"Fuentes said it himself, 30 per cent of his clients were cyclists. Where’s the other 70 per cent?"-- Pat McQuaid, UCI President, 2009
I've been defending cycling a lot lately.
That might seem surprising given what has been in the news, that I have a leg left to stand on, but I feel I have little choice as a cycling fan when the wider media use cycling public problems with drugs as a stick to beat it with. And that's also only the case if you believe that cycling is unique to the drug problem just because it is the one in the public spotlight. It's not.
In The Telegraph this past Monday there was a story about how the Operation Puerto investigation from way back in 2006 into the workings of Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes was finally going to trial with the good doctor charged with public health offences and that "despite Fuentes himself admitting to working with professional footballers and tennis players as well as cyclists, the Spanish authorities have ruled that the case will only cover his involvement in cycling."
Fuentes has admitted working with football teams in Spain’s first and second divisions as well as tennis and handball players. Spanish police are believed to have unearthed evidence in his vast database revealing names of Fuentes’s clients but these have never been made public.-- Nick Holt, The Telegraph, January 21, 2013
I find it a disgrace that these other sports are getting off the hook. Operation Puerto is only investigating Fuentes for his doping procedures relating to cyclists, but no other sport because the Spanish authorities do not want the house of cards falling in on their nations football and tennis achievements. The authorities would rather not rock those financially rewarding apple carts.
Cycling has become the easy target. To non-cycling fans it is a sport to point at as one losing all credibility. To some who I would classify as (anti) doping fans rather than cycling fans it is a sport that allows them to run up thousands of Tweets exclusively about the issue of drugs in the sport as though there were no other aspect to the sport whatsoever. That isn't to say no mention of drugs should be made -- I've wrote quite a bit about it in recent weeks on here -- but by ruling out any other good that comes with the sport does nothing more than hurt it further. To reel of tweet upon tweet or blog upon blog, day and night, about drugs in cycling through the years without ever giving thought to the positive steps taken for the future of the sport or the other great qualities the sport offers up isn't just sad, it's pathetic.
Is cycling the easy target? It would sure seem so. It's become a case of, "Well everyone knows about doping in cycling so what harm can it do to kick it a few more times while it's down?" To do it with a different sport would only be to risk the wrath of the fans, of the media, of the athletes, and of the authorities. It's kind of where we were in cycling at the end of the 1990's.
Yes, cycling has had its drug issues, but because of them we no longer watch it blind and oblivious unlike the fans and media of other sports. Positive tests and scandals do not simply mean that the sport is a farce, it simply means we're under no illusions. I know where I stand as a cycling fan. I'd rather know what's been going on than to be fooled into thinking everything's wonderful.
I feel cycling is well ahead of the curve when it comes to anti-doping. Are there still some out there cheating? Of course, some will always try to gain an edge, but they'll do it with one eye looking over their shoulder unlike athletes in other sports. Cycling tests for more and tests more often than in any other sport that I can think of. Take what Mark Cavendish said to The Sun this past weekend on this very subject:
He was speaking about the "bitter legacy" that Lance Armstrong has created, because "it’s clean athletes like myself who are left to absorb the shock waves." But he said that "Cycling today is the cleanest sport in the world."
That might sound ridiculous, but he explained it by saying that "It’s not that we have more cheats -- we just catch them and bring them to justice better than any other sport. I am convinced other sports do not tackle doping as rigorously as cycling because they are frightened of losing franchises and sponsorship's. Cycling isn't the only sport with a hidden past, but it is the only sport brave enough to drag its skeletons out of the closet, even at risk of damaging its reputation."
Cavendish also highlighted further proof that cycling is held to a higher standard than other sports in a separate article for the same paper. He said that "Most sports use intravenous injections, but for minerals, it is the most efficient way to recover lost vitamins. For a few years now, all intravenous injections in cycling are illegal, even minerals, yet other sports are fine to do it. During the famous 10 hour tennis match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon in 2010, Tim Henman was asked in the commentary box how he thought they would recover from such a grueling game. He said ‘they’ll probably have an intravenous vitamin injection.’"
Where would cycling be if the sport limited its testing and turned a blind eye entirely to the subject of drugs as a topic of discussion like many other sports have? I suppose you could look at the money in football and the sponsors fighting to get a foot in the door to get your answer, though given the individual aspect of cycling and the aid it gives to you because of the physical demands, we would be watching nothing more than chemically induced robots. And we seen what happened in the late 90's when they tested to a similar level as what other sports are still testing today.
The argument against the issue of drugs in a sport like football is that it is exclusively a team game and that there isn't the same advantage to be gained by one player taking performance enhancing drugs. And that's true, but what about when its a program consisting of an entire team? It may not make them better footballers technically, but at the sharp end when the talent levels are high across the board, the difference maker can be the ability to go deeper into games at a high level and recover quicker between games.
I know all too well that the UCI didn't do all they could over the years, and there are some serious questions to be asked about how Lance Armstrong got away with it as long as he did and I hope that too comes out in the wash eventually so that we can properly move on from this ugly saga, but there has still be plenty of good done. A test against the use of EPO has been adopted and is being used, there is out of season testing, there is blood testing, and there is the drug passport which -- if it isn't deterring some athletes entirely -- is certainly making them look over their shoulders.
And it's working. In baseball during the 'steroid era' the home run totals soared and records were smashed. Sponsors, TV companies, and the sport itself made a fortune out of it, waiting until all the cheques were cashed before turning on those that cheated. Federal trials were heard, the fans spoke out, the sport instituted a testing policy, albeit one that is still light years behind cycling and has minimal punishment, but a testing policy nonetheless, and with it the home run totals have plunged back to normality. We've seen that in cycling lately. Races are not quite as fast as they were, and the top climbers are not going up the mountains anywhere near as quickly as they did ten or fifteen years ago. In sport were human achievement is always supposed to edge forward, this is a fine example as to where we were, and where we hopefully are going.
I'm not saying doping in other sports is as rife or as in depth as it was in cycling. It probably isn't for as the hardest sport in the world, cycling will always have athletes pushing the boundaries of drug use. Some other sports would never require the kind of endurance drugs that cyclists have required, but that's not the point here. It's the fact these other sports may have drug use of any kind at all and that they're not being flagged for it while cycling makes the doping headlines.
If these other sports would prefer not to know, then good luck to them. I'll continue to enjoy watching other sports, but I won't hear of criticism aimed at cycling by those who think there's nothing wrong with what they watch themselves.
