Rest Day #2

Did you know you can follow along with the progress of Elvis' Tour by clicking on "Tour Mileage Chart" tab on the upper left column? Well you can.


Alexandre Vinokourov is a doper. Why doesn't this surprise anyone? Why? Because doping news has now come to be expected when the topic is pro cycling. Doping and cheating in pro cycling has been so pervasive for the last 20 years that the sport may never be fixed. Yes, we get the traditional lip service from the sport's governing bodies, the team owners, the team managers and even from the riders; "It's only a few that spoil it for all of us and we don't like it either". Really? Then stand up, tell the world what you know and take it like a man. There is no way that the so called "rogues" like; Pantani, Zabel, Chipollini, Riis, Mancebo, Heras, Basso, Ullrich, Miller, Hamilton, Landis and now Vinokourov have been doping in a personal vacuum. The how-to's of which drugs to use when and in what amounts was not created from scratch by each of these dopers. The perfect blend of drugs, the appropriate masking agents, the other cheating methods, the timing of the doping programs - do you really think that each of these guys had the time and mental wherewith-all to figure it out on their own? Not a chance. The chemicals and the cheating methods have been perfected over decades with the help and experience of hundreds of riders.

Team owners, managers and teammates all know what is going on. Maybe not the specific details of what each rider is doing - but they know who is doing it. And that, from Elvis' perspective, makes them all a bunch of dopes.

The heroes of our sport, like the stars of Hollywood, are not what they seem. We may all want to believe in the make-up assisted, lighting controlled glamour-shot view of people - like this;

How we'd like to see the sport of cycling

But when stripped of the veneer of the micro-managed, public relations, spokesperson fantasy world, the sad reality is unfortunately more like this;

What pro cycling really looks like

I'll have a more complete expose on how doping is killing our favorite sport, entitled, "The Tour de Fraud", as soon as the Tour Challenge is complete.