These guys are amazing

I am not naive enough to believe that Le Tour de France is completely clean. This is afterall the premiere race in the world, and it has a very dirty history of drug abuse for the purpose of getting athletes over the mountains and trails for a period of three weeks. But I do believe that the public expects the tour organisers to do everything they can to make it as clean as possible, and drug cheats will be ostracised. As a result I think it very unlikely that the majority are using perfomance enhancing drugs, but I don't think it is 100% clean, there's just too much money riding on it (pun intended).


If you are an elite athlete, who wants to excel, there is always the temptation to use whatever it takes to get you there. Now that would be OK if everybody had the opportunity to use those drugs, and that those drugs were safe for you and didn't end up affecting your health in the long and short term. But if you decide that you don't want to use something that could reduce your life expectancy, could cause you to have a premature heart attack or stroke, then it's just an unfair advantage, so yes, I support the position of a drug free sport.
Whether it's ever possible is a mute point, keep up testing guys and keep on excluding and dumping. Actually do it better guys than you already are, the public demands it.

So coming from the view that not everybody has entered this race using drugs, it's an amazing feat for the fact that there are definitely some people that finish 3 weeks of incredible hardship within the time limit and haven't used them, For them. I salute. For anyone else, I hope some day you get caught. In the meantime, I have to just hope that some of those up the top end of the field are doing it without the drugs, And let's face it, they're being tested much more too. So I have to throw away the cynicism and just enjoy the ride.

This year's Tour has been a great duel, because none of us know who is going to end up with the maillot jeune. The race through the alps has at last brought us some excitement after 2 weeks of speculation around the main contendors. Cadel Evans has performed exceptionally well, the Schlecks have been rather disappointing until now, and Contador has only recently started to show his usual form. The excitement is at last on.