Hero Worship

Cycling has always been regarded by some as being a dirty sport, where competitive human nature, the winning mentality and money collide into an ugly world of deceit, corruption and drugs.
I’m glad that as a relatively new cycling fan, I have engaged in a sport where a new dawn is beginning and the peloton, with it’s code of silence of yesterday has climbed the final col of deceit and is now on the descent to salvation.
Riders no longer feel afraid to speak out against doping in the sport and against those who will cross any line to pursue fame and glory. Even now, in this age of clean sport, there are those that still choose the dark side, such as Ricardo Ricco, a man who shows no remorse for what he did and how he once again brought shame on the sport.
For some, naïve fans like me, watching Ricco’s mountain finishes in the 2008 tour brought a shiver to my spine. The demonstration of explosive power to negate a field of athletes like that is something that few can achieve and aspire to. For other, more cynical fans, it was a moment not too dissimilar to that in football, where Diego Maradona ran directly to the TV cameras after scoring against Greece in the 1994 World Cup with a crazed look on his face, a man on the edge of drug abuse and sanity.

I don’t believe that cycling has any more drug takers then any other sport, it has just been tainted with this belief over the years, following high profile positive drug tests. If any sport’s organisation were to take doping as seriously as cycling, then the sporting world would be rife with sensationalist stories.
Football, rugby, swimming, athletics, practically any professional sport where an athlete is required to hold an aerobic capacity or muscular strength is capable of tempting athletes into taking performance enhancing drugs. Why do we not see more tests in these sports? Athletics and Olympic sports have a structured drugs programme that seems to expose the cheats from time to time. Why do we not hear of more professional footballers being drug tested? Is it because it is not in the interest of the sport or the organisations that control the game?

In my youth, football was my number one sport. At no time did I doubt the morality of the players on the pitch – is that because of careful marketing or control? In cycling I’m still too afraid to have aspirations and dreams. I watch Alberto Contador dance on his pedals up the slopes and rather than applaud his display of finesse, I find myself holding back and questioning the fact as to whether this is a true display of athletic prowess or the results of a systematic doping programme. I’m not speculating that Alberto takes drugs, you could replace that name with anyone from the pro cycling world and my statement would mean the same thing. How is it that we’ve got to the stage where in this era, I’m still afraid to have a hero and believe?