Newly appointed 2010 Tour de France winner Andy Schleck says there is no reason to celebrate the demise of Alberto Contador for doping, who has been stripped of the title, but the Luxembourger is not getting the bigger picture.
Contador cheated. Plain and simple. Forget that the decision took way, way too long to be made and the ban announced. Schleck says: “There is no reason to be happy now. First of all I feel sad for Alberto. I always believed in his innocence. This is just a very sad day for cycling.”
And that is all well and good. It is definitely a sad day for cycling, but it has happened before and you can bet your life it will happen again. Winning the Tour de France in this manner is never good, it’s not preferable, but it is what it is.
Schleck is good mates with Contador, and was only 39 seconds behind him on the Tour in 2010. He says: “If now I am declared overall winner of the 2010 Tour de France it will not make me happy. I battled with Contador in that race and I lost.
“My goal is to win the Tour de France in a sportive way, being the best of all competitors, not in court. If I succeed this year, I will consider it as my first Tour victory.”
Again, Schleck is missing the point. He didn’t lose. Contador was cheating. The playing field was not level. Schleck was the best of all of the competitors, because he wasn’t doped up.
Contador’s excuse of eating contaminated meat is laughable, but so is the time it has taken for this ban to be announced and enforced. Cycling’s reputation and the Tour have taken another beating.
The best cyclists in the world, such as Schleck, need to realize that drug cheats are out there and feeling sorry for them is not the way to go. It sends the wrong image. Contador’s $3 million fine will hit him hard, but for me, the two-year ban doesn’t go hard enough. Riders like him should face longer bans if they are caught.
The Tour is cycling’s most prestigious race, and if the sport is to ever fully move away from its drug-addled past, it needs to come down hard on the offenders and offer no mercy.
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