Tour de France - Playing with words?

July 8 Stage 4 Cholet/Cholet 29.5 km Time Trial - report

So Stefan Schumacher comes to the Tour de France and in a fantastic display of power time trialling takes the stage win and in the process the yellow jersey on stage 4 in Cholet. To large sections of the European press the 26 year old Gerolsteiner riders besting of some of the best riders against the clock in the world is less interesting than his brush with the law and amphetamines last year.

Schumacher, who had been partying with friends in a nightclub, was tested by German police for drunken driving last October was found to have traces of the stimulants in his blood sample. Whilst he has admitted that drink driving was perhaps not the cleverest thing he’s ever done he has always hotly denied taking the drug knowingly.

Wind forward to a month ago and Belgian sprint star Tom Boonen is caught in an out of competition test by the Belgian federation for cocaine and promptly removed from the Quickstep squad for the Tour with no way to defend his green jersey.

In the ongoing war between the sport’s governing body, the UCI and the organisers of the Tour de France the use of drugs has been right in the middle of the battlefield. Both sides in one way or another have tried to make the situation black and white, most notably the ASO. Both men, protestation or no protestation, have displayed the presence of a banned competition substance in a recreational context, so how can one be welcomed by the hardliners at ASO and the other told politely that he would not be hailed on arrival?

Surely both organisations can see that if you put your ethics on a pedestal you must either carry them through without flinching or be prepared to accumulate enough blows to be toppled. The Belgian was tested by the sport’s national federation, the German by the police and that, it appears, is the one characteristic that allows one and not the other contest the greatest annual sporting event in the world.

One thing is for certain, the most uncomfortable man in the Tour following Schumacher’s win will be Gerolsteiner team boss Hans Mikael Holzer. Desperately searching for major sponsor to replace Gerolsteiner at the end of the season he must surely be wishing, deep down, that the yellow jersey and the great publicity it brings with it had been resting on the shoulders of another of his men, losing it may be a blessing is disguise.