Doping Allegations will not go away from the World of Cycling: Lance Armstrong Implicated Yet Again
A lot has been written and said about doping allegations in the sport of professional cycling. Recently, though, the greatest cyclist ever, Lance Armstrong, was once again rocked by allegations that he used performance enhancing drugs when he was with the US Postal team. The usual denials have come from the Armstrong camp, but how many times will allegations be produced and how many times will Lance Armstrong prove his innocence? There could be many factors involved in the allegations but something seems to be very wrong because every few weeks another string of accusations come flying out of one corner.
Cycling is an extremely tough sport; it takes an immense amount of physical fitness and strength of character to compete in some of the more gruelling races. One of the most gruelling is the Tour de France, and it is so difficult that some athletes have claimed that it is necessary for cyclists to use drugs just to compete. The interesting aspect of performance enhancing drugs is that if a sport is so tough that every participant uses them, does that not level the playing field with everybody then having an equal chance of winning? But it seems some teams and cyclists have taken it to a higher level. The allegations of doping keep coming out of the world of cycling every few weeks, but the recent allegation concerning Lance Armstrong and his former team US Postal are really shocking.
Detectives in America have recently been made aware of a doping scandal that could involve the former cycling team US Postal and Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong has been accused of using performance enhancing drugs during his time with US Postal and he is further accused of encouraging his teammates to use them as well. The team, US Postal, is suspected of having run a systematic doping programme. Earlier this year, Armstrong’s former US Postal teammate Floyd Landis, who had his 2006 Tour victory taken away from him after failing a drugs test, had also accused Armstrong of taking drugs. The shamed Landis had also said that the US Postal team funded its doping programme through the sale of bikes that the team used. Even though Armstrong had denied Landis’ claims, this current accusation is a big blow for the seven time Tour winner.
A large number of cyclists have been found to have used performance enhancing drugs in the past and another cyclist, Tyler Hamilton, who has been banned for eight years for doping, has been called before a grand jury in the States. The most shocking aspect of this incident is the fact that a US company is being accused of using a sports sponsorship deal to fund a doping programme to increase its own marketability amongst its customers. This is such a big charge that Special Agents have been called in to head a taskforce to try and uncover the truth behind the whole fiasco.
The Tour de France has always been the one race of the sport where all the sordid elements of cycling are revealed. In 2009, even though the race was almost controversy free, Pierre Bordry, who heads the French Anti Doping Agency, AFLD, stated that he felt that proper testing procedures were not used by the organisers of the race, UCI. This sad state of affairs seems likely to haunt the race for the rest of its existence, unless a major cleanup operation takes places to rid the sport of doping once and for all.
A recent news item goes completely against all these claims of doping, when Pat McQuaid, President of the UCI, stated that the sport of cycling is now cleaner than it has ever been. 500 samples were taken from athletes and the results showed a marked improvement over the last year’s results. Now the pressing question is who do we believe, the president of the governing body of the sport, the cyclists themselves or detectives investigating the doping allegations? Well, this story is far from over and we will probably find out more in the weeks and months to come. Until then, the fans of the sport can put all this performance enhancing drugs talk out of their minds and just enjoy the sport they love.
Tags: