Sport & Fitness

It’s a supreme irony that London’s biggest sporting event for at least a decade should also be one of the world’s most tainted. Recent years have seen the Tour de France’s reputation as a supreme test of sporting endeavour demolished by a succession of doping scandals, each implicating more riders and ensnaring ever bigger names. Transport for London has spent around £3.6 million to bring Le Grand Départ to the capital, with the aim of ‘putting the bike in the hearts of Londoners’. While the opening ceremony, prologue and first stage are certain to be great spectacles, a stench of scandal will accompany the peloton all the way to the traditional finish on the Champs-Elysée.
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Drug abuse in cycling is nothing new. Fausto Coppi, a Tour legend from the 1940s and ’50s, was once asked whether he had taken drugs. ‘When necessary,’ he replied. How often was that, came the next question. ‘Almost always,’ was Coppi’s response. In the early days, heroin, cocaine and strychnine were used to mask the pain of riding huge distances while amphetamines were a common stimulant. In one of the Tour’s darkest moments, Tommy Simpson died of heart failure during a mountain stage in 1967. The autopsy revealed amphetamines in his blood, while investigators found more drugs in the pockets of his jersey and in his hotel room.

The International Union of Cycling moved to ban performance enhancing drugs but, as former pro cyclist Paul Kimmage revealed in his still-shocking book ‘Rough Ride’ (newly reissued by Yellow Jersey Press, £8.99), ‘the race organisers, the directeurs sportifs, the sponsors – the men in power knew what was going on but turned a blind eye to it’. He added: ‘Why haven’t they made every possible effort to eliminate this cancer?’

Blind eyes would have continued to be turned had a lowly masseur named Willy Voet not sparked what became known as the Festina Affair. In 1998, this team underling was intercepted in his car carrying 80 bottles of growth hormone, 160 capsules of testosterone and 234 doses of the blood-enhancing drug EPO. It was a truly spectacular stash, and turned that year’s race into ‘The Tour of Shame’.

Since then, Bjarne Riis has admitted his 1996 win was chemically assisted while 1997 champion Jan Ullrich retired following a major drugs probe in Spain which also snared 2005 runner-up and Tour of Italy champion Ivan Basso. Then, in potentially the biggest blow of all to cycling’s shattered image, last year’s winner Floyd Landis was disqualified following a positive urine test. Landis has appealed, with explanations ranging from naturally high testosterone levels to flawed testing procedures and, perhaps inevitably, a conspiracy.

‘The Tour must regain its credibility and its dignity,’ says organiser Christian Prudhomme with masterly understatement. It is probable, though by no means guaranteed, that the race will be the cleanest for many years, with the teams themselves finally pledging to act against riders suspected of doping.

Another way to help restore the Tour’s image is to take it to a city where these problems merit only small paragraphs in the newspapers rather than the back-page headlines garnered in the sport’s European heartland. London fits the bill perfectly, and has a mayor who is willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the riders. ‘We judge the athletes who are competing,’ he said at the Tour launch. ‘They will not carry the burden of what has happened in the past.’ It’s an admirable sentiment, though more cynical observers of the sport consider it a touch naive.

The Tour has always required us to suspend disbelief that cycling 3,550 kilometres in 20 days is humanly possible. We must recognise that its riders are among the fittest, toughest and most dedicated of sportsmen but not let our critical faculties be seduced by history, romance and glamour.