Professional Cycling For the Fans - Do you still care about the Tour after all this?

I'm glad that cycling, unlike most other sports, is at least attempting to clean itself up... yes, it's all about sponsorship dollars but at least they're doing something. Can the same be said about MLB and the Barry Bonds fiasco... the most highly regarded record in baseball about to be broken by a known and unpunished doper... now that's pathetic.

TDF

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I'm thinking of trading my bike for a SUV

Absolutely.

We all should be PROUD of our sport not at all ashamed.
How may other pro sports really do anything about doping?
It feally bugs me to see the news people laying into cycling.
If cycling officials didnt do anything about doping the media woudnt be putting down the TDF
So I really hate this attatude of pissing on a pro sport because they are trying to clean it up instead of turning a blind eye like every other sport were money is involved.Here here! I've got your next beer.

I am having a difficult time watching the race today and caring. Though I suspect it will return to me.

Yeah, I care. I know riders in the race.

Yeah, I care. I know riders in the race.still in the race?

That is what would piss me off. You're a few days from finishing your first (or last) TdF, and the whole team has to watch from the cheap seats because some ****** cheated.

We all should be PROUD of our sport not at all ashamed.
How may other pro sports really do anything about doping?
It feally bugs me to see the news people laying into cycling.
If cycling officials didnt do anything about doping the media woudnt be putting down the TDF
So I really hate this attatude of pissing on a pro sport because they are trying to clean it up instead of turning a blind eye like every other sport were money is involved.

It's a good point, for sure, and it's the only thing keeping me watching this for the time being, but I'm right on the cliff because it seems very top-down lately and it's ever so slightly getting on my nerves. The biggest GC contenders in particular in the last two tours have gotten their noses bloodied over doping scandals, proven or no. The people coming up right after them seem also now to have allegations leveled their way and cannons pointed at them, and it starts to have the proverbial onion layers, where I keep wondering how far down the peloton it's going to go and indeed I'm skeptical that there are any clean riders at all in the pros. Thanks a lot, bad apples! Even guys that I really like as characters and still root for (Zabel, for instance) have had doping histories, and I'm not so sure they're clean now.

I put it the same way in another post, that these things - for all their drama - have the downside of actually being anticlimactic (not good in a sporting event), even if it is good that officials are being stringent about controls. I was watching this tour, thinking "can Rasmussen hold on to the yellow?" with the only explanation for why he couldn't being injury or quite literally getting out-bicycled. But to have him go out like this was like walking into a wall for me as a cycling fan, especially coming directly after the Landis affair. I can't even imagine what it must be like for the Rasmussen fans. I've been a fan of cyclists who eventually were caught, so I know what that feels like, but I've never had a favorite get yanked while wearing the yellow late in the ultimate race.

Another poster compared the TdF to the Superbowl. Can you imagine how weird it would be to have the obvious MVP of a close game tossed from the team right before the fourth quarter because of a similar scandal discovered during the commercial break?

If it's going to be clean, great! But let's get it over with soon, please, or this sport is going the way of the dodo. Let next year's tour be completely drug and drama-free and I'll hopefully wake up from this nightmare of a sport that should rightly be a dream.

I lost my passion for watching the pro tours after last year's round of "amazing, groundbreaking discoveries of rampant doping."

So you are now watching NO sports? I ask because it would be rather hypocritical given that no other pro sport effectively drug tests. Cycling is catching as many dopers as they can. Why would people tune out on a sport that DOES effective drug testing? Are you for no drug tests in sports?


I guess this gives me more time to ride...

You do make a good point!!!

... Brad