By now any casual sporting fan will have heard of the doping problem in cycling, so I’ll just link to this article by Chicago Tribune columnist Philip Hersh for a brief summation.
Yep, it’s big, but other sporting fans need to realise that cycling is the only sport airing it’s dirty laundry in this way. Operation Puerto named a lot of cyclists, but what has been forgotten is that a greater number of athletes from other European sports have been mentioned, where is the investigation into those activities?
Here’s Hersh.
What shred of credibility remained about elite pro cycling has disappeared as 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis of Denmark on Friday became the first Tour winner to admit he used banned performance-enhancing drugs.
Echoing admissions made by two other leading riders and two doctors from his old Telekom team who have come forward in the last few days, Riis said in a news conference Friday he had taken the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) from 1993 through 1998, including during his Tour victory. He also confessed to using human growth hormone and cortisone.
Over at my cycling blog I’ve been commenting regularly on all of this; more recently yesterday where I gave some commentary on the admissions of 1996 Tour de France winner, Bjarne Riis.
I also don’t like this focus on the nineties; as if doping on a grand scale somehow went away at the turn of the milleneium. Puerto should tell us that doping is also a scourge of the noughties and if anything it’s even worse, with a conspiratorial and criminal look to it.
In fact Riis’ admission is absolutely in the present tense because he is actively involved in the sport as a senior member, in a sense time has stood still.
This is a complex story that has a long tail to it, doping has been riding alongside cycling for decades, but it’s important to know that no sport is immune, they just aren’t doing anything about it. Cycling is.
