The trial is due to last several months and it will pore over one of the most widespread doping programmes in the history of sport. Or, at least, it will pore over one element of that doping programme. The cycling element. There were supposedly 200 names on the Fuentes client list and there were footballers and tennis players among them. Some players from some of Spain’s biggest clubs, it has been said. And yet they have been given a pardon by the Spanish government. Despite Fuentes having freely admitted that he treated footballers and tennis players as well as cyclists, it is only the bike riders – just over 50 of them – who will come under scrutiny.By Tom English, Scotsman.com, Sunday, January 27, 2012
It's an absolute joke that the Spanish government can let these other sports away with it, but make no mistake, that in regards to football it is because of the names involved and the scale of the fallout if they were to be made public. The money that could be lost and the scandal that would come out. The Spanish Government don't need that when their football teams, both club and country -- are riding high. Heck, Uefa and Fifa could do without another scandal when they've already got racism issues a plenty and internal corruption to keep them in the news for the wrong reasons.
Any journalists from any big name media outlets out there pursuing this? No, I didn't think so.
Cycling continues to lead the fight but is the only one publicly dragged through the streets of Sportsville when a scandal hits. How different might this sport be if they tested their athletes like those of other sports, or alternatively, if other sports took the cycling approach with blood testing, out of season testing, and a blood passport, what kind of headlines would we be seeing? Some guy called Lance Armstrong would be a margin article buried somewhere in the middle of the sports pages of any newspaper.
I, along with millions of others are hypocrites when it comes to this subject. I talk a lot about the subject of doping in cycling while watching other sports such as football without a care in the world. It would seem I only talk about doping in cycling because the issue is prevalent and because it is cared about. Yet the sports reputation gets dragged through the mud, because it cares? What's all that about?
You can point to the likes of Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen as to why cyclings reputation might be as it is and how the sport aparantely doesn't care that much, but they're two people in a sport were many want to see the right thing. And if even to defend McQuaid for just a moment ... by comparison to what the leadership of other sports are doing in the fight against doping (the Armstrong scandal aside), McQuaid is a saint.
And it's this whole subject of cycling being held to a higher standard that has really begun to bug me of late when I wade through my Twitter feed and see non-stop talk of the doping issue in cycling while nothing is mentioned of any other sport. And a lot of the talk of drugs in cycling is of instances from the past: Operation Puerto ... Armstrong. Cycling genuinely does appear to be turning a corner for the better and the future at least looks bright.
Maybe it's about time cycling fans and its media gave cycling its dues. Yes, when a scandal or a positive test arrives then of course it needs talking about, but let's not forget either what else this sport offers and that there is a lot more to it then drug stories and it's those things we should be reading about, writing about and Tweeting about. It is time to accept that the athletes of this sport are well tested in this era and, if you ask me, it is clean by comparison to other sports when you factor in the testing they do. Yes there will always be some out there cheating but that's life in any competitive environment, but you can still enjoy the sport for what it is, thanks to what it has put itself through.
