Fine, I say this may be a good thing… in the long run. Man, “zero tolerance” has never been so “zero”.
Unfortunately, as long as it’s a “business”, it will never be clean.
Well, Prudhomme is the new Sheriff in town and doesn’t seem shy about cleaning up.
Your right and the Tour is likely facing a massive loss of sponsors.
I think it is going to take an unprecedented amount of testing transparency, using multiple samples at multiple labs from every rider, every second of every day all year to convince me that it even can be cleaned up.
Maybe it needs to go back to its roots. Just open that thing up to whoever is brave enough to do it. No teams, team cars etc. Maybe some neutral support vehicles and you have to bring your own damned water. Every man for himself and nothing but a trophy at the end. Put it check points and make it the cannonball run of cycling.
Yep…
I hear and agree with your call there… At the very least things need to be improved to give everyone more confidence that the guilty are really guilty.
And I don’t believe that Tom believes in witch hunts, - too likely that innocents are going to be caught up in the melee
And I hope that no one jumps in there with that “no one is innocent” crap, - as the weight of the evidence is inconclusive on some, conclusive on others…
The potential problem ahead is that sponsors get sick of the problems the sport is going through and leave en masse. That will only make the sport poorer and return it to the late 70s / early 80s when there were no global corporations sponsoring massive teams. Most teams had about 15 riders and were sponsored by small regional companies, who usually had cycling fans in charge of them. That was when the going rate for a four time TdF champ was about $100K per year. The logical conclusion of that development is that there will not be the money in the sport anymore to fund elaborate drug testing and rider monitoring schemes like CSC and T-Mobile and the like have started this year. Heck, the amounts of dough those teams are spending on just their testing regime would have funded a TdF winning team twenty years ago!!!
I fear for the future of the sport. If it devolves to where it was pre the LeMond era, when it was a gritty, working class sport, then it will not be good for getting it to the point of clean competition that so many desire it to evolve to.