Le Tour rocked by doping scandal

The day before the start of this year's Tour de France, the event, and the cycling world in general is rocked by a major doping scandal. As a result of an investigation in Spain, the names of more than 30 top cyclists, as well as athletes from other disciplines have been identified as customers of a physician dealing in banned substances such as growth hormone, EPO (a red-blood-cell booster) and storing blood for athletes for "blood doping".

As a result, several of the top names and contenders for the race this year have been booted from Le Tour, including Jan Ullrich, Eban Basso, Francisco Mancebo, and American Tyler Hamilton. There may be more casualties yet before tomorrow's Prologue, and the Tour may start with only 170 riders.

I find this all very sad. It's not as if professional cycling has not been plagued with such problems for many years; an old-time champion once quipped, "Le Tour is not won on mineral water."
One Tour back in the 70s was so bad it was dubbed "Le Tour de Pharmacie".

Still, with recent scandals, and the death by suicide of Italian champion Marco Pantani after he was kicked from the Giro D'Italia (The Italian equivalent of Le Tour), you'd have thought that there might be some effort to straighten things out.
Still, it's a professional sport, pursued in Europe with the same fanatacism (and money!) that Football and Baseball are in the states. There is a lot of money and prestige riding on Le Tour, and that brings in the motivation to succeed....

Campionissimo Lance Armstrong has been recently accused of doping prior to his Tour wins, right after he was diagnosed with cancer. Armstrong denies the allegation (made by the wife of an ex-teammate) and his physician has denied it as well, maintaining that Armstrong made no such statements.
Armstrong may be the most-tested athlete of all time, so if he was doping he was very, very clever about it. Personally, I believe his denials.

Le Tour is still a grand event, each year achieving the status of "most-watched" of all sporting events. It has always managed to rise above these scandals...Hopefully this will continue to be the case.