Drugs and the 49th Tour of Turkey

The 49th ToT finished yesterday in Istanbul, and the GC winner was Mustafa Sayar. Well done him.

Unless he’s a cheat. Like the Bulgarian who won it for the same team last year, and then got banned for doping and lost his win.

Mind you, it was an impressive sight, watching him grind his way up to to Selcuk in his big ring, dropping everyone in his wake. Even Magnus Backstedt was impressed, and said he hadn’t seen anyone ride like that since Frank Vandenbroucke, who sadly died in 2009 aged 34 after admitting to taking a whole bundle of drugs. David Harmon, Backstedt’s co-commentator on Eurosport merely commented, “Frank Vandenbrouck. Err, enough said.” For those who don’t know the ins and outs, Sayar’s win was like watching an AFC Bournemouth striker run rings round a Manchester Utd. defence. German sprinter Marcel Kittel was particularly unimpressed and tweeted to the effect.

Why should I get particularly uptight about this isolated doping incident in a 2.HC race, whe? Well, because Team Novo Nordisk, whose entire pro squad are T1Ds had, with an average age just beyond nappies, placed 2 riders in the top 20 (Andrea Peron 14th, Martijn Verschoor 16th), and for many of them, It was an inauguration into the world of stage racing. So if the Turkish bloke’s a cheat, it’s a double insult to a bunch of guys already dealing with stuff beyond the world of competitive cycling, and for whom finishing the race (and they all did) is a major achievement.

Which leads me on to David Harmon, who is something of an institution on Eurosport, though I fail to see why, particularly when teamed with the articulate and knowledgeable Backstedt (unlike the inarticulate and profoundly tedious Sean Kelly, his usual oppo.). He grates on me; not because he spent a considerable amount of commentary talking about “No, not Greek, Hellenistic civilisation”, as the race rolled past Ephesus, and other such arcane observations whilst Backstedt pushed manfully on with cycling observations, but because he’s condescending and avuncular. He clearly hadn’t done his homework on Team Novo Nordisk, dismissing them as “invisible”, and “failing to anything to light up the race”, when Javier Megias had been out front on the final stage, and Martijn Verschoor likewise on the penultimate day. Furthermore his condescension reached new heights when he dismissively referred to TNN’s prime achievement being to highlight the fact that T1Ds can ride bikes. He didn’t realise that every team member is kept alive by their own daily insulin management, and hang on to their health and their life through constant mathematical medical calculations in addition to all the other mundane stuff about heart rate and wattage. Chapeau, guys, and a bit of humility amongst the academic diatribe, please, David. Or better still, don’t bother returning after your well-trumpeted 2-month “sabbatical” (you’re a commentator mate, not a university lecturer), and hand over the job to Magnus.

So I await the outcome of Mustafa Sayar’s dope tests with interest, and I hope he’s clean, though, along with a large chunk of the cycling world, I’m sufficiently cynical to doubt it. And I await the return of Phil Liggett to the airwaves, whose commentary on the Tour of Britain a few years back, when TNN’s antecedent, Team Type 1, were riding, clearly stated the facts: T1D riders stay alive by drugs, and they are expert in doing so. They also happen to be really good racing cyclists.

Cheating is for cowards.