For 15 years I have watched the Tour de France with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy, in anticipation of the days of mountain-top tension that can be found in very few other sports. Yet today I feel ashamed to be a cycling fan.

The UK is not exactly a hotbed for cycling talent and enthusiasm: most people are far more concerned with using their cars to get them to the corner shop to consider cycling as anything more than a leisure pursuit. Every year in July, when the Tour brings cycling to something approaching prominence, I have to field the same ignorant questions: "It's just people riding fast for a long time...they're all on drugs, anyway."

Yet how can I dispute these charges now? In two consecutive days we have seen a rider cross the finish line with arms upraised, only to be thrown out of the race just hours later. The spectre of doping now hangs over every great performance like a black shroud: can any rider win a solo victory in future without doubt creeping into every spectator's mind as to whether he's managed it unaided?

'The spectre of drug abuse now hangs over every great performance like a black shroud: can any rider win a solo victory in future without doubt creeping into every spectator's mind as to whether he's managed it unaided?'


A similar thing happened six years ago in the other sport that I love. At the height of cricket's match-fixing scandal, no unusual result could pass without the suspicion that all was not as it seemed. The feats of the giantkillers of Bangladesh, Kenya and Ireland lost their gloss as the fairytale story was tarnished by cynicism, even if all the victories were clean.

And this is where things begin to unravel: what is sport if not a microcosm of life, where the disadvantaged can conquer the giants and sheer hard work and determination can reap great rewards? Yet once the spectator starts to believe the game is not fair, the drama becomes a farce, the illusion completely broken. Part of the reason people watch sport is that they want to witness life-affirming stories of triumph against adversity, knowing they can emulate it in their own lives. When it is all revealed to be false, what is there left?

The disillusion seems to have spread through the whole of the cycling world, proving that the events of the past few days are even more of a hammer-blow than the 1998 Festina affair. Of everything that has been said, it is the words of the greatest cyclist of all time that are the most heart-rending: "We know now that it's difficult to cheat. But for me, it's the end of cycling....on Sunday I am due to work with Dutch TV live from the Champs-Elysees in Paris. I'll go because my son, Axel, is riding in his final Tour. But my heart is no longer in it." If the great Eddy Merckx's heart is no longer in it, where does that leave the rest of us?

It should be remembered among all this that the case against Michael Rasmussen is effectively an insubstantial one. Yes, he was foolish in lying about his whereabouts in June and in missing the out-of-competition tests, but the bottom line is that he has never returned a positive drug test. The fact that decades of technological advancements in drug testing seem to have boiled down to 'no smoke without fire' is almost as sad as the proliferation of drugs in the sport itself.

So, after 15 years my enthusiasm has finally been dented. I'm not sure I really want to watch today's stage, because who can be sure that another stage winner will not be hauled off by gendarmes a few hours later?