Tour de Farce

Last post! On the deadline! Says a lot about my work habits I guess. I shall bury the English blog after today. Hopefully I won’t have to exhume the body next year. Enough morbid stuff for now. The topic I chose is something close to my heart, as I have actually thought about this before. This topic is doping. The article taken from MSNBC and is entitled “Tour winner denies doping, will provide DNA”. Here’s the URL
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20179848

The article discusses the cleanliness level of the Tour de France winner Alberto Contador. It is said that he was once caught without taking a bath and was suspected of being dirty. I guess Spanish people don’t really make an effort to look clean. On top of that, most Tour de France winners have been found to be dirty, with the exception of Lance Armstrong, who was extra clean due to his cancer treatment. Rather, I believe he was sick of drugs and hence decided to stay clean.

Well I am referring to doping in cycling. Where those who have use performance enhancement drugs are considered dirty and those who pass doping tests are considered clean. The winner of the latest Tour de France is only the winner due to the fact that the overall winner was ruled out due to one of countless scandals that have taken place in the Tour de France, which has been subject to satirical comments that it should be renamed Tour de Farce, and rightly so. The winner initially was only the runner up but in lieu of the disqualification he is the winner. Contador, however, is not scandal free himself. News broke last week that a doping expert Werne Franke has found incriminating evidence that proves Contador did not take a bath. That will be enough dirty jokes for now. The evidence shows that Contador had taken a testosterone booster and an asthma drug. However, Contador vehemently denies it and claims it is a misunderstanding and that he will take legal action against anyone who makes another defamatory comment and the compensation will go to the fight against doping. To top off his inspiring selfless vow, he gave a sob story as an appeal to pity. Something about going through a sad and disillusioning experience that transformed the vision of the sport he gave the best years of his life to.

I am not impressed. To give him credit, his speech was well prepared. He even punned on the word dose in the phrase “and a large dose of hope”. However, in my opinion, if he is innocent, he has no need for all that fuss. Even if he did drugs, I would not blame him. In a competition littered with doping cases, the peer pressure would be great. The physical toll on any cyclist taking part is really great, as the tour has many stages and a good overall performance would be required to even make it to the top ten. Furthermore, he is seemingly stricken with asthma, if the report is correct in saying that he took drugs for asthma. It would be hard to excel in a sport so physically demanding if he was weighed down by asthma. Personally, I had a struggle as well as to why we should not take drugs. This was due to the fact in primary 6, I could not make it to the sprint relay team which I was in for the past 2 years. While everyone’s puberty level was 5, mine was a mere 1. Excuse on my part? Maybe. Still it wasn’t fair. I felt the need to level the playing field. Yes, I can empathize with those doping dudes. However, is it worth it? I don’t think they gain anything but triumph for a few days till the doping results surface.