Shock, Horror: Riders took drugs way back in 1998

That long anticipated list of riders who retroactively failed drug tests from the 1998 Tour de France was published today at the ruling of the French Senate, and from it 18 names have shown up as having had traces of EPO in their system with 16 more being listed as 'suspicious'. The names contained nobody that will have shocked you -- not that anyone being on drugs back then should be taken as shocking -- and so has left me wondering why on earth, fifteen years down the road from that ugly Tour, did we need this coming back to haunt the sport?

Where were you in 1998?

It was a time when bands like the Spice Girls and Boyzone were topping (and some might say destroying!) the music charts, and 'Armageddon' was the big box-office smash. I was sixteen years of age back then and heading down to Dublin to watch the opening stages of that years Tour de France. A long time ago, but not long enough for that French Senate.

The world has come a long way since those days. I know I have and I sure as hell know cycling has, yet once more it is being dragged into the mud for past problems. I have long since come to terms with the fact that almost all of them were on drugs at some point during that era so I'm not sure the need to drag it all back out into the open again some 15 years later and especially just days after a fine Tour de France has taken place. All it serves to do is ensure more negative press around a sport that has gone a long way to try and to put things right.

In the time that those aforementioned bands faded away only to be replaced with some that were just as dodgy, cycling went about fixing a lot of its problems. Sure the Lance Armstrong era that followed it did the sport no favours, but we've since seen the implementation of blood testing, out of competition testing, a where-abouts program, and the biological passport. What other sports can say the same for all of that?

I fully understand that there will always be cheats in cycling to some degree or another, but it's clear the sport is in a better place now, that those cheating are fewer in number than ever before and that they will eventually be caught. Cycling is the leader in anti-doping within sport and should be held up as an example to other sports that are clearly still stuck were cycling was in 1998.

If you're wondering why it's always cycling on the end of this kind of subject, then you're not alone. Where is the French Senates re-tests of their French football team that won the World Cup that same summer? Double standards prevail and cycling remains pinned to the top of the totem pole of standards.

And, for the sake of record -- and because like with a car crash, we can't look anyway -- here's the names from the list:

Positive:
Andrea Tafi, Erik Zabel, Bo Hamburger (twice), Laurent Jalabert, Marcos Serrano, Jens Heppner, Jeroen Blijlevens, Nicola Minali, Mario Cipollini, Fabio Sacchi, Eddy Mazzoleni, Jacky Durand, Abraham Olano, Laurent Desbiens, Marco Pantani, Manuel Beltran, Jan Ullrich (twice), Kevin Livingston (twice).

Suspicious:
Ermanno Brignoli, Alain Turicchia, Pascal Chanteur, Frederic Moncassin, Bobby Julich, Roland Meier, Giuseppe Calcaterra, Stefano Zanini, Eddy Mazzoleni, Stephane Barthe, Stuart O'Grady, Axel Merckx.

Does it really make a difference to what we just enjoyed these past few weeks? No, I didn't think so. Only Stuart O'Grady from that list was still active and he just retired yesterday ahead of this so-called revolation.