Translated material
Tour de Doping
The Tour de France, which traditionally finished yesterday on the Champs Elysees in Paris, is called the most scandalous. Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme accuses the International Cycling Union (UCI) of allowing Dane Mikael Rasmussen to participate in the race, although the rider had previously evaded two doping tests. UCI chief Patrick McQuaid says Rasmussen is clean and the race management is simply looking for switchers. The president of ASO, which organizes the Tour de France, Patrice Clerc, generally says that the leadership of the cycling union is obliged to resign immediately. At the same time, the organizers of the Tour de France are even more vehemently defending their independence from the UCI, which since 2005 has been unsuccessfully trying to force the main professional cycling race into the Pro Tour, held under the auspices of the International Cycling Union. And the organizers of the race in response say that they intend to join forces in the fight against doping with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and not at all with the specialized federation.
But all these positional bureaucratic battles pale against the background of the situation in which first one of the main contenders for victory, Kazakhstani rider Alexander Vinokurov, is expelled from the race (for blood doping), and then the leader of the general classification, Mikael Rasmussen, who missed two doping tests even before “ Tour de France." It seems that there is not a single team left, not a single notable racer who would not be suspected of using prohibited stimulants. They even suspect the legendary American Lance Armstrong, the main legend of the Tour de France, the only person who won the Big Loop seven times in a row and has already successfully completed his career.
The situation in professional road cycling is reminiscent of the situation that at one time led to the virtual destruction of the “old” weightlifting. After constant doping scandals and the disqualification of entire teams, this sport had to be re-established: all previous weight categories with all their records were abolished by directive, and new ones appeared in their place. Which still hasn’t abolished doping scandals, since a normal person simply physically cannot lift such weights without pharmacological help, and the list of prohibited drugs is constantly growing.
It’s hard to accuse riders, doctors or team bosses of using doping when you see the terrain of the tracks and get acquainted with the schedule of cycling races. More than 20 stages in just 25 days, monstrous mountain climbs, time trial races. It already seems that soon the main achievement of a normal Tour de France will not be anyone’s victory, but the absence of deaths. In the meantime, due to doping scandals, there is an automatic devaluation of the winners’ achievements, and the winners themselves look like just “lucky people” who were fortunate enough not to be caught using prohibited drugs.
The problem of excessive loads in general becomes key for the fate of big sport. There are species where we have come close to the physiological limit of capabilities. And now either progress will come at the expense of technology (in the same cycling, as in Formula 1, more and more advanced machines will appear), or we will have to simplify the competition conditions, reduce the number of stages, and make their terrain easier. That is, accepting that progress in certain sports disciplines is no longer possible.
The health of an athlete, his self-preservation as a full-fledged person is more important than any sports records. If one comes into irreconcilable conflict with the other, a fundamental and unambiguous choice must be made. Because in its current form, the great Tour de France race does not look like a triumph of sportsmanship and skill, but an endless series of doping scandals that nullify its very essence.