Cycling, Lance, Baseball, & Doping

The Tour de France (TDF) is arguably the most difficult endurance contest in the world and only five men have won it five times and only one - Lance Armstrong - has won it more than five times. His record tying fifth victory was in 2003 and questions and doubts swirled around the possibility of Armstrong becoming the first ever to win six (he would go on to win 7). Several of the previous 5-time winners had stumbled while trying to win one more. In Lance Armstrong's War, Daniel Coyle gives a superbly detailed account of Armstrong's 2004 campaign. The book was published in 2005, but I just read it - with the recently concluded 2010 TDF whetting my appetite for related stories. You don't just show up in July and try to ride in the tour - the preparation starts many months before and that is where Coyle starts as well. He is there for every training race, every experimental bike, and seemingly around every conversation that goes on between Armstrong and his team. Pro-cycling has more than its share of colorful characters and Coyle profiles a number of the key cyclists who had a legitimate chance of winning in 2004 - Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, and Iban Mayo among others. Making several cameo appearances is 'Juanita Cuervo' (aka Sheryl Crow), who Armstrong was dating at that time. Even though we know how the race ends, Coyle succeeds in building up the anticipation and his blow-by-blow account of key stages of the 2004 race is rather satisfying. The time elapsed since the race helps no doubt, although in my case that is moot since I had not followed the race very closely back in '04. Just as much as an account of the race, the book is an attempt to explain the enigma that is Lance Armstrong. He is not an easy person to know or get close to. With his emphatic victories and inspirational cancer survivor story, he is a sports icon without peer, certainly within the American landscape. He has many detractors of course and indeed there were even threats made on his life during the penultimate stage in 2004 and he had to be protected by armed guards during the actual race.
One question that has dogged Armstrong throughout is the accusation of cheating/doping - the use of performance enhancement drugs. Armstrong does have certain physiological advantages (Coyle explains the science behind his ability to operate at peak performance without going into the anaerobic zone longer than anybody else), but his dominating performances and take-no-prisoners attitude has spawned lots of doubters. The official record is that he has never tested positive, but that hasn't stopped the questions. And there is plenty of circumstantial evidence. The conventional wisdom about doping in pro-cycling is that everybody does it, so what is the big deal. Several of his accusers (among others, a massage therapist in his employ, his old mechanic, and Floyd Landis, his old teammate and the cyclist who was stripped of the 2006 TDF title after testing positive) have provided very detailed descriptions of how Armstrong apparently cheated over the years (none of which have been independently corroborated as of date). Although, Steven Levitt (of Freakonmics fame) has argued in a blog that the very specificity of the accusations is proof enough of their truthfulness. Freakonomics was persuasive, but this particular one argument does not wash with me - perhaps I am too much of a Lance Armstrong fan and don't really want to believe. The book is aptly titled: Everything is a 'war' for Lance Armstrong and it continues to this day - even as he was finishing off his last tour, investigations based on Landis' claims and others were just getting underway.
Coyle is clearly interested in being the objective reporter and his book comes across as neither a hatchet job nor hagiography. It is a fascinating glimpse, albeit fleeting, into a world that many of us will never get close to and I highly recommend it.
Doping was rampant in procycling in most of the 90s and the 2000s and the case was no different in another sport in which fair play and chivalry are held paramount - baseball. The rather surprising fact about pro-baseball is that many of the drugs that were banned in other sports were not actually illegal in baseball till very recently. During the last decade and a half the power numbers have been off the charts (basically the batters have been doing very well)and this surge crystallized in the single-season home run record chase of 1998 and culminated with Barry Bonds going past Hank Aaron's all-time home run record (755) - a record that was essentially considered unreachable just a few years ago. However, the home run kings of the last decade or so have mostly been discredited, almost to a man and even Congress has held hearings on this topic. All of this hue and cry may be having an effect: While the single season home run record is now 73 and the top hitters were routinely getting 40-50 homers, this year nobody even has 30 and there is less than a quarter of the season left. Ostensibly, a similar effect can be seen in the TDF - not a single rider tested positive in the last two years, but curiously performances have not really dropped. It is hard to believe that the tour has suddenly become clean, especially when winners of other major cycling races continue to test positive every so often.
Of course, doping is no longer limited to the realm of sports - it is becoming more common place for students to boost their academic performance by improving their focus and concentration by illegally using drugs typically prescribed for ADHD. Next surely, will be genetic engineering. Rather depressing to contemplate, to say the least. But then I wonder, how different are these "aids" from that of the more affluent parents resorting to private schools, extra coaching, and donations to further their child's academic careers?