I’m a cynical sod and the repetitive doping scandals and the bare faced lies of those who use chemical enhancement to win sporting contests may be finally weighing me down. But then if I abandoned those sports in which I believe doping is rife it would be an empty old cupboard from which to choose my fancy.
I was hopeful that the bad old days were behind the sport of cycling and while not being naive enough to think that a mere mortal can compete on bread and water alone and complete the Tour de France let alone win it, I had been hopeful that the worst days of drug abuse and blood doping were behind us. Alas, I now feel it not to be so.
There is an old saying, “If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck”, and no truer words have ever been written as I wax lyrical about the Sky Professional Cycling Team.
As the teams and riders relaxed on the rest day and gave media conferences and generally tried to recuperate after two monstrous days in the Pyrenees, the cycling world remained abuzz online and in print about the performance of current leader and heavy favourite to win in Paris, Chris Froome.
Froome was born in Nairobi, Kenya and lived in South Africa from the time he was fourteen and represented the land of his birth at the Commonwealth Games. He now rides on a British license thanks to the Anglo Saxon genes he has inherited via his British grandparents and to tell anyone from the United Kingdom that Chris Froome is Kenyan not British is to invite an inevitable skirmish and possible physical altercation with those with whom you are conversing.
He entered the world of professional cycling through the short lived Barloworld squad from South Africa and now rides with the world’s biggest and best professional outfit, Team Sky, the plaything of British cycling and a sporting behemoth powered by the money of the odious Murdoch clan. The eldest Murdoch boy I believe is chairman of the team and no doubt will show his cabbage shaped face at the race sooner or later, eager no doubt to bask in the glory won by his super powered squad of seemingly bionic ability.
Chris Froome never amounted to much in his first years as a professional cyclist. Just another of the hundreds of young riders who are tagged with those intimidating words, “has potential”. He seemed destined to be one of the many of this type who would slip through the cracks and live the rest of his life telling stories to the local amateurs in his home town about how he once made it to the “big show” but cashed his chips before making it big.
Much of the underwhelming nature of his first few years on the circuit has been put down to his apparent contraction of a parasitic disease called Bilharzia, a common infliction in Africa and to those who are native to that exotic continent. Then he joined Team Sky.
Now I have always been a believer that money makes sporting teams into champion outfits and the current success of British sport is power to my argument. For years British sport was the laughing stock of the world. While producing the odd world class runner or track and field athlete, it seems the British were regular losers right across the board in anything they tried their hand at. I too am guilty of laughing at the ineptitude of the pie-chuckers England would regularly send out like a forlorn hope to confront the Ironmen of Australian cricket, only to be pummelled to a pulp and sent back from whence they came to tell their brethren of the superiority and might of the Australian male. Oh, how the worm turns!
Then London was awarded the Olympic Games and a national lottery began to fund British sport to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars a year and lo and behold, British sportsmen became feared and fearless worldwide and it seems that no horizon is too far for British sporting teams to reach for. The sky’s the limit, if you pardon the pun. Australia is reduced to being a bystander in the longest running sporting rivalry in the world. We have lost the Ashes, been destroyed in the rugby, humbled at the Olympics, much to the chagrin of those from Downunder and the delight of those in the Old Dart.
British cycling has of course benefited much from this waterfall of finance and a production line of powerful riders has dominated the velodrome where Australia once held sway and much of this talent has transferred onto the road scene with considerable success, culminating in Bradley Wiggins’victory in the Tour de France last year. And of course he rides for Team Sky as well. Could the Tour de France become the virtual property of the British? Surely the French would never allow it?
Team Sky of course fits neatly into the matrix of British sporting success, founded to empower British cycling and find a home grown Tour de France winner. With extra money flowing from their illustrious sponsors, it took only a few years for them to achieve their goal. And it now looks as though they may dominate for some years to come. Oh, the horror!
Of course the secret of their success is somewhat ambiguous and seems to be a closely guarded secret. Mysterious coaches brought over from Swimming Australia and Dutch doctors known to run doping programs at other professional cycling teams have been employed to improve performance. Training camps on the island of Tenerife where training at altitude is beneficial and doping authorities find it difficult to travel to seems to be the preferred venue for tests of power and performance. A stench emanates from Team Sky and I don’t like it.
In the bad old days of the Armstrong era, such training methods provided by dodgy personnel was proudly announced to be “cutting edge”, and Armstrong’s success and that of his team were put down to dedication and ability and willingness to train harder and longer than everyone else on the circuit. And it was all an illusion.
Move on a decade and you could change the jumpers and the sponsors and you could still believe you were dealing with Armstrong and his cronies. It is the same methods and the same response to the questions and the same results on the road. Not for nothing to the critics on various cycling forums refer to Team Sky as “UK Postal”, a play on the title of Armstrong’s old US Postal team.
Chris Froome’s performance on the first day of the Pyrenean stages of the this years Tour has only added fuel to a blossoming fire. Decimating the field, he rode up the concluding mountain in the same time Armstrong had ridden in the halcyon days of dope fuelled cycling and produced wattages which many sports scientists believe should be impossible for a human being to produce. But these guys from Sky aren’t humans. They are Cyborgs.
And of course, perhaps more pertinent to the argument, was Richie Porte from Sky who finished second on the stage after doing the donkey work for Froome and reeling in a breakaway in the dying stages, only to ride away from the field as well after Froome had attacked, leaving the best cyclists in the world, including the greatest cyclist of his generation, Alberto Contador, floundering in his wake. It’s more science fiction than cycling.
Sky will tell you they are clean. They will look you in the eye and tell you so and I can’t prove that it is not so. But I know what has gone before and as the old saying goes, “If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck”. No wonder my enthusiasm is shaken.
I don’t know where cycling goes from here. I am not close enough to know what the buzz inside the peloton is or what is really going on. Men like journalist David Walsh who was responsible for bringing down Lance Armstrong seem enamoured and dazzled by the Sky machine and incredulously, seem to want to believe the lie. Was this the same man who vehemently discredited anyone associated with Lance Armstrong and US Postal? He won’t be getting another red cent from me for anything he writes.
But, as much as I decry it, the sport is still beautiful and despite my protestations I will once again be glued to the television tonight as those great men of world sport who, despite all I think and have written, still retain my respect for their toughness and dedication, go through their paces in that garden of Europe, on the roads of the Tour de France.
Have a nice day.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 