With the Quest inquiry, the City of London police raids on three clubs, the death of Woolmer, the Premier League/West Ham fiasco, Poll's retiring refrains and Shinawatra, the bookmakers together with their client regulatory bodies must be delighted that the focus on corruption has moved out of their territory and over to Le Tour de France.
The use of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) is common in most sports. There used to be a mistaken belief that only endurance and speed-specific sports would fall under the drug shadow but, as fitness is now key to all sports apart from darts, PESs usage is ubiquitous.
Different sports approach the problem in different ways. Cycling repeatedly falls under the spectacular society spotlight as there is a clear division within the sport between the abusers and the relatively honest which results in public portrayals of attitudes and affiliations. The football world prefers to pretend that no problem exists aside from the unfortunate rogue individual who might enjoy cocaine in his leisure time or accidentally took nandrolone in an asthma treatment, that is. We attempt below to contrast these two mainstream sports with particular reference to PESs.
Le Tour has had issues with Erythropoietin (EPO) for well over a decade - it is widely accepted in the sport that the victory of Bjarne Riis in 1996 was chemically enhanced and last year's race should have warned the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) that the issue was reaching a boiling point. Prior to the 2006 race, numerous riders - including the two favourites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso - were expelled from Le Tour due to their link with the Operación Puerto doping case. To make matters worse, the American winner Floyd Landis was found to have failed a drug test after stage 17; runner up Óscar Pereiro currently also claims the title but in January 2007, it was revealed that Pereiro has tested positive for salbutamol (for asthma, apparently).
For the 2007 race, there were pre-event ruptures relating to the abuse of PESs by German riders and, as le Tour has progressed, the peloton has splintered into two camps. The very open support among riders for the disqualification of Michael Rasmussen which followed a false start protest against doping on the previous day is a clear indication of the chasm between two sets of riders. It seems that the younger riders have a cleaner approach to the sport and are in open mutiny against the PESs usage by some of the older riders. Within the cycling world, it is general knowledge who the EPO brigade are - there were continual rumblings about Vinokourov while Rasmussen was suspect over his creative avoidance of pre-race testing and there were repeated media hints yesterday regarding the authenticity of current race leader, Alberto Contador (Tom Boonen pointedly stating that: "it is possible to win the Tour without taking drugs and Cadel Evans proves in my eyes that you can win it without doping." - Evans lies in second place behind Contador). All this followed on closely from the elimination of Moreni and the Cofidis team. The use of EPO, blood transfusions, testosterone development, avoiding out of race testing and linking with pharmaceutical companies to evolve masking substances to hide PESs abuse have been core competencies in the cycling world for too long. The actions of the majority of the peloton is driving the abusers into the public eye - indeed, the key dynamic with regard to Rasmussen was the widespread knowledge of his alleged PESs abuse among the other riders. The momentum most definitely did not come from UCI (indeed, it was UCI loopholes that allowed Rasmussen to race in the first place), the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) or Le Tour organisers although when these bodies work with the cyclists, the enhanced impact is evident.
So despite the unwanted publicity, there is a clear dynamic in cycling towards facing up to and attempting to solve the problem of PESs. There are rumours around the sport that there may be a split with the pharmaceuticals brigade establishing a separate drugged up event with a compliant testing regime and, presumably, rather revealing sponsors.
The use of PESs in football has been addressed on this blog historically and there is no intention to cover all the old ground again. We do wish, however, to highlight the difference in attitudes of the relevant authorities in the two sports. Although there is frequently a reluctance to face up to realities that undermine the brand, the sport of cycling is involved in publicly targeting the dopers. The campaign to clean up the sport has the perverse impact of a short term publicity nightmare which will hopefully be followed by a more meritocratic (and marketable) sport. The various international and national regulatory bodies in football choose a standard myopic approach to all areas of potential discordancy. Just as there is no problem with racism or illegal gambling, there is also absolutely no issue relating to PESs. Of course, this is a nonsense - the most revealing statement that one can make in proof of this assertion is that the market prices fully discount for the usage of PESs by football teams ie there is no edge in knowing that a team is on EPO (apart from, perhaps, the initial game under the influence) as the information is in the price. Market efficiencies suggest PESs usage is widespread in football.
Obviously, there had to be the standard idiot censorship suggestion on the BBC that perhaps coverage of le Tour should cease on the beeb in an act of self-righteous indignation at all this drug abuse among cyclists. If the BBC chooses such a draconian threshold for transmission, there is going to be an awful lot of school sports days on the telly.
Le Tour is several orders of magnitude more meritocratic than football; the race is iconic; the bookmakers do not dominate the markets and hence the outcomes; the authorities confront the drug abusers; referees are peripheral to the outcome. Give me any mountain stage in the Pyrénées in preference to any football match...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
