Failed test latest in long line for sorry sport
LONDON: The scandal surrounding Chris Froome, undoubtedly cycling’s brightest star in recent years, could be seen as a microcosm for the state of the sport’s current reputation in general. Is anyone still shocked or surprised by revelations of failed drug tests or admissions of guilt in a sport with a reputation as tarnished as that of cycling?
The four-time winner of the Tour de France and this year’s Vuelta a España champion is now the latest name to be added to a staggeringly long list of riders to have failed drug tests. It seems the sport never makes positive headlines for long before being rocked by yet another scandal. Of course, Lance Armstrong’s case remains the most infamous. But you don’t have to delve too far back to remember Floyd Landis in 2006, Alberto Contador losing his Tour de France and Giro D’Italia titles at the turn of the decade or Jan Ullrich’s admissions in 2013 — the list goes on.
And this is exactly why Froome’s admittance last week was met with apathy and indifference by an unsurprised public rather than the outcry or derision a failed test in other sports might provoke.
It is well known that the British rider has suffered with asthma since childhood, so few would begrudge his lawful use of salbutamol in combatting its effects during competition. The immediate question posed to Froome and his Team Sky overlords will be why the level of the drug found in his urine was twice the amount allowed by anti-doping rules. Froome cannot play the innocent party here, especially being an athlete familiar with anti-doping tests.
But to an outsider, this latest episode makes the whole cycling hierarchy appear ineffective at best and incompetent at worst. And the deeper question has to be how much longer cycling can survive this type of scandal before it loses the trust of not just those within its own community but of the wider sporting public.
We can expect Froome to bitterly fight any suspension or ban. He will no doubt be backed by Team Sky — an organization ironically founded on a zero-tolerance approach to performance-enhancing drugs. Whatever the outcome, the inevitable tarnishing of Froome’s image is nowhere near the damage that scandal after scandal continues to have on the reputation of this most beleaguered of sports.