Thursday, July 24, 2008

I love le Tour de France

But . . . When something looks too good to be true it is usually too good to be true.

Andy Schleck first aroused suspicion when he arrived at last year's Giro d'Italia with nothing more than a junior resume, an older brother in the sport and a father who was a professional cyclist. Cycling is an endurance sport, endurance sports should reward maturity and strength. With a tiny amount of professional experience young Andy Schleck was immediately able to compete with the best riders in the sport and captured second place in the Giro. It seemed too good to be true.

Andy disappeared from prominent view for the rest of 2007 but has reemerged this year. For the past two and a half weeks we have seen him ride comfortably at the front of the most elite group in cycling at the head of the race in the Tour de France. He makes it look easy. Perhaps a bit too easy.

If I am suspicious, there are probably others who are suspicious. It seems French customs officials are also suspicious. Today a car driven in the race caravan by Schleck's father was detained by French customs and searched. If it looks too good to be true it is probably because it is too good to be true.

Team CSC has adopted the attitude that they do not do drugs. The team manager is Bjarne Riis, who has admitted that he was doping when he won the 1996 Tour.

The riding of the Tour draws near to its Sunday in Paris conclusion. We all might have to stay tuned for quite a bit longer before we have a decision on the identity of the one who most deserves to be named the winner.

Football starts soon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Schleck brothers do seem a little too good to be true, but they do have decent genetics and, so far, at least, no indisputable evidence that they are cheating. I hope they do get caught if they are cheating. TT

Emily M said...

Those brothers are a little sketchy... Hopefully we won't have two dethroned winners in as many years. That would just be sad.

I'll be over on Saturday morning-ish to watch the race. Very exciting!