Ah geez....here we go again (Tour thread)

[VeloVT]

I'm kind of curious as to what's going on with Saunier-Duval. This morning during live coverage Phil & Paul seemed a bit perplexed that there wasn't more information regarding why the team withdrew.

Here's the official team statement from the Saunier-Duval website:

OFFICIAL STATEMENT
SAUNIER DUVAL-SCOTT Statement
17/07/2008
SAUNIER DUVAL-SCOTT announce that just an hour before the start of today´s stage, the French anti-doping agency notified Riccardo Riccò that he´d tested positive for a banned substance after the fourth stage of the Tour de France 2008. Although the Tour organisers allow teams to continue to participate after a positive test, given Riccò ´s important role to the team in the race, SAUNIER DUVAL-SCOTT have decided to withdraw in order to preserve the positive image of the team´s sponsors and the Tour de France itself. Riccò has been suspended.

Moreover, the team decided to temporarily abandon competition activities until this unfortunate incident is clarified.

The last line is curious? Wonder if there's concern by the sponsers that other riders might also be involved?


Anyhoo, my take on this whole issue:
People need to realize that there will NEVER be a tour that is 100% clean. Someone will always try to dope. Just like there will never be an Olympics that are 100% clean. So I get tired of hearing hysterical comments like "can cycling survive one more scandal? is this the END of cycling? this really casts doubt over the future of the tour..." when someone gets caught. I am not talking about this thread at all, I agree that it is disheartening whenever someone we admire tests positive (I was pretty upset when Marion Jones finally actually TESTED positive...of course it coincided with all sorts of other unsavory news about her, giving me a few other reasons to modify my opinion of her, but that's another subject entirely...). Versus plays into the hysteria with its anti-doping commercials (particularly the riding backwards one), you see this attitude both in coverage by mainstream media and in letters to the editor and (user generated) "comments" posts at sources like Cycle Sport and Cycling News. I think we need to be realistic about the goals and likely outcomes of testing in the sport -- and that means **not** expecting to have a tour without any incidents, because that will NEVER happen. I think the goal should be to "de-institutionalize" doping, to change the culture of the sport so that doping isn't just another part of every team's training regime. When that happens though, there will still be some dopers. Hopefully they will be caught and hopefully the incentives will continue to become stronger not to dope... I just get tired of the apocalyptic tone that often accompanies reports on doping in cycling...

Sorry for the rant/ramble...