Tour de Farce
The Tour de France cycling event is becoming a joke. After last year’s debacle with the initial winner Floyd Landis being rubbed out due to drug taking (which is still ongoing), we thought that the event would be cleaned up. This year’s event is not over yet, and there have been several doping incidents, the latest with the tour leader Michael Rasmussen being dropped by his team for lying to them and possibly covering up where he was when he missed drug tests last year. Other recent events include pre-race favourite Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov testing positive for a prohibited blood transfusion, and early on in the tour a German rider tested positive for testosterone resulting in some German TV channels stopping their coverage of the Tour. Tour officials are trying hard to clean up the race, but the problem in cycling is too deeply rooted. The penalties need to get even tougher. How about banning transgressors for life? And they should not hold another event until the sport is squeaky clean.
Related Pages: Tour de France, cycling, Floyd Landis profile
