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Journalism of Courage
Cycling officials embarked on a new effort to clean up their doping-marred sport, pushing ahead with plans to create medical profiles of riders as a way to deter drug cheats.
With cycling’s survival at stake, the World Anti-Doping Agency set aside a long-running war of words with the International Cycling Union and gave its support to the “biological passport” programme billed as an unprecedented crackdown that could be a model for other sports.
WADA president Dick Pound, who has been sharply critical of the UCI’s handling of the doping crisis, hailed the effort and said it was time to reach “a new page” in the sport’s future.
“There has been a lot of harsh language back and forth about how cycling got to where it is today,” Pound said. “This is a new day. We are trying to work with cycling to help in insofar as we can to get cycling back to where it should be.”
Pound said he hoped that some day, historians would look back on the 2006-07 seasons as the years that cycling officials “looked over the edge of a very deep chasm, pulled back, and said: ‘No, enough.’”
Riders would need to present the passport to be able to ride in next year’s Tour de France. If successful, the experimental programme could become a model for use by other sports.
“The blood passport doesn’t follow products, but the athlete,” French Health and Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot said.
