Test, cheat, test: unending cycle
DUESSELDORF, Germany — A scene from “Godfather III” about sums up where the Tour de France is with doping as the 2017 edition begins Saturday.
In the movie, Al Pacino’s character, Michael Corleone, laments that his efforts to become a bona fide businessman are being undermined by his family’s underworld connections. “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” he wails.
Likewise, cycling’s showcase race seemed largely to have extricated itself from the swamp of widespread blood doping that characterized Lance Armstrong’s era. The 12 riders banned or provisionally suspended by cycling’s governing body, the UCI, in 2015 and 2016 for using blood-boosting agents were largely second-tier.
But four days before the 2017 edition gets rolling in Duesseldorf, Germany, came a reality check.
The UCI announced that Andre Cardoso, a seasoned pro who was to have raced in support of 2007 and 2009 champion Alberto Contador in his quest for another Tour title, tested positive for EPO, a hormone banned because it stimulates the production of oxygen-carrying blood cells.
EPO was also part of Armstrong’s doping armory when he cheated his way to seven Tour wins from 1999-2005. Those victories were subsequently stripped from the Texan, who has been banned for life, leaving the sport laboring under corrosive clouds of suspicion.
Time and cycling’s sustained antidoping efforts have helped to heal some of those wounds and win back fans in countries like Germany, but Cardoso’s positive test shows that the race isn’t out of the woods yet — and likely never will be.
“We keep saying that time is the healer of the sport and what people did 10 years ago to ruin the sport will be healed by time and the fact that nobody is doing it anymore,” Team Sky rider Luke Rowe said.
But Cardoso’s test, he added, “just puts a bad shadow on the sport again.”
Rowe, angry and frustrated, said he’d like the Portuguese veteran of seven Tours of Italy and Spain to be banned for life, “especially if you are caught with something as obvious as that.”
Cardoso said in a statement that he has never taken banned substances, having “seen firsthand through my career the awful effects that performance-enhancing drugs have had on our sport.”
But the conclusion must be that cycling still hasn’t convinced all of its most experienced athletes that cheating isn’t worth the risk.
“You had to be naive to think it couldn’t happen again. And it will happen again. It’s logical. Just because we haven’t seen riders caught for EPO for a while doesn’t mean that riders weren’t taking it,” said Marc Madiot, head of the French FDJ team.