Passport to legality: Cycling's new plan to wipe out the dope cheats

The 2007 Tour de France saw another nail hammered into the coffin of professional cycling. For the second year in a row, a doping scandal enveloped leading riders, resulting in the withdrawal of tour leader Michael Rasmussen and the elimination of high-profile Astana rider Aleksandre Vinokourov and the whole Cofidis team.

'This is a step in the right direction and if it reduces the number of dopers by even a small margin, then it is definitely worth the effort'

After the Floyd Landis disgrace of 2006, there were real concerns that Le Tour, and professional cycling, was mortally wounded. These concerns deepened with Lance Armstrong’s Discovery Channel team deciding to call it quits and it was feared that they were just the first of many.

Although those fears have not been realised, professional cycling is teetering on the edge of an abyss. The sport may not survive another scandal-wracked year and so the UCI have announced a drastic, but innovative, way to pre-emptively eliminate potential dopers long before the race even begins.

The UCI is introducing a “biological passport” to establish baseline levels of hormones and other biological ‘markers’. The passport will be created from six periodic blood tests, at least one of which will be random. The tests will be mandatory for all professional cyclists.