Dope-ridden cycling losing its appeal to Olympic movement

PARIS — Cycling risked being ejected from the Olympic Games because of the consistent spate of drug scandals surrounding it, a senior European International Olympic Committee (IOC) member said yesterday .
Speaking under condition of anonymity in the wake of the revelation that Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan had failed a test for blood doping — possibly two tests, according to a report — the IOC member said the constant spate of scandals had placed cycling in serious danger of being voted out at the 2009 session of the IOC in Copenhagen.
Aside from Vinokourov, the image of the sport has taken a huge battering with even the integrity of current yellow jersey leader Michael Rasmussen being questioned as it has been revealed he missed four random doping tests in the past two years.
Several members of the former Telekom/T-Mobile team admitted to doping, including 1996 Tour de France champion Bjarne Riis — who has been stripped of the title. All the winners since him have also had suspicion hanging over them.
Jan Ullrich (1997) has denied he ever took drugs, but he was sacked by T-Mobile after being implicated in the Puerto scandal last year in Spain. The late Marco Pantani (1998) was thrown off the 1999 Tour of Italy after failing a blood test.
Seven-time champion Lance Armstrong has been the target of several allegations — all denied vehemently by him — while last year’s winner, Floyd Landis, failed a test during that race and is awaiting the verdict of his arbitration hearing against the US Anti-Doping Agency.
All this, and more, has taken the sport to the brink and IOC members are losing their patience, according to the IOC source. “Cycling is now a serious concern for IOC members,” he said. “There is scandal after scandal and it is in serious danger of exiting the Olympics.”
He said that there were several sports — seen as clean in the eyes of IOC members — that were lobbying hard for inclusion and could well supplant cycling as a sport at the global showpiece.
“Softball, rugby and karate are seen as clean sports not carrying the dirt of doping. Cycling is dreadful for the image of the Olympic movement and the games themselves.”
The IOC member said it was not all International Cycling Union president Pat McQuaid’s fault — the problem had been there under predecessor Hein Verbruggen, now head of the IOC’s co-ordinating commission with Beijing for next year’s Olympics. Verbruggen was in charge when the Festina scandal broke in 1998 and a soigneur (an assistant escorting the team) was caught with a carload of drugs and the elite team — including top climber Richard Virenque and Christophe Moreau — was thrown out of the race.
Verbruggen did not draw favourable comments when he spent the last half of that chaotic Tour on holiday in India and the IOC member said he should take some of the blame for the present state of affairs. “Verbruggen has questions to answer from his term as president,” he said.
“The fall guy has been McQuaid. He is taking all the hits.”
He said it had been a certainty cycling would come to this point of desperation. “The problem in the sport is endemic and it is getting worse and worse.
“They tried to avoid everything Wada (the World Anti-Doping Agency) said should be done, and they didn’t like the fact there was a new sheriff in town in the person of Dick Pound (Wada boss, who quits later this year).”
Pound himself blasted cycling earlier this month at the IOC session in Guatemala, declaring its credibility to be “in shreds”.
“I don’t know what the sport of cycling has to go through to shed this image,” he said.
“They (the International Cycling Union) have allowed it to get out of hand. First it was denial, saying that the positive doping cases were isolated incidents, and now they accept that it is endemic and organised. Their credibility is in shreds. Networks are not interested and sponsors are diving out of the sport.”
Pound, though, did give McQuaid guarded support. “The (union) has not done enough but at least they now recognise this.”