Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France

Dear readers, I've put off writing about the scandal surrounding Lance Armstrong because - frankly - I don't know I feel.about it. When the UCI accepted sanctions imposed by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and did not appeal them to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, it was clear that Armstrong would be stripped of his 7 Tour de France titles and be disgraced and cast out of the cycling world. Even his 2000 Olympic bronze medal came into question. But reality forced itself onto the scene when the head of the UCI announced: "For us, very clearly, the titles [Armstrong's 7 Tour titles,1999-2005] should remain blank. Effectively, we wish for these years to remain without winners [because doping was so rampant]." This is the cycling dilemma...drugs are everywhere and no one has found the key to eliminating them. Now, I knew nothing about cycling until I met my husband, a great fan. He patiently taught me the details I needed to become a fan, too. And part of his experience related to the history of the use of drugs. He said that before EPO there were steroids and before that amphetamines and before that alcohol. It was an open secret. The problem is, especially for the grueling Tour de France, cyclists are expected to perform superhuman feats for 3500-4000 kilometers in 21 days with 3 days rest. How? Depends on the epoch you're talking about. I don't condone drug use in sports, but perhaps it is as inevitable as wet suits for swimmers and Big Bertha golf clubs. And in Europe, where cycling is a major sport, families actually take vacation time, load the family into a camper and follow the Tour for a week. The TV (at least 3-4 hours a day with special review programs every evening) coverage and following is enormous...because it isn't only watching the men climb mountains on bikes, it is the aerial panoramas of the beautiful countryside and mountain tops and quaint villages nestled in out of the way places that the Tour visits - with a different route selected and announced soon after the last Tour ends...to give people a chance to arrange their vacations and find hotel rooms. So the Tour de France is a major event by any measure...the European equivalent of the Super Bowl...but one played every day for three weeks. So, I suppose my position would be -- clean up the sport, do it efficiently but quietly, do not let heros become ogres after the fact because it serves no real purpose, and try to find a way to help professional cyclists survive physically the demands if the Tour without destroying their health and bodies and without expecting them to be masculine Mother Teresas.