Fat Cyclist » Blog Archive » 2007 Tour De France Winner Stripped of Title
2007 Tour De France Winner Stripped of Title

“Really, it’s very simple,” said [Dick Pound,] the Chairman of WADA. “Follow my logic, if you please. Every single rider at the Tour de France is a superior athlete. If one person is able to beat all these other people, that person must be doing something the others aren’t doing. However, everybody knows that every single one of these athletes is doing every legitimate thing he can to be the best racer he can be. And since every racer is doing every allowable thing, but only one person can win, the person who wins must be doing something that is not allowed.”

“And what is not allowed?” asked Mr. Pound. “Doping is not allowed, that’s what.”
[...]

“I suddenly don’t feel so well,” said Ivan Basso, following the press conference. “Also, I have a pain in my knee and my goiter’s acting up. I intend to race still, but frankly don’t see my prospects as all that good.”

“My back is killing me,” commented Alexandre Vinokourov.

“I feel a general sense of malaise,” noted Iban Mayo, though nobody asked.

Concluding the presentation, Christian Prudhomme, Director of the Tour de France, said, “…All of this is null and void in the event of a Frenchman winning the Tour.”

The current leader of the Tour, Denmark’s Michael Rasmussen, has been suspended from his national cycling team for having made the ‘administrative error’ of failing to comply with drugs-testing regulations. Yet he is still in the Tour.

Sorry, folks, élite athletes in a sport as drug-ridden as cycling should not be allowed to make administrative mistakes.

Meanwhile, I keep my fingers crossed that Vinokourov’s B-sample comes back clean.