My Thoughts on the Tour

This year I was really looking forward to the Tour de France. I knew it was going to be wide open this year. It started out great, the prolouge was fantastic and the first week was a sprinter's field day. I felt sorry that Vino crashed so early in the race. It was looking like he was going to be out of things. The Alps stages were great, but I thought Levi was going to do more there than he did. Michael Rassmussen took the yellow jersey on one mountain stage, but there was the first time trial coming up & I thought he would lose it, but he rode the TT of his life so far and was able to keep it. Vino won the TT & it seemed like he was back in the thick of things, then he bombed the next stage and it was stick a fork in him, he's done. Alberto Contador was looking great in the mountains & I thought it was just a matter of time till he's in yellow. The battles in the mountains were some fantastic racing. This year's Tour was really great so far & clean so far. Then the bottom fell out. It turns out that Vino was busted for illegal blood transfusion after the TT. It also came out that his sample after his victory on stage 15 was the same. I thought this year would be different, no doping, but I was proved wrong once again. While I was on my way back from a recovery ride today, I got a call from Will telling me that a buddy of his told him that the leader of the race had been kicked out. He asked me to check when I got home & let him know if his buddy was yanking his chain or not. I got home & got online and found out that Rabobank had removed Rassmussen from the Tour and the team for breaking team rules concerning his missed out of competition tests. It seems that he lied to his team about where he was at during the missed tests. I don't know what to think about pro cycling anymore. I love the sport, but it seems like everytime I turn around, another big named rider is getting busted for some sort of doping. It's getting to seem like cycling is getting worse and worse instead of better, but at least they seem to be doing more to remove the cheats than most other sports. I'll still follow the sport, but for the time being, I'll wonder if the winner is on the juice or not until all the cheats are out of the sport. The Tour is still wide open right now & it seems like it's going to come down to the final TT on Saturday.