I love watching the Tour de France. Ever since, about twenty five years ago, I found myself trapped on a campsite because the road outside was closed for the Tour to go past, I've found it magical: the publicity caravan, the tactics, the teams, the history, the mystique. I look forward to it every year, watch as much as I can on the TV, sometimes even spending the afternoon watching the live coverage. I've been to stages, been to preludes: it's great.
Unfortunately, it's also as fake as WWF wrestling. Each great break-away, each glorious mountain-top victory, each yellow jersey on the Champs Elysee, is provisional until the drug results are in. There's hardly an overall winner of the past twenty years to whom some suspicion doesn't attach, and in some cases --- Pantani, Riis --- a great deal more than suspicion. But every time someone is caught, there is a disingenuous cry of "who knew? not me!" to the point that Alberto Contador can advance the argument that he doesn't associate with drug-users, even though his team manager is drug user.The problem is that cycling says it wants to be clean of drug use, but tacitly realises that drug-using cycling is superficially better to watch than clean cycling. A fresh-looking Pantani accelerating at the top of Alpe D'Huez is to the casual viewer more exciting than watching an exhausted man hauling himself over the line, and sponsors like casual viewers. That this comes at a horrible price, not only in the lives of cyclists but also the long-term credibility of the sport is almost ignored. Young men believe themselves immortal, and just as F1 has to deal with the fact that most drivers would take a car that is more dangerous in exchange for 0.5s a lap, you cannot rely on the health self-interest of cyclists to keep things clean. So the solution is, I think, draconian penalties. In the event of a drug test proving positive (A and B sample, well-proven methodologies, accredited laboratories) then the whole team is banned for life. All the riders, all the management, all the sporting staff are, to use the phrase from horse racing, "warned off". The entire team, for the purposes of the sport, ceases to exist. The only way for someone finding themselves in a team where drug taking is happening to escape this fate is to blow the whistle: the people who blow the whistle on a team would not be themselves banned. This would stop all the artful looking the other way, as anyone who sees drug use happening has a powerful incentive to tell the authorities. The penalty would only have to be exacted once, if that, do have its effect. Just as Denise Lewis was only persuaded that employing a drug-tainted javelin coach was a bad idea when Nike threatened to pull her sponsorship, the reputational risk to any sponsor would be so great that they would impose strict governance themselves, just as Sky have done today. The hideous sight of obvious drug users being recycled around various teams would go away, and anyone even suspected of drug use would become an immediate risk to the livelihoods of everyone around them. Drug use is killing the sport. Who would like to place bets on the last non-drug TdF victor? Fignon? LeMond? Longer ago? If it wishes to avoid a descent into farce, it must deal with drug use swiftly. Reason has failed. Appeals to better nature have failed. The time has come for savage punishment.
339. Mr Contador stated in his defence, among others, the following: “I have never taken doping substances in my life. And not only have I not taken doping substances, but I have always been surrounded by people (cyclists, doctors, trainers, etc.) who categorically reject the use of doping substances.”
340. WADA disagrees with this statement.
341. In its appeal brief WADA presented a list of 12 former or current team-mates of Mr; Contador who have been banned for doping and states that criminal investigations are pending against the Astana Team and the Athlete’s former team manager, Mr Manolo Saiz, while in the “Puerto” criminal investigations, initials corresponding to those of Mr Contador were found in certain handwritten documents of Dr Fuentes and Mr Jörg Jaksche testified accordingly in his own doping case. Finally, Mr Contador’s current team manager, Mr Bjarne Riis admitted to having used performance-enhancing drugs during his career.