Le Tour est fini....

[VeloVT]

I too am sad.

Have to admit to pulling a few double TDF shifts myself (watched live in the morning, as I did every morning since I much prefer Phil & Paul's race coverage, then for some reason had to tune in again at night).

I'm left with the question though: is there a single rider in the pro peloton that is truly, 100% clean? Googling around, reading a little about the history of modern doping in the sport (the Festina affair, Pantani's sad story, lots of ex-pro riders "tell-alls"), it appears to be deeply entrenched in the culture, seemingly more so than in the elite level of other sports that have had doping scandals (like track & field). I have to say I feel a little bit badly for the teams that got kicked out this year, for Vino, etc (of course I suspect some of my sympathy for Vino comes because of that pretty face). While I absolutely think all sports should be dope-free, and I do believe it's possible for cycling, it also seems to me that the problem is bigger than a handful of "cheaters", and the ones who got caught are just, well, the ones who got caught and they sort of got trapped between the "old culture" (doping was tacitly encouraged, and you had to do it to win, and everybody knows how to perform a transfusion on themselves) and an externally imposed "new culture" of non-doping (though, of course, in spite of my sympathy, I do think the cheaters who are caught do need to be punished).