Fair-Weather Friends

With all the latest revelations of cyclists who doped in the recent past — and by that I mean Telekom in the 1990s, and especially Bjarne Riis — a number of sports columnists have been writing hand-wringing articles about the sorry state of professional cycling.

Some, perhaps most, of these columnists got onto the cycling bandwagon during the Armstrong era, as Lance proceeded to win seven straight Tours de France, a feat that no cyclist ever did before or will ever do again — at least, not in my lifetime. Armstrong’s accomplishments seem all the greater given that his is the ultimate “person overcoming great obstacles to achieve great things” story that we Americans seem to love. Beating cancer and coming back to be an even better cyclist than he was before? Unbelievable. Yet we all witnessed it, those of us who follow cycling.

Now, some people say that Armstrong had a little bit of a boost, if you know what I mean. But no one has ever caught him red-handed, and since he’s now retired, it’s not likely that anyone ever will. So the truth of the matter is elusive. But even if he did, would that make his accomplishments any the lesser? Realistically, even if he had a bit of EPO or other rocket fuel in his system, winning one Tour is incredibly hard. Winning seven? In a row? How much harder is that?

So Armstrong’s story sucked in writers like Phil Hersh, George Vescey and a slew of others. Now, being journalists, they should have had their eyes open. Even the most casual of cycling fans could tell you there’s a history of doping in the sport. Fans who are a bit more knowledgeable can cite chapter and verse about the who, what, when, where, why and how various cyclists doped in the past. It’s not like this has been some carefully hidden family secret or anything.

With Riis’ admission, writers like Vescey are telling us:

Sure, go ahead, enjoy the Tour de France this year. Stock up on the pâté and the baguette and the vin ordinaire, either in a beautiful corner of France or in front of the television. The Tour will still be a beautiful sight.Just don’t take it seriously. That’s all I’m saying. Don’t take the riders into your heart the way I once took the gritty Tyler Hamilton or the loopy Floyd Landis into my sentimental journalist’s notebook, my common sense suspended.

When a prominent rider and coach like Bjarne Riis offers to turn back his yellow 1996 championship jersey because he cheated, as he did on Friday, cycling has officially become as bogus as pro wrestling.

OK. Sports are … what’s the word I’m looking for here? … entertainment. Most (if not all) of the time, we’re not watching sports — whether it’s the Tour or the latest football game — for deep intellectual stimulation.

Hersh tells us that whatever credibility cycling had is now gone.

What shred of credibility remained about elite pro cycling has disappeared as 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis of Denmark on Friday became the first Tour winner to admit he used banned performance-enhancing drugs.

And Phil Sheridan of the Philadephia Inquirer says:

Only one thing was proven beyond a reasonable doubt during Floyd Landis’ appeal hearing over the last two weeks.

Professional bicycle racing is a filthy sport and, in a perfect world, the Tour de France would go away and never come back. Certainly there is no reason for anyone to watch cycling’s premier event with any faith that it is clean.

Given the scorn these writers are heaping on professional cycling, you would think that the sport had led them down the garden path. What a load of crap.

Doping — or more generally, cheating — has been going on in all professional sports, in one form or another, to varying degrees for at least the last 50 or 60 years. When was the last time football had teams that weren’t trying to find some sort of edge to beat their opponents? Even in the 50s, pro teams were using amphetamines to boost their game-day performances. In the early 60s, steroids came into pro football via a strength coach for the San Diego Chargers.

And by the end of the 60s, steroids had begun to infect baseball, too. Pick a sport, and chances are you can find someone who cheated their way to victory at one time or another. So Bjarne Riis admits he used EPO in 1996 when he won the Tour, does that damage the credibility of pro cycling anymore than, say, the Carolina Panthers making a steroid-fueled run to the Super Bowl damages the credibility of pro football? I don’t think so.

But to hear certain writers tell it, cycling is the worst of the lot. Not hardly. If one sport’s bad because players dope, then all sports are bad when their players dope. But we have a bit of a double-standard. The big sports, even if writers pontificate a bit about their doping scandals, don’t suffer the same fallout that cycling does. Why is that?

I can’t imagine that Vescey, or Hersh, or Sheridan are so naive as to overlook the fact that doping has existed in cycling for some time now. It’s nothing new. But to hear them tell it, suddenly pro cycling has sunk into the gutter.

Now, if this were just their opinions and nothing more, then OK, they’re entitled to their wrong opinions. But what they write colors the perception of others, and some of those others are decision-makers who dole out sponsorship money to the cycling teams. As VeloNews notes, that’s getting to be more of a challenge, given all the negative press cycling is receiving in this country.

Despite all the rumors about steroid use, Barry Bonds has yet to suffer any serious fallout. He hasn’t lost any major sponsorship deals. He hasn’t lost his job. He still gets paid millions upon millions of dollars to swat a baseball out of the ballpark. But if someone in cycling admits to doping 11 years ago, suddenly the sport is evil.

Granted, it’s been a cumulative effect. One doping story on top of other allegations on top of admissions about drug use years ago. It does paint a certain picture. But give me a break, is it really any different in the major sports in this country? I think not. It’s just that the only stories we read about cycling have to do with doping. Except when there’s an American who overcomes great obstacles to win the Tour. There was LeMond, who came back from hunting injuries (I think his brother-in-law must’ve gone to the Dick Cheney school of hunting), Armstrong came back from cancer, and Floyd Landis, with a bum hip, came back from a really bad day to get back in contention and win.

We like those kinds of stories, don’t we? And so do the sports writers. But let’s be serious, if they didn’t realize that doping exists in cycling, then I have a bridge to sell them. I have a suggestion for the whole lot of them: Forget about cycling. Don’t write about it. Don’t think about it. Better that the sport be dead to you. We don’t need your ill-informed opinions. We don’t need fair-weather friends. Go write about something you know.

Leave the cycling commentary to those who understand the sport, and who have enough perspective to know that the admissions of doping and the scandals are a sign of a sport actively working to clean itself up. Baseball and football could take a lesson from cycling, as far as coming clean about doping is concerned.