Tour de Farce

It was hard not to feel just a tiny bit sorry for the organizers of the Tour de France when the news broke that Alexander Vinokourov had flunked a doping test. The last thing the already embattled event needed was for another top cyclist to be caught out in what was, if the test results are confirmed, a brazen attempt at cheating.

The public outcry after Vinokourov and Team Astana's sorry departure from the Tour was predictable. So, too, was the organizers' attempt to put a positive spin on the scandal by claiming that it proved the effectiveness of anti-doping tests.

The incident, however, also broached an issue that an increasing number of hardcore cycling fans have raised during the course of this particularly ill-fated Tour. Is it not unfair of the media to pillory cycling while remaining more-or-less silent about comparable abuses in other sports?

Indeed, there is a certain measure of hypocrisy here. No one would seriously contend that soccer, tennis or even golf is free from athletes using banned performance-enhancing substances or techniques. The line between cheating and gaining a competitive advantage in pursuit of that all-important goal, victory, is at best blurry.

Nonetheless, because of the nature of cycling itself, doping presents a particular threat to the athletes' and the sport's credibility.

Cycling -- and especially its premier event, the Tour de France -- is not a game of hand-to-eye coordination. It is a contest of perseverance without any nifty one-two combinations, breathtaking goals or diving saves.

The appeal of cycling depends on the ideal of the lone rider overcoming the constraints of the human body. The drama of a race -- for instance, the point at which the eventual winner pedals away from the pack -- resides in spectators being able to imagine that he is breaking through his own personal pain barrier and summoning up previously unknown reserves of strength and determination.

That illusion is completely dispelled when the audience assumes that the decisive surge is just the EPO kicking in.

It's an unavoidable fact that doping provides more of a competitive advantage in cycling than it does in many other sports. A transfusion of oxygen-enriched blood, for instance, might give a soccer or tennis player extra energy for a 15-minute overtime period or a long fifth set. But in the absence of individual skill, it wouldn't help them flick a lob over the keeper's head or paint the baseline at match point.

In cycling, as disgraced Tour de France winner Floyd Landis seems to have shown last year, hormones alone can turn the tide. When doping is introduced into the sporting equation, cycling appears more and more like a contest between medical teams -- and who wants to watch a bunch of physicians battling it out?

The effectiveness of doping in cycling also makes it more difficult to eradicate, and the sport is set to pay heavily for this inherent shortcoming. Major sponsors like T-Mobile are likely to scale back or discontinue their sponsorship of teams, and TV stations will certainly think twice about shelling out major cash for the broadcast rights to next year's Tour de France.

And that may be the only silver lining in the very dark cloud that hangs over cycling at the moment. Perhaps with less money and publicity in play, athletes and teams will be less willing to risk their reputations for 15 minutes of dubious fame.