Tour de France: A Band New Start?

Tour de France - Brand New Start


As we wake to the first day of this year's Tour de France, the epic three weeks commence amid a mix of excitement, mystery and for the corporate sponsors who make professional cycling possible, at least a bit of anxiety.

The banks, watchmakers, national lotteries, car manufacturers, GPS-makers and restaurants that provide cycling's financial backing in the absence of the ticket sales of other sports have been abandoning their riders in ever-greater numbers in the wake of drug scandals played out on the very public stage of the most prominent cycling event on the calendar. As if to pre-empt or mute the constant buzz, Versus, the sole U.S. television station airing daily coverage of this year's Tour, has created its own buzz, tapping British rock artist Paul Weller to provide a new background tune.

The station's campaign dubbed "Take Back the Tour" includes a commercial spot pairing Weller's tune, "Brand New Start," with footage of past Tour riders played in reverse. All of those included in the advertisement have been associated with the scandal if not implicated, and some who have since returned to the roads after multi-year bans.

David Millar, Alexandre Vinokourov, Ivan Basso, Bjarne Riis, Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, Micahel Rasmussen, all of whom have either retired or been stripped of their greatest palmarès, ride back up time trial ramps, step down off winner's podiums and, in the case of the American Floyd Landis, is stripped of his maillot jaune in the commercial's wiping clean the slate.

Cycling is associated with doping scandals more than any other international sport, not necessarily because more cyclists use performance-enhancing drugs than other athletes, but perhaps due to their being one of the first group of athletes to be identified with the habit.

Beginning with the death of Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen at the Olympics in Rome in 1960 (an autopsy later identified amphetamine use as the cause) and burned into the memory of Tour de France spectators when British ace Tom Simpson died on the slopes of Mt. Ventoux in 1967, cycling has endured an unfortunately tragic history with drugs.

No American TV commercial can erase the drug scandals from the memories of fans; only a clean Tour can accomplish that goal. And for the cyclists to ride clean, the race needs to not only get better at detecting doping than the cyclists are at masking it, but also create a more manageable Tour - shorter stages, fewere hors catégorie climbs, and more humane conditions that don't beg riders to dope to survive. The founder, Henri Desgrange, said after the first race in 1903 that his ideal competition would be one in which only one competitor “survived” to finish. The physical demands are excessive in the extreme and the race has always been intended to test man to the limit – this year the course is 3,500km (2,175 miles) with the usual two days only of rest thrown into a three-week onslaught.

When Tour organizers provide less extreme conditions, perhaps then we will witness a clean Tour. And while I'm sickened by the reality that athletes around the globe and across disciplines feel compelled to harm their bodies in order to win, I can't help but be thrilled by this summer's lineup from the Tour to the Olympics even as I hold my breadth in awe and dread. British commentator Phil Liggett speaks for me when he says "There is no place I'd rather be in July than on the roads of the Tour de France."