Tour de France v. American Pro Sports

Great column from Jemele Hill today. She says exactly the point I'm trying make, exactly what Tour de France veteran commentator Phil Liggett believes: that the Tour de France is at the forefront and very possibly the downslope of the anti-doping curve.

The key point:
"There is no way American sports are any cleaner than cycling. In fact, if our sports were held to world anti-doping standards, the cycling's scandals would seem mild by comparison."

Accepting that, though, brings us back to an older topic of discussion in the Sauna: do Americans care? A lot of people care that the most hallowed record in baseball is going to go to a player who, by the Tour's standards, would have been banned from his sport a couple years ago. Far, far less people seem to care about PEDs in football.

To the flip-side then: why do Europeans care so much about cycling being clean? To understand that you have to understand the sport. I've said it many times before; the physical suffering these cyclists go through - in the Tour de France, in the lesser Tours of the cycling year, and in their off-season workouts - is incomparable to any other major pro sport. The effort IS the sport. That's why millions line up on the roads of France to cheer them on. That's why the camaraderie of the peloton is such a beautiful thing. These guys are a couple hundred Forrest Gumps 6 out of 7 days for three weeks. If they dope, they are cheating on the very thing that they are admired for. They are cheating the suffering. It doesn't hurt Barry Bonds to hit a home run, HGH or no HGH. Football hurts, but that's not the main reason why Americans love football.

Look at it this way: the best games in most major sports almost always involve exciting finishes, but the best Tour de France stages are also the least exciting at the end. The most exciting stage finishes are the flat ones, when half a dozen sprinters are battling in the final seconds. But the most famous stages are in the mountains, and the most famous rides are made by individuals who suffer for four hours but manage just a little bit more pace than everyone else.

Vinokourov and Rasmussen and the others suffered, but they did something illegal to manage their suffering. So the very specific thing they are admired for is diminished.

cycling Stuff

Ivan Basso "widely acknowledged his responsibilities" in the Spanish cycling doping case and is cooperating with investigators, according to an AP report today. This is big. To put this in perspective, if Lance Armstrong is Barry Bonds, and Jan Ullrich is Mark McGwire, than Ivan Basso is Sammy Sosa.

Unlike Sosa, however, I've always liked Basso. Ullrich, on the other hand, was never that likable as his career wound down. He was icy with the press, and in his last few years on the Tour de France there were always one or two other guys on the T-Mobile team that seemed like they might challenge for the lead if Ullrich hadn't been standing in the way.

Basso was different. He was the one guy who went head to head with Lance and won a stage or two, which was nice, because Lance had everything under control anyway. I was pretty excited when Basso joined Team Discovery, even with all the doping allegations swirling. After all, everyone's doping in cycling.

And that's just it. If Basso was doping, that leaves three possibilities for Lance: A) He was doping better than Basso, B) He was doping the same as Basso, but he was a better cyclist. C) He wasn't doping. He was just that good. For the record, I'll begrudgingly admit that B is most likely, but I still think there is a chance that C is true, too. People really ARE out to get Lance, and nothing has really stuck on him for the long haul. The point is, chances are Lance really WAS that good.

Of course, that's no consolation to the (I'm totally, recklessly guessing) 10 or 20% of the riders who don't dope.

In the end, I like Basso for coming forward. He's the first big named cyclist to do it. Come to think of it, he might be the biggest name in sports to come clean. He's at least as big worldwide as Jose Canseco. I'm ready to forgive! Come on people! Admit it! You're on stuff! Go get 'em Ivan.