It is inspiring indeed to see some of the toughest men on the planet battle it out across the heights of Alps & then finish on the Champs- Elysees to be crowned as the champions. It is unbelievable when you watch Lance Armstrong attack on the slopes of the Alps, Michael Rasmussen dance away with ease over the mountain stages, Alexander Vinokourov launch an attack after attack from the ‘peloton’ & Boonen & Hunter fight it out at the sprint finishes. ‘Tour De France’, I must confess, is the only cycling event that I ever watch & I do so with great enthusiasm. While I do keep myself aware of the results of ‘Giro de Italia’, it never makes me television set.
While the dampener in all this is surely the doping scandal that seems to constantly hit the sport of cycling. It really is taking a lot of gloss off the sport. The latest revelations Patrick Sinkewitz’s riding for team T-Mobile about the intake of EPO & blood transfusion seem to have virtually put his career on the sidelines & also might put the famous magenta-black jersey’s out forever.
Patrick’s confessions that T-Mobile as a team have used EPO & blood transfusion since 1997 till 2006 come as an absolute shock to the officials of cycling’s governing body. While EPO is a drug that cyclists across the world acknowledge helps immensely with the pace of the race, its intake is banned by the sport. It is clearly branded as a performance enhancing drug & now T-Mobile is paying the price for its devious methods. German telecommunications giants Deutsche Telekom are meeting this week to discuss the possibility of ending their sponsorship of T-Mobile; this despite having another 3 years of contract.
While many believe it is almost certain that T-Mobile will be all but gone after this week, the wait seems to be about the conditions to which the contract would be scrapped. It is now a matter of ‘when & how’, rather than ‘if’. The famous sight of a leading train of magenta-black jerseys that for nearly 6 years went head on with US Postal & offered Jan Ullrich the best possible chance to dethrone Lance Armstrong, is now a mere sight of the past. For many years it was team of Ullrich, as he commanded them like a general against war. Those great contests between Ullrich & Lance will now forever be dogged by the cloud of doping. It is a sad day indeed for all those who love the sport of cycling & enjoyed one of its greatest rivalries.
