Meaningless Bike Races

Every summer the biggest race in cycling, the Tour De France, is run. (This year's winner was an Italian rider who claims to be drug free.....I have my doubts about that affirmation.).  Trouble is, in recent years no one is watching or cares about it.  That's because bicycle racing is the first sport to be so impacted by competitor drug usage that it has been virtually killed.  I think Lance Armstrong's decline and fall from grace was the single biggest reason for it all. He was arguably the greatest bike racer ever and had overcome a serious cancer to compete again. But after drug tests revealed he was both a major cheat and liar, the bicycle racing fans said "enough" and stopped watching.

Anyway, drug usage in bike racing has a long history, starting in the 1920s. At first, the athletes were using stimulants, so few cared. But  the practice of blood doping that we have come to know seemed an extreme extension of that. When a Danish cyclist  named Knud Enemark died in the 1960s Olympics and his autopsy revealed traces of amphetamines, there was a public outcry to increase athlete testing. Testing for anabolic steroids came along in the 1970s and resulted in a higher amount of athletes testing positive for such substances. It became the secret mantra of the riders that to not cheat meant to be non competitive.  Blood doping became the easiest way for the competitors to cheat the drug testers. The result is that much of the public thinks that every bike rider is a drug machine on top of his or her bike.

That's why nobody in the United States and almost every other country on earth, for that matter, cares about the Tour de France.  They all know the performers are not riding on sheer talent alone, and that without  the aide of performance enhancing drugs most would not even bother to sit on a bike. Since 1960 about half the winners of the Tour de France were caught doping or using drugs to enhance their performance. Of the 21 top three finishers in the 2012 Tour de France, only one has not been tied to doping, according to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

I guess the rampant use of illegal drugs by of humans in their every day life is a stimulus for drug abuse in sports, particularly in cycling. No one seems to care anymore.  Instead, the react with no interest in the sport altogether. It's very hard to root for anyone who could be cheating his way to the finish line. So, the bike racing continues to slowly die, and one wonders which sport will be the next to self distruct because drug abuse. Gee, as much as I hate soccer, I hope that will be the one.