From the article:
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by Robert Messenger
Only at TNR Online | Post date 07.27.07
Revelations of illegal doping have marred yet another Tour de France.
On Tuesday, the Astana team pulled out of the race after its star,
Alexandre Vinokourov, tested positive for blood-doping. The Cofidis
team followed them out the door on Wednesday after Cristian Moreni
tested positive for synthetic testosterone. And, that same day, the
Tour's leader, Michael Rasmussen, was fired by his team for missing
doping tests earlier this year and lying to his employers about his
whereabouts. As the Tour rides to its conclusion in Paris this
weekend, cycling commentators and officials have been trying hard to
cheer the success of the sport's war against doping: The cheaters are
being caught, they say. "Things are changing. Yesterday, riders sat
down against doping at the start of the stage. Ten years ago those
riders would have been sitting down against drug tests," said Patrice
Clerc, the head of the Tour's organizing group.
But there is a very deep hypocrisy at work here. Many of the sport's
officials, team managers, and commentators are ex-racers, men who have
long been a part of the sport's doping culture. CSC's manager, Bjarne
Riis, this spring admitted that he took EPO, a blood-doping agent, to
win the 1996 Tour de France. Rolf Aldag admitted using EPO between
1995 and 1999, but remains a T-Mobile sporting manager. The manager of
T-Mobile when both Riis and Aldag raced for it, Walter Godefroot, came
out of retirement this spring to help oversee Vinokourov's Astana
team. The team that has just fired Rasmussen has one Erik Breukink as
its sporting manager. I remember him as a fine racer who finished
third in the 1990 Tour. In 1991, he was suited up for the powerhouse
PDM team which withdrew all its riders from the Tour with what was
variously described as "influenza" and "food poisoning." In reality
the riders had been using a nutritional supplement that masked the
presence of anabolic steroids in their urine and left the Tour at the
organizers' behest to save a scandal. The team and the riders weren't
punished, and Breukink went on to race for six more years and now to
run another powerful cycling team. The list could go on.
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J. Spaceman