Drugs.
Are there drugs in the Tour de France? Yes. Is it as widespread as you think it is? Definitely not!
I want to look at an issue that causes a lot of division amongst Tour enthusiasts: Drug cheats! The Tour has an unfortunate reputation for being heavily influenced by doping, you will often hear that all the riders are essentially drug cheaters and that the Tour has no integrity! Unfortunately it has gotten to the point where each wearer of the Malliot June (yellow jersey) stands under suspicious and convicting eyes; constantly having to answer vicious and unfounded accusations that he is a drug cheat! Well I don’t think that this reputation is deserved, and I want to state some important points to keep in mind when discussing this important issue!
A Tour Rider, Riccardo Ricco goes in for a mid-Tour mandatory drug test
1/ The Tour has probably the strictest most regular and most harsh policies around performance enhancing drugs! Every rider in the Tour is tested for banned substances prior to the race. Various cyclists are tested after every stage, according to a selection process determined before the race. Under current rules, at least 180 urine drug tests are given, including daily drug tests for the race leader and stage winner and six to eight cyclists selected at random throughout the field. Tour drug tests are administered in accordance with the rules of the Union Cycliste Internationale and the French Federation of Cycling or Federation Françoise de Cyclisme. The Tour conducts banned substance testing under secure and strictly monitored conditions. A specially equipped caravan is established near the finish line of every stage to transport drug samples to a private location following the race. Drug test samples are then transported by private plane for analysis, and results are quickly reported to Tour officials.
The clearest example of this strict attitude towards drugs came in the 1998 Tour de France! There was widespread drug cheating and the French police literally busted into hotel rooms and team caravans to arrest riders and team officials who they knew to be using drugs! Cyclists and coaches and team doctors were put into prison cells and it caused a huge outrage in the international cycling community. Six teams left the Tour midway through in protest to the tactics of the French authorities; but since then the Tour has been a lot cleaner and the amount of drug cheating has dramatically dropped.
2/ Even though the Tour has been cleaner for over a decade, there still remain riders who think they need to take drugs to keep up with the peloton. Although the number of cheaters is incredibly small; each drug story is sensationalised by the mass media; each scandal is used to question the integrity of the Tour; and each disgraced cyclist is shown to be a model of all cyclists! This creates the false image that the Tour is simply full of drug cheats!
3/ Cheating exists in every sport, and doping exist in every endurance sport, denying that is just being silly, thus if you want to write off the Tour because of cheating then you are holding double standards. In fact the Tour has been strict on cheating since the very beginning! The winner of the second Tour de France was disqualified when the officials found out that he had been cheating… he took shortcuts and held onto the backs of cars for some sections. It was a big scandal at the time, but the disqualification of the rider ensured the integrity of the Tour, an integrity that I believe still exists today!
I would like to end with this Nike commercial. It was made when Lance Armstrong was in the height of his career and was under heavy fire from the French press stating he was a drug cheat! It sums it up nicely. Enjoy.
Other posts in this series include:
History
The Peloton
Peeing
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