In reading Chris Horner's latest comments about the Tour, in which he hopes that his injuries suffered at the Giro will heal in time for him to race with the Astana squad, he notes that he wants to help either Contador or Lance win. Hmmmm. This is a sea change. For the longest time, Astana has made it clear that Lance is not really a Tour contender. His performance at the Giro has changed all that.
Horner also reports that he's racing at 139 pounds, down from his usual 145 to 150. He says this accounts for his dominating performances. Good for him. That's skinny, to be sure. But when you're 37 years old, going on 38, that's called doing what it takes to stay in the game. Good on Horner.
Speaking of staying in the game, Bernhard Kohl's graphic descriptions of his blood-doping in the days leading up to the 2008 Tour have to be rocking the cycling world -- indeed, all of the sporting world. He talks about the systematic doping process, which began nearly a year before the Tour. Beyond that, he speaks about a dog's breakfast of testosterone, human growth hormone, caffeine, and other performance enhancers used before the Tour began. This includes the banned new EPO,
Cera. It seems clear that doping is such a huge part of the cycling culture, and that the riders are so dependent on doping as a lifestyle choice, that it's going to take years to eradicate this problem -- and even then it will remain a vigilance issue.
Should we care? Should it be taken as a matter of faith that performance enhancing substances are part of sports -- ALL sports? Should we just expect that everyone's doing something?
I say no. And here's why: I don't like the asterisk. I like pure, unadulterated superhuman effort. The Greek philosopher Aristotle considered sports to be the closest the common man comes to contemplation. The rules of the game, the flow of the action, the drama of an unexpected outcome suck us in to the point that nothing else matters. We are watching the human form intertwined with the spiritual, which is what happens when emotion and passion overcome mere physicality. The human form of the body is limited in so many of us, and so it makes us feel empowered to watch others elevate this earthly form to its most optimal.
Aristotle considered contemplation to be the highest of human undertakings. So while we might still find ourselves enthralled by a competition in which doping is allowed, we certainly know in the back of our minds that it is not pure, and that it is not an elevation of the earthly body. Rather, it is merely a distortion and a manipulation that ultimately detracts from the drama.
Keep pushing... always.
But while we might still experience this contem