Team Astana has been extended a gracious "invitation" to leave the race and fuck off back to Kazakhstan after their team leader and several other team members failed doping tests, and the overall leader Michael Rasmussen apparently failed doping tests at every stage, so things are looking good for the Discovery Channel team, but not for the sport. There's no point in getting excited about it if half the field is cheating and half of the leaderboard may be "invited" to leave. People occasionally wonder why during the Olympics I so enthusiastically support the athletes of several small nations, but I get less excited about the United States, and it's because of all the drug samples "accidentally misplaced" at the '96 Olympics. If we're going to cheat for bragging rights, then why bother with the event, just skip to the end so we can find out who gets to thump their chest. David Stern said it best explaining a harsh decision regarding suspensions in the play-offs when he said sport is the one area of human endeavor created by an agreement to follow certain rules, so that without the rules, there can be no such thing as sport. The law is a set of rules, but all the situations governed by law and the legal system predate the legal system and would exist in its absence: crimes invite vigilante justice and mob rule, property disputes can be settled by force, and the ability to combine force of arms with reputation created the world's first banks: secure strongholds with armed guards. If you remove the rules from sport, there is no sport: a race can become one woman running 100 yards and one running 110 meters, each claiming to be the winner for finishing first and for running farther respectively, and it dissolves into two independent events without the governing set of rules to join them in actual competition. And now the Tour de France is just a bunch of guys out for a bike ride in colorful shirts. From now on I'm sticking to the biathlon for my fill of obscure European sports nobody watches in America. (And I can't believe Norway lost to Russia in the Men's relay... that was bad enough, but Sweden winning the mixed relay?)
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