if you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin'

ahh, the magic of sport. On the one hand, you've got guys like Barry Bonds. He probably took steroids. I don't much care. It wasn't against the rules when he did it, and there's a long and inglorious history of cheating in baseball. You can say Aaron didn't use illegal drugs, but you have to admit that he may have been popping greenies like tic tacs. So what?

And then there's cycling. lordy lordy lordy. Cyclists are the East German swim team from 1976. I have a friend in France (oui!) that rides with some amateur cyclists on the weekends. He told me a couple years ago that even the amateur riders, the weekend warriors riding for club teams, have to deal with doping at every competition. He says it's just the done thing; if you're not enhancing w/ drugs, you're not going to even compete. I confess that I doubted him then, but not now.

The rider in the photo above (from Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; please don't send me litigious correspondence) was the race leader until he got booted for skipping scheduled drug tests before the race started. How did he get through almost the whole race without someone noticing that he had been booted from his own national team for suspicion of using drugs? That's the kind of oversight you only expect from the federal government.