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So Lance Armstrong is to give up defending himself against doping charges and is likely to have his seven Tour De France wins taken away.
Apart from what happens to the millions in prize money he received, does this mean the man that finished second in those seven years will be promoted to winner and if so, the main beneficiary will be Jan Ulrich who came second to him 3 times and would now be upgraded to another three wins to go with his previous win – does he get enhanced prize money backdated?
Problem is, Jan Ulrich was banned from cycling because of doping after finishing 3rd in 2005.
I wouldn’t want to have backed a cyclist for SPOTY at short odds because as a sport it doesn’t have good, clean publicity.
Cheating happens in all sports. Is a cyclist who takes drugs to get a performance advantage any worse than a footballer who deliberately tries to con the referee by diving or pretending to have been hit in the face any better than a drugs cheat ? the answer is no. All sports are tainted by drug abuse and cheating of some kind.
There is so much hypocricy around. Athlete, and now pundit, Darren Campbell slams Dwain Chambers because Campbell lost a medal following Chambers drug taking yet was quite happy to have another drug cheat, Linford Christie, as his coach.
A lot also seems to depend on who does the cheating. If it’s another nation or team it’s wrong, if it’s one of ours it’s ok and we make excuses. We seem quite happy to slam others yet ignore the fact that one of our cyclists deliberately fell of his bike to get a restart. On the other hand we seem quite happy to label a Chinese swimmer a drug cheat when there is no evidence aginst her at all. During the eighties when drug taking was rife we slammed eastern bloc countries for their drug taking yet it was also rife amongst western, particularly American, athletes and was covered up. Even the great Carl Lewis was tested positive to a banned substance three times prior to the 1988 Olympics but the American Olympic Committe covered it up and he wasn’t banned.
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