It’s interesting that all these sports are involved in crisis at the moment: 1. Doping at the TDF, 2. Ref gambling scandal in the NBA (the latest in a string of scandals), 3. Player conduct in the NFL (Vick, Bengals, others), 4. Bonds and steroids in MLB.
Cycling is clearly getting a black eye at this time, but is it any worse than the other sports? At least cycling appears to be trying to clean up it’s act. It is arguably making much more effort than any of those other sports.
Booting Rasmussen was probably a good thing, to avoid a second straight year of the Tour winner being under a cloud of suspicion. Can anyone image MLB suspending Barry Bonds on the eve of passing Hank Aaron? Highly unlikely. Is Bonds as deserving of being kicked of the team as Rasmussen. I think so. How crazy would it be if MLB did that? But it will never happy, because too many $$$$$ will be lost.
The bottom line is, all sports have their problems, and I suspect cycling is no worse, and perhaps no better than the rest. Unfortunately, the perception in the main stream media is that cycling is undergoing a greater crisis than any of those other events.
At the end of the day, I have enjoyed watching this years TDF very much. While non-cycling fans will likely to continue to bash the sport (i used to be one of them), it is important to keep things in perspective.
P.S. I have been a fan of those other sports far longer than a cycling fan.
On thing cycling is not good at is public relations. Can you imagine David Stern coming out after the NBA ref was busted and saying something like “we believe all are refs are dirty. We have a really hard time catching them but we managed to catch one. All the other dirty refs are on notice that we are after them.” Same with baseball. They are suspending people right and left but it is always presented as an isolated case and evidence that the testing process is working and you’ll never hear anyone from MLB specualte on Bonds. He either passes the tests and he’s in or, if he fails one, I presume he’ll be out but they are smart enough to realize that hand wringing at this point does not help the league.
While I’m not saying cycling should put its head in the sand, they are not helping the health of the sport by feeding the hysteria that all cyclists are doping. It may be true but it is not a good message for those running the sport to be putting out. Right now, its a game of “gotcha” with the press leaks of testing results and each organizing body pointing the finger at the others and blaming them for the problem which has the effect of convincing fans and sponsors that the sport is hopelessly dirty.
He was Manolo Saiz golden child, Saiz was the DS that was caught with ~$20000 as he was visiting Fuentes.
Contador was on Fuentes list after Puerto, but was crossed off after agreeing to be principle witness against Fuentes.
The two points so far, I don’t have a problem with. The next four are a bit more of a stretch, but I will list them here for completeness.
The fact that he is Armstrong’s heir apparent, and that Armstong supposedly had EPO in his urine in 1999, while Contador was 1.5 MINUTES faster than Armstrong up Plateau de Beille.
The disagreement between Discovery Channel and the majority of the other ProTour teams, in particular over the hiring of Basso. Point being that Discovery isn’t opposed to hiring guys that might be questionable.
The fact that before this year he didn’t do much of note, and this year his performance explodes, winning Paris-Nice and being very strong in the TdF.
In the accident he had in 2004 during the Tour of Asturia a blood clot was found in his brain, and removed during a risky operation. It is unclear why he had a blood clot in his brain, but steroids and EPO both are known causes for blood clots.
I don’t necessarily agree with all these points, but if Contador wins he’s certainly not clear of suspicion.
The difference, most (ok many) of the players in the NBA and NFL would be in jail if they weren’t playing a pro sport, I doubt that is the case in pro cycling.