Poga\u010dar dragged out of bed at 5am, Vingegaard at 2am, both hauled in for testing before a mountain stage, and within not that many hours some were asking why not also test the kid sitting fourth overall… that one who happens to be French?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then the ITA has worked its way steadily through the peleton \u2014 Evenepoel and the entire Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe roster tested on a rest-day evening – Eight Red Bulls in one sitting – that’ll keep you awake. Seixas’ Decathlon CMA CGM squad were also visited an hour and a half before that, plus EF Education, Alpecin, Soudal, Astana, Groupama-FDJ and more. Red Bull team manager Ralph Denk didn’t even try to spin it: “The regulations allow for late-night testing. It ensures that our sport remains clean and credible, so this is simply part of it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s the whole story, really. No favourites, no cover-up, no nationality getting a free pass \u2014 just a testing agency working methodically through a list, at hours that have in the past been used to dope and get away with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So – this is a good thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the ITA picked up a whisper of something and decided to run it down hard rather than sit on it, that’s the agency doing its actual job, evidence or no evidence yet. Clean riders paying a small tax in broken sleep for the sins of the peloton’s past is not a great trade for them, but it is a fair one for the fans who want clean sport, and it’s one this sport signed up for the moment doping stopped being an open secret and started being an existential threat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me explain, cos I think I confused myself there too…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For decades cycling more or less tolerated doping as an unspoken norm \u2014 everyone in the peloton knew it happened but it wasn’t treated as a crisis that could kill the sport. Then came Festina in ’98, then Armstrong and his cronies – and all in-between- and it stopped being a wink-and-nod deal and became something that nearly destroyed cycling’s credibility, sponsorship, and TV deals entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I say ‘nearly’ when actually, for many, it was completely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once that happened, the sport made an implicit trade: in exchange for being allowed to survive and rebuild trust, everyone in it \u2014 teams, riders, sponsors \u2014 accepted a much more invasive testing regime, including things like the 2am\/5am knocks. Nobody voted on this exactly, but by staying in professional cycling post-Armstrong, riders effectively signed up for a much stricter set of rules than the sport used to have, because the alternative was cycling not existing as a credible professional sport at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then Jonathan Vaughters decides to chime in – sorry just did a little sick in my mouth there – with his opinion on all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one in the mainstream cycling mediasphere raise an eyebrow, no one suggests he should not be connected to the sport in any way shape or form, not tells him to shut the f&*k up and get back under his rock where he should be happy to be able to earn a living from. He talks about how he and his pals would have been long busted had the anti-doping testers been getting them up for 4am tests and no one asks why he had not the backbone to not cheat in the first place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n