Doping allegations linger over cycling's premier race

The Greek philosopher Diogenes carried a lantern in broad daylight, in the search, he said, of an honest man. I was thinking of bringing a lantern -- or at least one of those little squeeze lights -- over to the Tour de France this year, in search of a clean rider.

Maybe I'll have an easier time than Diogenes. The race starts in London on July 7. As reported recently by Cyclingnews.com more and more riders are stepping forward to sign the new anti-doping charter issued by cycling's governing body, UCI.

It may prove effective, because the UCI agreement has teeth. Riders who sign it pledge to pay a year's salary and serve a two-year suspension if busted for doping. That's what we've come to in cycling. In recent weeks we've seen a tsunami of confessions, revelations, and publications leading to the inescapable conclusion that this sport -- as I write in this week's Sports Illustrated -- is at it lowest-point ever.

The good news is at least two disgraced teams appear to have said enough is enough. The director of Team CSC is Bjarne Riis, who recently admitted he won the '96 Tour with the help of EPO and other banned substances. Riis, whose very nickname denoted his guilt (he was known as Mr. Sixty Percent, a reference to his unnaturally high hematocrit level), is a Dane who rode for the German squad Telekom, which became T-Mobile in '04. His confession capped a week in which a half dozen other riders from that squad, past and present, confessed to having doped. (Conspicuous by his absence from that group of penitents: Jan Ullrich, who won the '97 Tour, came in second five times and retired last February, after his DNA was matched to nine bags of blood taken from the offices of Eufemiano Fuentes, the Spanish doctor at the heart of a blood-doping scandal called Operacion Puerto.)

CSC and T-Mobile have both adopted aggressive, in-house anti-doping programs: Riders have their blood and urine taken frequently. When their baseline blood levels fluctuate suspiciously, they have some explaining to do.

In this country, Team Slipstream takes self-policing a step further, paying an independent agency to conduct the testing for them. Directed by former Lance Armstrong teammate Jonathan Vaughters, Slipstream is the equivalent of a Triple-A team. But not for long. Vaughters will soon announce the signing of a slew of name riders: Slipstream will be stepping up to the big leagues next season.

In fact, they are likely to be the sole American-based team in next year's Tour. Team Discovery Channel, with whom Armstrong won the final two of his seven Tours, will be in the Tour for the last time. Discovery will end its sponsorship of a cycling team after this season, and companies are not exactly lining up to take its place.

It would be difficult for any team to find sponsorship, considering cycling's current reputation. The sport's image has not been improved by the publication of From Lance to Landis, the latest book by Irish journalist David Walsh. Walsh devotes considerable space to the allegations of Betsy and Frankie Andreu. The couple has repeatedly insisted that on Oct. 27, 1996, in an Indiana hospital room, they heard Armstrong admit to having used performance-enhancing drugs.