a great ride by Contador, Evans and Lepiheimer. I did think Evans would win until the middle of last week, but Contador earned the win and that is great. Next years tour, and there will be one, will be exciting with the winner and a top contender likely on the same team again (Contador and Lepiheimer) and Evans will be more prepared.
Now for the real news for the 2007 tour though - doping. Doping will be the biggest story of the 2007 in the future, just like the 1998 Festina debacle which completely overshadowed the rest of the tour. It is unfortunate that the actions of a few, very few, end up completely taking the tour over. That is unfortunate.
As I have pointed out to numerous people in the last 2 weeks, cycling is seen as dirty because it kicks dirty riders out of the race and ends their careers many times. If baseball, soccer, basketball, and football all did the same they would be seen as dirty too. The difference is that those sports have chosen to ignore the problem and only taken minor PR hits when over the top drug issues happen - both on and off the competition field. That does not excuse dirty cyclist, they should be gone, but to act like cycling, swimming and track and field are the only sports where doping is a issues is foolish.
Cycling has a HUGE (HUGE HUGE) problem when it comes to PR. As a sport it has to go back to its roots of devoted cyclist riding day in and day out for the love of the sport. The problem is that such a thing will not happen due to the money that has found its way into cycling. Baseball has never recovered it’s purity once money and free agency came to the game. Many pro football players are bigger then their teams now.
In the end cycling has to decide how it wants to progress. It has to fixed the problems and that will mean more and more strict enforcement. That means there are probably more bad press in the future before the cheating slows. Riders have to believe that doping once could mean the end of their career forever. That will be the only want this doping ends. Until then cycling will continue to get black eyes every time there is a doper.
At this point there is a news template for cycling - XXXXX doped, all cycling is dirty, etc. That template will not be broken over night. Each time there is a doping scandal, and there will be more, the template stories will run. Every time a clean rider wins a hard race it will be on page 4 of the sports section next to local tennis coverage and high school cross country results.
