Cycling Without Drugs
July 16, 2007
After the first week of the 2007 Tour de France, one could not blame the race organizers for sporting big shameless smiles.
With the sport of cycling in disrepute and the Tour shaken by failed drug tests and high-profile doping admissions, many people were merely hoping that this year's edition of the world's most prestigious cycling event would pass without any bad news.
But the first nine days have been far better than that.
If Tour director Christian Prudhomme had asked the gods of sport to send him the perfect poster boy for his race, he couldn't have received anyone better than Linus Gerdemann of Germany, who won Saturday's stage in splendid fashion and then said all the right things.
Fresh air for cycling
"This victory proves that it is possible to win and be clean," Gerdemann told everyone who asked.
Participating in his first Tour de France, Gerdemann displayed rare maturity, taking off on his own from a group of riders on the final climb and keeping his composure until the finish.
"Many things are changing for the good (in cycling)," he said. "We are on the right path."
That was music to Prudhomme's ears.
"It's the fresh air we were hoping for, with a team that has taken exemplary measures," he said.
The German press agreed as the mass-market Bild am Sonntag went to lengths to congratulate the 24-year-old.
"He's blond, young and he's the new star of the Tour de France," the paper wrote on Sunday.
Purging the 'old school'
Gerdemann's T-Mobile team -- formerly called Telekom -- has been damaged more than most teams by doping news and was therefore forced to clean up its act.
Cycling heavyweights Jan Ullrich and Bjarne Riis both won the Tour while wearing the Telekom jersey. While Ullrich has only been seriously implicated in a doping scandal, Riis has confessed to taking performance-enhancing drugs.
As if addressing his disgraced generation, Gerdemann said that "we must show people that cycling can be a sport without doping. But it is certainly not with the old school that we will evolve."
Spectator in critical condition
But a series of mishaps Sunday could make it difficult for T-Mobile to evolve as a team at this year's Tour.
In addition to Gerdemann losing the yellow jersey to Denmark's Michael Rasmussen, Patrik Sinkewitz crashed into an elderly person, who was not identified, when Sinkewitz was riding his bike to his hotel.
The spectator was hospitalized in a coma, and Sinkewitz, who fractured his cheekbone and damaged his shoulders and knees, was also taken to hospital and announced he will drop out of the Tour.
The team's leader, Aussie Michael Rogers, also injured his shoulder in a crash during a high-speed descent and abandoned the race, as did British teammate Mark Cavendish, who crashed twice earlier in the race around France.
Monday off to rest and plan
Racers will use a day off on Monday to rest up for their third Alps stage and start making plans for the rest of the Tour as little has been heard from the 94th Tour de France favorites, and even Rasmussen has admitted he doesn't expect to ride up the Champs Elyseees in the yellow jersey.
"I'm a climber, and a pure climber," Rasmussen said. "If I have to go all the way, and take the yellow jersey all the way to Paris, I will have to climb faster than I have ever done in my life.
"There's still two more weeks of racing and I still have 110 kilometers of time-trialing to negotiate," he added. "And I think I've proven in the past that it's not exactly my specialty."