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.
skipow
Guest
Schleck is enabling this behavior and sanctioning it by tip toeing around the decision. There was evidence of doping, and if Schleck himself isn't dirty he should come out with a clear message that he disapproves of behavior like this.
rdh
Guest
The odds that Contador ingested clenbuterol through contaminated meat are astronomical. According to the Wikipedia (you can check the sources for the article for yourself): "There has been some scepticism of Contador's claim that contaminated meat was to blame. In 2008 and 2009, only one animal sample came back positive for clenbuterol out of 83,203 animal samples tested by EU member nations. Out of 19,431 animal tests in Spain over the same period, there were no samples that came back positive for clenbuterol". In ALL of the EU, one animal tested positive for clenbuterol in the two years leading up to the 2010 TdF. Contador's claim is laughable.
sittingbison
Guest
I suggest you do a bit more research - cyclingnews and about ten articles on this site might help.
anabel
Guest
Excuse me, but the one who´s missing the point is you. Read the decision of the TAS again and if you still think the same then you have a reading problem. It was positive, yes. But it wasn´t doping and most doctors agree to that, ergo it wasn´t cheating.