Doping

Talking about racing, cycling is one other sport which I follow closely, well atleast the Tour de France for sure. This is the flagship race in all of cycling and and a win in this is tour is one, all endurance cyclists would covet. The race goes all over France for a distance of nearly 3500 Kms over the span of 3 weeks, huh.. a gruelling race for sure.

I am sure many of us have heard about Lance Armstrong, he has won the race 7 times, that is an acheivement in itself. But add in a twist that he was suffering from cancer and he fought it and came back to win it 7 times is almost unparallel. It is amazing what a man can do if he has the will. One of the most toughest endurance races and person comes back from cancer to win it 7 times, phew that is something

Last year he retired from the sport, of which he had a strangle hold on for the past 7 years, opening up the field for the other contendors. But this year race started in a very ugly manner, the top 3 contendors all pulled out with less then 24hrs to go for the start. Reason-- all of them were named in a doping scandal in one of the earlier races leading up to Tour De France. Now this made it more interesting as the race was much more open now.

But as the race progress there was lots of leaders as there was no one person who could be named as the winner. But with 3 stages to go Floyd Landis, the leader then and a strong contender, broke down during a mountain stage and lost quite a bit of time. So he was almost ruled out of the race. But he comes back the next day with an amazing stage where he gains most of the lost time. It was a stage win which shall stay as one of most spectacular comebacks. He goes on to win the Tour. His comeback stage was talked about lot and was really appreciated by one and all.

But alas, things had to take a nasty turn, and he was found out have had higher levels of testesterone and both the A and B tests showed him postive for the same on the day of his dramatic stage win.

There we go, doping is back in the game. I am not sure whether he really took performance enhancing drugs, but then the tests talk that way. So most probably he might loose his title. It is sad that when we all like the way he fought back to win the title, it has to be marred by such incidents.

As I had started this article, I had said, what a man can do if he had the will. I guess the same still applies here too. Doping is one thing which has put many an athelete to disgrace. Justin Gatlin, Ben Johnson now Floyd, this is something which I guess we have come to live with. Man in trying to push himself to the top most ladder, sometimes does go over the board and uses unethical means. We see it in all fields of life, be it corporates or sports or wherever.

I guess it is the inate nature of us to be the best of all, makes us do things which we should not be doing. I am sure, it takes a lot of courage for one not to fall in the trap. If at all Floyd was at fault, he must not have had the courage to accept the fact that he had been beaten in the Tour this year. He was one of the hot favourites and he was supposed to excel in that part of the tour where in fact he buckled. That might have been too much for him. So may be he went overboard. Well we will never know until it is proved, but the tests show that way and his team has sacked him.

Another sad incident in realm of sports. I really wished he had won it cleanly as I really liked the way he came back in the Tour.