If I ever need to know what happened on, say, Stage 15 of the 1998 Tour de France—or any other stage of the Tour in the last 23 years, for that matter—I need only reach into an enormous box of videotapes I keep under my bed.
Yes, my obsession for bike racing is so deep that I have compulsively collected and catalogued every televised moment of the sport's grand event for more than two decades. Over the years, I've helped to justify this dubious use of my time and energy by lending the tapes to friends who don't have cable TV and wouldn't otherwise see the race. Though I'm very protective of my collection of Tour tapes and have chased borrowers across state lines to reclaim that which I have loaned, the truth is, I rarely look at any of them again. Still, I feel reassured just to know they're there.
I did not, however, record a single moment of the 2007 Tour.
I had decided not to tape this year's race before it even began, largely because of the heartache I felt—and still feel—following the 2006 Tour, when the apparent winner, Floyd Landis, was effectively stripped of his victory after testing positive for steroid use. I had spent much of the last year hoping that Landis would clear his name—an outcome that seems increasingly unlikely despite the rider's aggressive $2 million legal campaign—and came to the 2007 Tour prepared for more disappointment.
Turns out, I made the right call. The 2007 Tour was a disaster.
There were some exciting moments: Aussie sprinter Robbie McEwen winning Stage One after being badly injured in a crash earlier in the stage; Swiss rider Fabian Cancellera, wearing the yellow jersey, stealing victory from a hard-charging peloton in Stage Three; German Linus Gerdemann escaping a 15-man breakaway in the mountainous Stage Seven to roll into Le Grand Bornand solo and into the yellow jersey.
Encouraged by the first week of racing, I began to let down my guard. That was a mistake.
The second week of racing saw pre-race favorite Alexander Vinokourov of Kazakhstan lose a lot of time to Danish climbing star Michael Rasmussen, then claw his way back with a jaw-dropping victory in the 54 kilometer Stage 13 time trial, then lose a massive 28:50 to Rasmussen in Stage 14 before rising from the dead again to win Stage 15.
Vino's yo-yoing performance seemed to show exactly what should happen physiologically to a "clean" rider who reaches beyond his limit, a widely-offered bit of analysis that fell short of the mark when the rider was tossed from the race a few days later for alleged blood doping.
Vinokourov, like Landis the year before, was an extremely popular rider who, many thought, was too classy to dope. His expulsion came as a huge blow to fans of a sport that has been mired in doping-related scandal for several years. Vino's ouster was only the beginning of trouble at this year's race.
Only days from the finish line in Paris, Rasmussen appeared to have the race won. His climbing in the big mountains had been inspired, holding off relentless attacks by American Levi Leipheimer and his Spanish teammate Alberto Contador. But after a brilliant performance in Stage 16, the hardest stage in the race, the Dane was fired from his team and pulled from the race. Before the Tour began, the Danish Cycling Federation had banned Rasmussen from competing in next year's Olympic games when the athlete repeatedly failed to show up for mandatory drug tests. The allegations raised the suspicion that Rasmussen's amazing climbing prowess might be chemically enhanced.
In the end, young Alberto Contador, riding for Lance Armstrong's old team, came out on top, but it was a hollow victory. Contador echoed the sentiments of fans everywhere when he said he'd have preferred to lose to clean competitors than snatch victory on the basis of tests that found his top challengers dirty. Meanwhile, the media worldwide began writing cycling's obituary.
As a fan, the death knell sounded by the media came as an overstated but largely justified rebuke. That it came against the backdrop of continuing problems in nearly all other sports, in the same summer that Barry Bonds, an alleged doper, will break Hank Aaron's career home run record, is no solace. Those eager to move past the doping scandals, whether in cycling or baseball or any other sport, by framing these times as the Era of Doping or the Steroid Era, want to suggest that the worst is behind us. Alas, I suspect we've yet to hit rock bottom.
