Cycling rocked again

A couple days ago, I wrote about the removal of the entire Astana cycling team being removed from the Tour de France. In that blog, I mentioned the current leader Michael Rasmussen also had some questions swirling about missing some tests. Rasmussen won today's stage of the Tour and extended his lead to more than 3 minute with just five days remaining.

In a move that would be shocking and unheard of in any sport, the sponsor of his team Rabobank forced the team to remove the leader of the Tour de France from the team and the race. It appears that Mr. Rasmussen not only failed to disclose his whereabouts to his native Danish cycling commission, he lied to his team and sponsor about those whereabouts. He is said to have told the team he was in Mexico (where his wife is from) training while he was actually in Italy. Certainly there is much more than has been revealed.

The entire sport has now been rocked. He joins the prohibitive favorite going into the tour, last year's winner (Floyd Landis), a former winner (Jan Ullrich) and many many more cyclists who have been barred from the sports biggest event for suspected illegal performance enhancing behavior.

Over the last several years, nearly all of the biggest contenders in the sport have been implicated on some level with cheating. The depth and breadth of cheating in this sport would be the equivalent nearly all Major League Baseball All-stars testing positive for performance enhancing drugs. By contrast, over the last two seasons of testing, only a handful of Major Leaguers have been suspended and none of them are in the same breath as the best on their team, better yet the best in the world.

It should be noted that Lance Armstrong never tested positive for any of these behaviors and although some rumors swirled, he has adamantly denied any allegations.

When tomorrow's stage 17 begins, the leader of the Tour de France will be 24 year old Alberto Contador with Levi Leipheimer (USA) in third. Both men are from the only American team in the Tour, Lance Armstrong's Discovery Channel Team. For the sake of the sport, I hope the eventual winner will be clean. If not, its not difficult to imagine an end to the sport as sponsors run from any connection to this type of negative publicity.


***** Update: Somewhat overshadowed by the dismissal of the leader of the tour is the story of the Cofidis team. At the end of Stage 16, apparently the French police were waiting to take rider Christian Moreni into custody in connection with doping. The entire team was removed from the Tour de France, second team to be removed this year.