Contador the winner of an unsightly Tour
PARIS -- Alberto Contador crossed the Tour de France finish line in the overall leader's yellow jersey as expected yesterday. The historic Hotel Crillon on the Place de la Concorde flew the Spanish flag from the roof in his honor just as it used to raise the flag of Texas for Lance Armstrong.
Outwardly, it was just like the old days, especially since the 24-year-old Contador and the now-retired Armstrong represented the same dynastic team -- Discovery Channel, formerly known as US Postal Service, which has captured cycling's crown jewel eight of the last nine years.
Yet, in the last year, the Tour has been shaken to its foundations. The 2007 race came to an end with the 2006 winner's slot still vacant, held hostage to the drawn-out legal dispute over Floyd Landis's positive test for synthetic testosterone.
Contador's win came courtesy of an unprecedented shake-up five days before the end of the three-week race when Danish rider Michael Rasmussen was fired by his Rabobank team for evasive behavior toward anti-doping authorities. Two men and their teams were thrown out of the race after positive tests.
Yesterday, Rasmussen said he never has used performance-enhancing drugs and would not rule out competing in next year's Tour de France.
"I have never used doping," the 33-year-old told Danish broadcaster TV2. "But it is as if the yellow jersey is easiest to shoot at."
The fact that more dirty riders are being caught, while damaging in a public relations sense, is cited by many as proof that a system long riddled with loopholes is casting a more narrow-gauge net. But cycling is also hampered by a culture of infighting that is as entrenched as its culture of doping.
Organizational dysfunction is the norm in cycling, and that was never as apparent as it was during this Tour. Directors of the elite teams have split into two groups, with each purportedly claiming the higher moral ground. The UCI, cycling's international governing body, and the corporate leadership of Amaury Sports Organisation, which owns the Tour, lob grenades at each other regularly.
Tour riders are divided, too. Young stars like Britain's Bradley Wiggins, whose Cofidis team was forced out of the race after one of his teammates tested positive, have lashed out at their elders, saying they are addicted to old-school methods.
"I still believe that there is a minority out there who are willing to push the boundaries, and that minority all seems to be over 30 years of age," the 27-year-old Wiggins told British journalists after returning home this week.
Team CSC's Jens Voigt, 36, of Germany, takes issue with the notion that there's a doping generational gap. "It's not a matter of age," said Voigt. "It's a matter of how much passion you have for the sport."
Voigt, whose team implemented one of the most respected internal blood testing programs in the industry this season, said yesterday he has just re-signed for two more years and added that his team's credibility made it easier for him to extend his career. "I'm not going to let the bad guys dictate when I stop riding," he said.
One of Voigt's contemporaries in the Tour peloton, 34-year-old Jonathan Vaughters, retired five years ago partly because he detested the pressure to use performance-enhancing drugs. Now he's in the vanguard of those who want to make a difference.
Vaughters invested his own money in a US-based developmental team several years ago and quietly has been building a program that goes against the grain. He contracted with an independent testing agency this year and asked riders to submit to voluntary blood profiling -- another layer of poking and prodding above and beyond.
The Colorado native said he is more committed to doing things right than having competitive success on the road. He is toying with radical measures to make a point of the team's transparency, including embedding journalists with the team and having monitors check on riders' rooms to preempt the possibility of blood transfusions.
"At this point, I don't care all that much about winning," Vaughters said yesterday in Paris. "I care that we play the game properly. Winning -- we'll figure that out later."
His team, Slipstream, bankrolled by financial manager Doug Ellis, is actively seeking a wild-card invitation to next year's Tour, but the team needs more than principle to get an entry -- it needs high-profile riders.
Vaughters's mission was boosted yesterday when he landed the most articulate anti-doping ambassador in the peloton -- Scottish rider David Millar, whose 2003 world time trial championship was stripped after he admitted to using the banned blood-booster EPO.
Millar served a two-year suspension and returned last season. Yesterday, he confirmed he is joining Slipstream -- a step down from his current Saunier-Duval team in terms of prestige, but a step he wants to take as a commitment to pioneering an "ethically sound" new wave in cycling.
"It's a crusade, but we're going to have fun doing it," said Millar, who also will be a part-owner of the team. "With what we've been through the last three weeks, it's needed more than ever in cycling.
"I love racing my bike. I didn't win a stage in this Tour, but I had a great time trying. This is an opportunity to get the young riders to take as much pleasure in the process as the outcome."
Vaughters also has signed accomplished US riders David Zabriskie, a time trial specialist who led the Tour for three days in 2005, and Christian Vande Velde, both from CSC. Other signings will be forthcoming, Vaughters said.
"Some of the things we're talking about are a massive invasion of privacy, but so is getting a liter of blood," said Vaughters, referring to performance-enhancing blood manipulation. "We'd like to let [riders] be whole human beings again instead of mentally torturing an entire generation of young men."
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. 