Le Tour 2007

I haven't blogged yet about the 2007 Tour de France, not because I haven't been watching, or because it's been uneventful (hah!). I was waiting to see what the fallout of all the scandals would be. In the end, the Tour will survive this, and go on, but I feel there will be many more drug scandals before I regain confidence in the fairness of the race.

The testing is starting to catch up to the cheaters, but I believe that it's still possible to cheat and not get caught in cycling. I'm not totally disillusioned with professional cycling as I became with heavyweight boxing, where the cheating dominated the results. And I'm not one of those conspiracy theorists that thinks that the fix is in with all professional sports. Operation Puerto caught out a lot of the top names in cycling, virtually all of whom claimed to be innocent, including Jan Ulricht (retired), Ivan Basso (later admitted doping,) Marco Pantani (died of a cocaine overdose in 2004) and Tyler Hamilton (served a two-year suspension for another doping infraction at the 2004 Vuelta a España). The protestations of innocence of Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, and even Lance Armstrong are now colored in my opinion by the controversies of this year's and previous Tours.

The cycling authorities have a long way to go to get on top of the doping issue. It's hard to say what more they can do, though. Cycling already has the most rigorous testing requirements and penalties. First offense is a two-year ban from cycling, and second offense is a lifetime ban. Think about all the other sports in which doping is involved. The NFL started testing for steroids in 1987, MLB in 2003. Neither test for HGH or other substances that cycling tests for. Some sports, like professional golf, don't test at all. On a personal note, I have participated in a federally-mandated drug testing program for the last 15 years. They test for substances like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, and phencyclidine (PCP). The government tests safety-sensitive positions like mine for the safety of the general public. I don't feel it to be a significant infringement of my rights or privacy, it's part of the job and the world we live in.

I expected this to be one of the most exciting Tours in recent history, and the finish did not disappoint, with the top three GC contenders within 31 seconds of each other. There were some disappointments, however, and the green jersey and polka-dot jersey competitions were not as close, and the white jersey was kind of a joke, with Contador leading the entire race.

Top 10 Tour Disappointments
10) Dave Zibriski's prologue time-trial time lasted less than a minute as the best time. Vladimir Karpets was the next rider and beat his time by more than six seconds. Dave Z's time ended up being the eleventh best time (Karpets' was sixth best) but as a specialist, I'd like to see Zibriski do better.
9) David Millar promised to win a stage in the Tour. He wasn't even close. His thirteenth place in the prologue was followed up with a 64th finish in stage 1 on home soil. He finished 20th in the stage 13 time-trial. His final chance on the stage 19 time-trial was spoiled in the first hundred meters by two broken wheels, finishing a dismal 87th.
8) Spanish climbers who can't climb. Why is Mayo in the Tour de France, anyway?
7) Frenchies pointing the doping finger at everyone but themselves. Don't they remember Richard Virenque? This guy swears Contador is definitely cheating because the speed of the climb of the Gourette-Col d'Aubisque was faster than Lance Armstrong ever went up it. This article strips the winner of his title for doping even before the race is held.
6) The tradition of a final-day procession into Paris. This was the Tour that begged for a final day race, with the top three only 31 seconds apart. If the final time trial had been Sunday instead of Saturday, it wouldn't have left the race feeling incomplete.
5) Robbie McEwen crash and later elimination left the green jersey competition a one-man race.
4) No Petacchi in the Tour once again. Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi was banned for one year after testing high for the asthma medication salbutamol in May. Petacchi holds a therapeutic-use exemption for the otherwise banned substance. With this exemption, he is presumed innocent with levels of up to 1,000 ng/ml, but tested at a level of 1,320 ng/ml. The testing criteria have become nonsensical; remember Jonathan Vaughters being stung by a bee on his face and unable to be treated for swelling that was so bad he couldn't even see? There has to be a way an athlete can take legitimate medicine without being banned.
3) Team Discovery finishing eight seconds short of a 1-2 finish
2) Vino's phenomenal stage 13 win on the long time trial, losing 30 minutes in the next mountain stage, and then winning stage 15 to seemingly coming back from the dead after his injuries in a crash to become a contender in the race once again, and then failing a drug test for blood doping, resulting in the whole Astana team being withdrawn from the race. This after team officials promised to sponsor the team for another ten years after his incredible showing. Maybe this was his revenge for the team being banned and leaving him out of the 2006 Tour.
1) Team Rabobank and the UCI failing to inform Tour officials of the problems with Michael Rasmussen (he had missed two previous out-of-competition doping tests), and then removing him from the race on the basis of Italian journalist Davide Cassani's statement that he witnessed Rasmussen training in Italy when he was supposedly in Mexico with his wife. This was despite Rasmussen testing negative for doping before the Tour and seventeen times during the Tour. If the Tour and Rabobank are trying to avoid negative publicity, this was the worst conceivable way to achieve that. At the time he was removed, he was winner of two stages, holding the yellow jersey, leading the race with 3 minutes and 10 seconds, and was the favorite to win.


Top 10 of the 2007 Tour
10) Fabio Cancellara's fantastic prologue time trial in the streets of London, dominating the entire field with the third fastest time-trial in Tour de France history, behind Greg LeMond's 1989 winner into Paris and David Zabriskie's stage 1 win in the 2005 Tour.
9) Fabio Cancellara's fantastic stage 3 win, powering off of the front of the pack when the breakaway was caught with less than a kilometer to ride and holding out for the win. I can't remember the yellow jersey ever being allowed to ride off of the peleton and win a stage like this. Brilliant. He tried it again in stage 11. If he hadn't fallen in the stage 13 time-trial, he could have had three or four stage wins.
8) Levi Leipheimer producing the fourth fastest time-trial in the Tour de France history, almost winning the yellow jersey on the last day a la Floyd Landis or Greg LaMonde. This memory will finally blot out the disappointing efforts in time-trials of years past.
7) Overshadowed by another 24-year old, Alberto Contador, Mauricio Soler is the best new climber and battled Rasmussen as the best of the best in the Alps. This guy is agressive and exciting.
6) Bonan finally won a green jersey, too bad the best sprinters in the world weren't around at the end to battle it out.
5) Nearing the end of stage 1, about 20 km out from the finish, when the peleton starts to heat up and sprinters start to jockey for position, Robbie McEwen was flying over his handlebars onto the asphalt. His team waited for him and amazingly was able to pace him back into the peleton before the stage finish. Most amazingly, he was able to ride around the world's best sprinters and win the stage.
4) The Tour start in London was incredible, with more than a million fans out to watch the prologue, and an estimated 2 million more to the road course between London and Canterbury Sunday. Now how about a stage or two in the US of A?
3) Sandy Casar winning in stage 18 after a terrible fall colliding with a dog. He managed to stay with the breakaway and out-fox everyone at the end, riding away from the other three riders on sheer guts.
2) Alberto Contador's fifth place time-trial in stage 19 to retain his yellow jersey and win the Tour de France. Who thought this guy could stay within two minutes of Cadel Evans? This shows that Contador has the right stuff even as a first-time Tour rider to perform when it counts.
1) Alberto Contador's success in this year's Tour in both time-trialing and in the mountains. This kid is for real (if he's not a doper). Very few riders can take time from their rivals in both the mountains and in the time-trials (a guy named Lance Armstrong was the last in recent memory) and he's only 24 years old. Contador's time-trialing will only improve as he gets older. If this kid can have the mental focus to improve, and concentrates on winning the Tour, he's got a real chance to win a lot of yellow jerseys. It may be too early to write his name next to Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, and Indurain yet, but he has the potential to be there with the greatest Tour riders of all times. At 24 years old, he's got about fourteen or fifteen chances to win six more and achieve Lance's record of seven Tour wins.