For all the doom and gloom surrounding the NBA, and to a lesser extent, the NFL and Major League Baseball, it is important to keep in mind that none of the three major U.S. sports are in the predicament that cycling is currently in.
The biggest event in cycling, the Tour de France, has been tainted almost beyond repair by doping allegations in the past several years. As many likely remember, Tour winner Floyd Landis failed a post-race drug test last year, doing irreparable damage to his reputation and the legacy of the 2006 event. That has been followed up by several riders being thrown out of the race on suspicions of doping this year, including Tour leader Michael Rasmussen.
With so many participants under suspicion and with the integrity of the entire sport in question, cycling finds itself facing a Tim Donaghy situation multiplied by 1,000.
Media and fan backlash has been severe. The France Soir newspaper ran a full-page obituary for the tour, citing a “long illness” — a not very subtle reference to the drug scandals. Headlines screech “Tour de France becomes drug-fuelled disgrace” and “New low for Tour de Farce“, while multiple editorials call for the event to be canceled altogether. German broadcasters and a large Switzerland newspaper have begun to boycott coverage of the event. French national newspaper Liberation pronounced the Tour dead on its front page and also “said that it would no longer publish race results because they were ‘without significance’ except for ‘scientists looking for new medicines’.” Sponsors, including T-Mobile, are considering pulling out of the race. And while the president of cycling’s governing body cannot “accept that the sport is in crisis” and foresees an outcome where “the sport will come out of it a lot better and a lot stronger,” it would appear as if the Tour de France and cycling in general is on its last, performance-enhanced legs.
Should the NBA and Major League Baseball, considering their respective credibility crises, look to cycling as a warning? To some extent, yes. While the baseball steroid scandal has not hurt business, and while the NBA referee scandal should not hurt the league overall, Bud Selig and David Stern should use cycling’s nightmare as a reminder that fans may forgive an isolated incident, but not a scandal that becomes as widespread as the one afflicting cycling. If a firmly entrenched event like the Tour de France can suddenly find itself facing assessments that it “is a race that is mortally wounded” and has “been decapitated“, no sport is completely safe.
Baseball and the NBA are safe for now and into the near future, with the steroid scandal publicly limited to a small group of disgraced players and the referee scandal currently limited to Tim Donaghy. But if more players are found to be using performance enhancing drugs, and if the gambling scandal extends to other referees, players and coaches, Selig and Stern could see their sports’ obituaries written on the front page. In the meantime, both can watch as cycling declines into irrelevance during its marquee event.
