Andrew Hood's Tour de France Notebook - Sastre’s Tour: Can we dare to believe?
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Now that the champagne has lost its fizz and the podium girls are back to their day jobs, the cycling world now waits with bated breath until that last anti-doping control winds through the labyrinth of syringes, gyroscopes, laser prisms and other weapons in the arsenal at the labs.
Until the final sample comes back clean, no one can afford to breathe easy. Anyone who loves the Tour is desperate to avoid that final-hour “worst-case scenario” that could once again send cycling to its knees.
For the past decade or so, fans and observers alike have had to float through some sort of suspended-reality truth zone, not sure if what they’re really seeing is true.
Is 2008 any different?
There’s a lot of evidence that it is. Doping controls run by the French national anti-doping agency (AFLD) were precise, diligent, numerous and — after four doping positives — accurate.
Testers were crafty. They wouldn’t post numbers of riders to be tested until minutes before the peloton barreled across the line, and they would systematically zero on riders. Even a short burst of an eyebrow-rising performance would cause a rider's number to show up on the to-test list at the end of a stage.
More than 250 tests were conducted, including 80 pre-Tour controls in critical ramping-up periods weeks ahead of the race. The French took urine, blood and even hair samples. Chaperones would wait for riders as soon as they crossed the line. Up to 14 riders a day were controlled.
It was, without a doubt, the deepest, most vigorous testing any Tour has ever seen.
Four positive cases saw the return of familiar headlines: “Tour de Farce” and “Tour de Dopage” were back in vogue.
But four cases among a peloton of 180 starters can be read two ways.
To some, the failed tests only underscored that the culture of doping still has its claws buried deep in the chamois of professional cycling.
As the sad and disheartening case of Riccardo Riccò only proves, old habits die hard. There are still enough knuckleheads out there who believe they’re clever enough to get around the system or greedy enough to dare.
Others, however, gleefully cheered the news that the cheaters were getting caught. As one team doctor said after the Beltrán case: “Good, I hope there’s a lot more. We want these wankers to get caught.”
The tightening noose was a clear signal that the old days of doping and dodging the tests are on the wane.
Optimists saw the short-term bleeding as part of the long-term cure that cycling needs. It’s like chemotherapy; temporarily poison the body to rid it of cancer.
There seemed to be a turning of the page in the 95th Tour.
After hobbling from one sordid scandal to another, it seems that the critical mass toward clean(er) racing has taken hold. Sponsors, organizers, teams and the racers themselves openly speak about and promote clean racing. In many respects the old practice of omerta has been broken.
Against this backdrop of the struggle for cycling’s future, the hearts and minds of both cycling’s cynics and believers turn to Carlos Sastre.
Whether he likes it or not, the unassuming father of two will be burdened with the inevitable question: Can the cycling world believe in Sastre?
There were some encouraging signs. In many ways, Sastre is an ideal winner of a Tour in a sport fighting for its credibility.
First off, Sastre rides for one of cycling’s “clean teams.” CSC-Saxo Bank is among a handful of squads, including Garmin-Chipotle, Team Columbia and Astana, that subject their riders to vigorous, out-of-competition controls as part of a season-long monitoring program.
CSC boss Bjarne Riis implemented his team’s program in late 2006 after star rider Ivan Basso was implicated in the Operación Puerto scandal. Danish anti-doping crusader Dr. Rasmus Damsgaard operates the program independently, and Riis and the riders have no idea when or where testers will arrive.
In an interview with Damsgaard at the World Anti-Doping Agency forum last fall in Madrid, he told VeloNews that his program is designed to pick up in irregularities in blood levels that would indicate manipulation. Damsgaard insists it’s all but impossible to cheat under his system.
In another plus, Sastre seems immune to the vigorous rumor mill that churns inside and around the peloton.
Though some journalists questioned the early years of Sastre’s career when he raced with the controversial Manolo Saíz at ONCE, there’s never been a hint of nefarious activity or even whispers about Sastre.
When Operación Puerto revealed an elaborate and banal blood doping ring that proved that not much had changed since the Festina Affaire had blown the lid open on organized doping a decade before, Sastre’s name was never mentioned.
Throughout his career, the ever-steady Sastre has never raced in a manner that would raise suspicions.
There’s been the odd win and rare attack, but there were never over-the-top accelerations that had people rolling their eyes in disbelief, a la Riccò over the Col de Aspin in the Pyrénées this year.
Sastre’s calling card has been his consistency, his doggedness and his willingness to fight to the end. Not glamorous stuff, by any stretch, but believability over spectacle is just what the Tour needs right now.
Then there’s the argument that if the playing field is leveled off, the dopers are kicked out of the sport and that it’s becoming harder to cheat, then cleaner and more talented riders should rise above.
There’s certainly a case to be made for that line of reasoning in this year’s Tour.
Riders from these so-called “clean teams” shined during the 95th Tour, with wins and yellow jersey runs by Mark Cavendish, Markus Burghardt and Kim Kirchen (Columbia), Frank Schleck, Kurt-Asle Arvesen and Sastre (CSC), a fifth place overall by Christian Vande Velde, and podium places in stages by Will Frischkorn and Danny Pate (Garmin-Chipotle).
Taken at face value, Sastre’s performances during this Tour seem credible enough.
His attack at L'Alpe d’Huez came with one, intense burst at the base of the 13.8km climb; he built a growing gap to the line as the leaders in his wake played cat and mouse, with the Schleck brothers marking wheels.
Sastre might have surprised many with his final time-trial performance to fend off Cadel Evans, the pre-race favorite. But in longer time trials late in a grand tour, Sastre has often finished within one minute of Evans, who isn’t a time trial specialist of the same caliber of Jan Ullrich, Andreas Klöden or Lance Armstrong.
Right now, Sastre is far from such troubling skepticism.
The 33-year-old Spanish climber is soaking up the post-race glow that comes with Tour glory. He’s being hailed as a hero in Spain and being showered with plaudits from the frenzied Spanish media.
Since being crowned as Spain’s seventh Tour winner on Sunday, he’s been in Belgium and Holland picking up checks worth an estimated 45,000 euros per appearance in post-Tour criteriums.
On Wednesday, he heads home to El Barraco for a hometown hero’s welcome. The local dignitaries are even going to name a street after the humble, hard-working gregario turned champion.
His overall victory seemed unlikely before the Tour started, but this unassuming and quiet family man called “Carlitos” by his friends could be the figure who leads cycling into the promised land of cleaner, fairer racing.
Sastre said the right things to offer encouragement. Rather than hide behind clichés about never testing positive or dodging a hard question, Sastre came right out with a strong declaration.
“I believe in clean cycling because I am clean,” he said Sunday. “I know all the sacrifices I have made. There are people who know how to sacrifice and who know how to work in a clean way.”
After a career of close calls, fourth places and near misses, Sastre’s hard work and suffering finally paid off with one daring, perfectly executed attack up cycling’s most famous climb where so many magical moments have unfolded.
Is it any coincidence that it happened during what’s reputed as the cleanest Tour in years?
One can only hope the work at the French labs is close to being completed and there won’t be any asterisks amended to the history books.
More than anything right now, cycling needs a hero it can believe in. Sastre just might be the man.
