Sunday 15 July 2007

Drug Stores On Bikes Through France

The "Tour de France" was started last week in London and this weekend the riders finally came into the territory that always decides who wins and who loses. Yes, it's the Alps now and just a few moments ago Michael Rasmussen won the stage after a solo escape for a few hours. He will now wear the yellow jersey but he also took over the polka dot jersey after climbing all those mountains by himself. Now honoury category mountains on this stage, but I believe on Tuesday the Galibier will be up, so there you go.

German commentators finally had something to smile about yesterday when young German rider Linus Gerdemann won the stage and took the yellow jersey. You could almost hear the sigh of relief by thousands of media people after a long drought and lots of discussions and confessions about drug abuses in cycling. In May almost all of the mid 1990s Telekom team members admitted that they used performance enhancing drugs in their career. Some said they only used it once, some declared they used for their entire career. With a huge blast Jörg Jaksche who was with professional teams in Italy, Germany and Spain gave an interview to German magazine "Der Spiegel" in which he relvealed the methods and cover ups of continous drug abuse in the world of cycling.

Since then nothing has been the same. German reporters jumped at all the riders, everybody was a suspect and all the broadcasting contracts were questioned. but now that the Tour is rolling through France again it seems that all the smoke has cleared up and we are back to normal. Just as I like to believe that a young rider like Gerdemann is clean and not involved with performance enhancing drugs there always is a little bit of doubt left.

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