Borat Would be Sad

Kazakhstan’s Alexander Vinokourov, the pre-race favorite in the Tour De France, winner of Saturday’s time trial, and winner of Monday’s 15th stage tested positive for blood doping. He denies any blood manipulation of course and suggested that maybe the blood anomolies occured because he was involved in a wreck and was injured. Right right, I guess some performance enhancing drugs had accidentally been spilled on the concrete just before you wrecked and then when you fell they were absorbed by the wound on your knee. That happened to me just last week, it’s very common…

Kazakhstan was proud of “Vino” as they call him. As a nation they are trying to gain international appeal and use their oil and cultural richness to attract international tourists and investors. Vino isn’t doing them any favors. Nor is he doing the sport any favors. Frankly, I was pretty excited about professional cycling during the “Armstrong years”. But after Landis and this, I’m through with it unless they completely destroy every shred of the current system and start over with very strict rules. Doping is a fact of life in sports, it’s nearly impossible to avoid. But when it becomes mainstream it’s gotten ridiculous.

Photo from Vino’s official site 

1 comment July 25th, 2007