Doping past clouds Tour return
The 104th edition of the Tour de France will get under way with much fanfare in Dusseldorf today, a fact about which organiser ASO – by far the most powerful force in professional cycling – is clearly thrilled.
Its blue riband event is back in Germany after an absence of over a decade (owing to, ahem, ‘PR’ issues), and Tour director Christian Prudhomme has been talking enthusiastically about the country’s renewed love for the sport.
‘‘We can’t imagine life in Europe without Germany, and that also applies in sport,’’ Prudhomme said this week in a statement for these troubled Brexit times. ‘‘We go where passion guides us! And passion for cycling has been reborn in Germany!’’
If the crowds at today’s 14km city centre time trial are anything to go by, Prudhomme’s observation is certainly correct. Should multiple world champion Tony ‘Der Panzerwagen’ Martin triumph there will undoubtedly be dancing in streets of Dusseldorf tonight.
And yet. professional cycling continues to be haunted by its past; apparently unable to move on from the it and confused about how best to deal with it. Hypocrisy and inconsistencies abound.
The Tour’s return to Germany for today’s Grand Depart – while indicative of the fact that cycling is in a better place -has also brought some of those inconsistencies into sharp focus.
Take the decision not to invite 1997 winner Jan Ullrich, Germany’s only Tour winner, to the start, for instance. Ullrich, like virtually everyone else in his era, doped. He finally admitted to doing so in 2013. And yet while he continues to be persona non grata, others with whom he doped, or who doped in eras preceding his, continue to be feted. It is an irony not lost on Lance Armstrong. ‘‘Rolling out the red carpet for the likes of [Laurent] Jalabert, [Richard] Virenque ... yet not inviting Jan? Pfft. F--- ASO!’’ the Texan wrote on Twitter.
Armstrong has a point. Of course, he feels such double standards keenly. He is so unwelcome within professional cycling, so utterly excommunicated, that he refers to himself as ‘Voldemort’. And maybe he is right to be.
But, while Armstrong has been stripped of all seven of his Tour titles, other known dopers such as Marco Pantani, Bjarne Riis and Ullrich have kept their yellow jerseys. How is that right?
There is no doubt that cycling is in a far better place than it was 10 years ago. The Tour’s return to Germany for a first Grand Depart since 1987, when the Berlin Wall was still up and Shane Sutton was the first man down the start ramp, is illustrative of that.
At the start of this decade German cycling had no teams, no national tour and had lost all of its star names after Ullrich and Erik Zabel quit. Perhaps most importantly, it did not even have television coverage of the Tour.
The sport’s presence in Dusseldorf is to be celebrated but until it finds a way of dealing with its past it is destined to be haunted by it. Telegraph, London