Looks like Landis rode "the ride of the century" as the news blabographers
called it, while cheating. Phonak officials were NOT available for comment.
What a surprise (NOT) - how ELSE could he ride with a hip which is so bad he can
hardly walk at times? And by the way, Lance was NOT exonerated as the article
claims - he simply paid off the group and "got out of Dodge" - he was also
connected with the same doc which got Ullrich and Basso fired.....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14061936/from/RS.1/


Some people are bound to be shocked to learn that the winner of the Tour de
France has tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. These are the same
people who would be shocked to learn that beer is consumed at fraternity
parties, that four-year-olds like chocolate and that professional wrestling
matches are fixed.

Yes, it's tough that the guy caught is an American, Floyd Landis, but it can't
be a surprise. One of the reasons Landis won is because the pedal-pushers who
finished second, third and fourth last year were banned for drugs before the
race even began. Every time you turn around, it seems as if there's another
story about a rider doing drugs.

Why should we be surprised that the drug cops made another bust?

Cycling and drugs go together like Valentine's Day and roses. There's a good
reason for it: it is perhaps the most grueling and physically demanding sport
there is. The Tour de France is a three-week race covering a couple of thousand
miles with just two days off.

Take the best athlete from any other sport, put him on a bicycle, and have him
ride just one stage of the tour. He'd barely be able to walk the next day and
wouldn't want to ride a bike again for quite some time.

Now do it every day for a week, and throw in gut-busting climbs up impossible
grades in the Alps and blistering time trials in which the riders go as fast as
they can for dozens of miles.

If ever there were a sport made for drugs, cycling is it. So it's no surprise
that the sport has been saturated with them for as long as anyone can remember.
If a doctor or chemist can find something that will help the riders go longer
and faster, something that will allow them to keep pumping through the screaming
pain, there will be a market - a big one - for it.

You name it, riders have used it, from brandy and laudanum in the ancient days
to amphetamines later on, to human growth hormone to steroids, to EPO, a drug
that allows the blood to carry more oxygen. Riders also reinfuse themselves with
their own blood, increasing the volume of blood and thus the volume of oxygen it
can carry, a practice called blood packing.


In a way, it's been an even playing field, because just about everybody was
doing it. So no one was getting an advantage that others didn't have.
Unfortunately, all the drugs also led to dozens of deaths, and no sport likes to
have its participants dying off in the middle of competitions. It doesn't look
good.

And when the public catches on, it gets offended. Of all the charades we buy
into in life, one of the most enduring is the myth of clean competition. We will
pay large amounts of money to watch people with bodies not found in nature do
things that we'd always considered to be impossible. Then, if they don't test
positive for anything, we allow ourselves to believe that they did it honestly.

It's a lie we gladly tell ourselves because it allows us to continue to enjoy
something we love. It's like someone who has mountains of evidence to suggest
that a spouse is cheating and chooses to ignore it because, well, because life
works better that way.

Still, even the craftiest cheater can get caught, and that's when the problems
start. It was pretty well known for years that cyclists cheated any way they
could. But the real efforts to clean up the sport began in 1998, when seven
teams were kicked out of the Tour de France, the granpere of all races, for drug
use.


The campaign was successful only in that it inspired the athletes to find better
ways to cheat the drug tests. The following year, Marco Pantani, the previous
year's winner, was thrown out for doping. In 2004, more than a dozen riders were
expelled. After last year's record seventh straight win by Lance Armstrong, the
French sports newspaper, L'Equipe, reported that tests performed on one of
Armstrong's preserved urine samples from 1999 revealed evidence of EPO, a
popular drug in cycling that boosts the blood's capacity to carry oxygen. An
investigation launched by the International Cycling Union exonerated Armstrong,
but it didn't stop people from saying he cheated.

This year, there were the series of suspensions before the race began. Clearly,
all the testing and all the enforcement efforts have done nothing to stop the
cheating; they've only forced the cheaters, who probably include most if not all
of the top riders, to find better ways to hide the evidence.

The surprise here is that Landis got caught so late in the race. The offending
sample was taken after the 17th stage, the same one in which he put on an
unbelievable performance a day after all but falling out of contention. People
marveled at his ability to recover. Now, there is evidence that he had help in
the recovery.

There will be appeals and tests of back-up samples. But it looks as if Landis,
desperate to win, took a chance after his terrible performance in stage 16. He
wanted to win and knew he had to do something extraordinary to do it. So he did
some drugs he hoped wouldn't be detected.

That's just a theory, but it makes sense. He lost the gamble, which will make a
lot of people in France and Europe very happy because finally, a Yank got caught
doing what everybody else has been doing.

But it won't change the underlying truth of big-time cycling: It's a cheater's
sport.


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