|
|
 |
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Back on track Tour recovering from doping scandals, director says
PARIS (Reuters) -- The large spectator attendance during this year's Tour de France suggests that both the race and its riders are recovering from the doping scandals of recent years, Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc has said. "The biggest source of satisfaction for me was feeling that the Tour was tremendously supported by the public," Leblanc told reporters before the race wound its way into Paris on Sunday for its annual finish on the Champs-Elysees. "It is as if the Tour, which was thought to be in danger, has received a very strong message from fans. The atmosphere was far from the mistrust and suspicion of the last few years." The sport has been struggling to rebuild its image since 1998, when the Tour de France descended into chaos amid a doping scandal involving the TVM and Festina teams. Cycling has still not shaken off the aura of drugs, however. In June, scores of Italian drug squad officers raided the hotel rooms of Giro d'Italia competitors and seized an unspecified amount of illegal substances. The issue of drugs reappeared last week when skeptical journalists repeatedly questioned a patient Lance Armstrong about his own performance and his relationship with a controversial Italian doctor set to go on trial this year for administration of products dangerous to health and sporting fraud. Armstrong, who went on to win his third successive Tour on Sunday, has repeatedly backed the efforts made by cycling and the Tour de France in the fight against drugs. The American rider has always stressed he had never given a positive test for any banned substance. War on dopingThis year, the Tour de France implemented a 10-point plan to counter the use of illegal drugs in the race, including blood tests on all 189 riders who started in Dunkirk and random urine tests. Among the banned substances for which doctors were looking this year was EPO, which boosts the amount of oxygen-bearing red blood cells. One rider who began the Tour, Txema del Olmo of the Euskaltel team, abandoned the race after being informed that there was an abnormality in a urine sample taken in Dunkirk. Leblanc said the Tour's efforts were slowly allowing both the race and the sport to recover, but he insisted the fight was not over. "The war on EPO is in the process of being won. The war on doping is not yet there, even if it seems that the desire to rely on doping has been considerably dampened," he said. "I do feel, however, that we must find a happy medium between laxity, which led to so much drifting off course, and fundamentalism, which does not reply to the needs of cyclists," he added. Leblanc cited the example of U.S. cyclist Jonathan Vaughters of team Credit Agricole, who was forced to abandon the race after not being able to treat a wasp sting because doing so would have broken anti-doping rules. "We must keep in mind the demands of riders who, for 23 days, have to grapple with cold weather, hot weather, crashes, injuries and illness," he said.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
