The tour de France,

The tour de France started last weekend. It is a sporting event which divides and polarises opinion. There are two reasons for this. The first minor reason is that some people can not understand the excitement of an event that lasts for three weeks versus the opinion that it is a gruelling physical test over three weeks, the ultimate test in sport. The major reason for the division and polarisation over the tour de France is that some people see it as a pharmaceutical game of cat and mouse between testers and athletes. The other side of the equation is that the sport has cleaned itself up and is back to the great test that it was in the days of Eddy Mercyx.

The truth is that professional cycling is in a real mess it. It is a sport that has possibly pushed its athletes too far 3400 km in a in three weeks. A public that demands faster speeds and higher climbs. Cycling has always pushed the boundaries of what is physically possibly. In the early age of cycling it was common to have races lasting twenty four hours, some of the biggest crowds that were drawn to Madison Square Garden when it was built were for a cycling race that was named the Madison. The idea of the Grand Tour such as the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia were publicity stunts for newspapers. The idea of a Corinthian sporting ideal was along way from the early days of cycling. Drugs especially stimulants were necessary. Unfortunately those days of drug abuse have continued and permeated the sport.

Unfortunately the tour has not had a champion without scandal whether proven or not and the scale of doping is astounding. Some of the stories include the doping of blood with horse medication, the transport of fresh blood too tired riders and the deaths of riders such as Marco Pantani with blood so thick that treatment by cardiologists was impossible. Even Britain's most successful tour rider of all time Tom Simpson who died on the summit of Mount Ventoux was full of amphetamines and brandy.

So the tour has been fighting a losing battle to keep drugs out of cycling. Yet cycling was built on drugs otherwise the riders would not have been able to complete the mammoth taks that were expected of them by their professional paymasters. Now it is fighting to retain its credibility by blood profile testing, and trying to maintain the idea that it is a creditable sport and that the tour de France is the toughest sporting event in the world.

Personally I think the tour de France is a great sporting event that is not just as simple as a race round France it is like a soap opera in terms of the team politics. It is like a chess match, when to go or when not to go. Hopefully it will continue and the drugs will be become part of its past.