I said yesterday that I thought that this year's TdF could be the year that things start to turn around in cycling. Today I'd like to expand on that idea a little more. I think that there are three key factors driving my thinking on this subject:
1. Cyclists are now getting caught at the time they are cheating. Whether they are stupid, unlucky or the testing's improved, cheats are getting nailed and thrown out of the grand tours. Happened in the Giro, but happened to a much greater extent in the TdF. This is a good thing - it shows that there are real consequences for cheating and that those consequences have a more-than-remote chance of occurring.
2. Sponsors are getting more involved. Rabobank withdrew and fired Rassmussen. T-Mobile and CSC are committed to running clean teams. Slipstream is based on being clean. These things help.
3. Right now the perception in cycling, even among many cyclists, is that everyone dopes, so one has to dope to keep up. If that can change and doping can once again be viewed as something that is not done widely, than it helps those individuals and teams who don't want to dope.
I guess we'll see, but today I'm more hopeful than I've been in a while.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment