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Perhaps the most cruel by-product of cycling’s ongoing battle with doping is the growing number of social media sceptics.
These mainly anonymous ‘experts’ sit in their lounge rooms and pass judgement in 140 characters or less. They comment on everything from a rider’s appearance to the reasons why they might have won a race, and everything in between.
Some of it is fun. Some of it is even informative. But a lot of it is just plain lousy. Much of it is mean-spirited.
Great wins are dismissed as dope-fuelled romps. Improvement in a cyclist’s performance over the course of a season or two is red flagged as something sinister. A consistently impressive ride through the Alps or Pyrenees is evidence of an artificial enhancer.
No one is immune to these relentless cyber attacks.
Unfortunately for young cyclists today, they are being judged by the lax standards of the past, and it is marring the enjoyment and enthusiasm they should be feeling for themselves and the future of their sport.
Vincenzo Nibali is the latest to be subjected to endless speculation about his performances. His dominant display throughout the current edition of the Tour de France has sent the faceless hordes into overdrive.
They tap out their one fingered messages faster than a Marcel Kittel sprint, ensuring that their often unfounded doubts are being re-tweeted across the world wide web before the rider or riders in question have even made it to the team buses.
It is ok to be sceptical, in fact cycling deserves the cynicism, and that the disbelievers find it hard to trust in what they are seeing is understandable.
But not everyone is doping. Not everyone deserves to be tarred with the same brush.
The questions being raised about Nibali’s Tour de France are interesting. Most seem to centre around how he is able to get away from his main competitors each time the race kicks up hill. Not just get away from them, but absolutely smash them.
Perhaps he is just the better rider.
Nibali is one of the world’s best stage racers. He has won the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana, and has stood on the podium at the Tour de France. His main rivals, Chris Froome and Alberto Contador, are out of the race. The world’s other great mountain goat, new kid on the block Nairo Quintana, isn’t here.
That trio of riders are either the equal of, or better than Nibali. If they were racing through the Alps and Pyrenees, you can bet that the Italian champ wouldn’t be having things all his own way. In fact, if those three were racing, it might be Nibali currently sitting in fourth position on general classification trying to work out how to make up a five minute time deficit.
Guaranteed that if that was the case, the twitter-sphere would be targeting someone else and lamenting that poor old Vincenzo was being dudded by drug cheats.
But that triumvirate of talent are absent, which leaves Nibali as top dog.
The story of his Tour dominance is as much about who is left opposing him as it is his scintillating riding. Put simply he is the best bike rider by far left in this race. Honestly, who can challenge him?
Alejandro Valverde is probably the next best. He claims he is in career-best form but his best years are behind him, as are Chris Horner’s (despite his Vuelta win last year).
Jurgen Van Den Broeck has always been thereabouts in Grand Tours but has never taken the next step.
The experienced Haimar Zulbeldia has ridden in 22 Grand Tours for six top 10 results, but has never finished on the podium.
Frank Schleck is not the rider he was.
Michal Kwiatkowski and Rui Costa can’t get over the big climbs.
Pierre Rolland lacks consistency and is probably better suited to chasing king of the mountain points or stage wins.
Bauke Mollema and Laurens Ten Dam are a step down.
The French duo of Romain Bardet and Thibaut Pinot are coming along nicely but are still a couple of years off reaching their full potential.
Joaquim Rodiriguez just isn’t interested in the general classification and hasn’t got the legs anyway.
And the jury is still out on the ambitious American, Tejay Van Garderen, whose bark seems to be worse than his bite.
Apart from Valverde and Horner, none of the others have won – or come close to winning – a Grand Tour.
I’ll ask again. Who out of that mob can seriously challenge Nibali? Is it any wonder he looks so good? It is an aligning of the stars, not the spectre of drugs, that has placed Nibali at the top of the Tour tree.
Of course, I can’t categorically state that Nibali is racing clean, but with Contador and Froome crashing out early and Quintana absent, coupled with being in peak physical and mental condition, his dominant performance so far should not come as any great surprise.
Unfortunately though, the doubts – which we are all justified in having – are the sad legacy that modern cycling has left us with.
But sometimes, just sometimes, what we see can be real.
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