2006 Tour de France: New page, same page

Next week, in the medieval city of Strasbourg, the 93rd Tour de France will commence. If the Amaury Sports Organization (ASO), the TdF organizers, is to be believed, this year's edition is a "new page" in the Grand Boucle. But the new page is actually dog eared. The new page actually happened in 1999, the year Lance Armstrong started his streak of 7 consecutive wins.

In 1998, the TdF was rocked by a scandal called, "The Festina Affair". A gofer for team FESTINA, one of the top teams that year, was caught in the Franco-Belgian border with performance enhancing drugs (PED) in the trunk of his car. Festina was expelled from the race. The French Gendarmes then started raiding team hotels in the middle of the night. This led to the same teams boycotting the race. Team ONCE, the team of number one French cyclist at that time Laurent Jalabert, also quit the race.

Now in that same year, LA had just returned to professional bike racing after a bout with testicular cancer. Unsure of whether he still had the heart to bump elbows in the peloton, he quit the early season race "Paris-Nice" that March and returned to the US for some soul-searching. After deciding to give it one more try, he went back to Europe and immediately won the Tour of Luxembourg. Later that year, he'd come fourth in the mountainous Vuelta a Espagna and 4th in the World Road Championships.

So when 1999 came, LA had only one goal-to win the TdF. The win over Alex Zulle by 7 minutes was more than a fairy tale, it introduced bike racing to mainstream America and at the same time gave LA a dais for cancer awareness. Who wouldn't want to be identified with someone who was on the brink of death and came back to win the hardest sport in the world?

But when LA started dominating and winning by large margins (except in 2003), there were whispers from the French media that LA was "juiced". The French Ministry of Justice launched an investigation. A couple of British journalists wrote a book about LA's alleged drug use. Then there were a few people who "saw" LA with PED. But the accusations remained only that since LA never tested positive and swore he never used PED.

Then just a few weeks after he retired, an experimental test done on urine from the 1999 TdF was leaked to L'Equipe, a French paper owned by ASO, saying that LA's urine was positive for EPO, a PED. In spite of the fact that the test was supposed to be blind, experimental and not to be presented to the public, L'Equipe was able to secure the results showing that LA tested positive 4 times in the 1999 Tour!

The result was a word war between LA and ASO, and it reached a point where during the announcement of the 2006 TdF route, LA was omitted in the 7-minute highlight film, an omission that never happened to defending champions, much less a 7-time champion!

ASO President Patrice Clerc had opened the program by saying, "We want a clean sport, without suspicion and one that conforms to the basic values of sport." Jean Marie LeBlanc, the outgoing race director, spoke about his special memories in the 16 years he was associated with the race but not once did he mention about LA. Incoming director Christian Prudhomme continued to echo what Clerc and LeBlanc had said by saying that, "The worst thing in sport today is suspicion. We can never get rid of doping in sport, but to eliminate suspicion is certainly possible."

But no matter how many times ASO puts the story in the washing machine and spin it, LA will always cast a long shadow on the TdF. Snob or no snob.

LOCAL RACE RESULTS: Road Cyclist of the Month CAT B June Final (6.26.2006) 1. Ian Colina VEL 2. John Ermitanio KAL3. Junjun Canasa KAL 4. Hitler Nemesis VEL 5. Henry Tampus LAP OVERALL 1. H. Nemesis VEL 2. J. Canasa KAL3. Richard Patalinghug LAP. TEAM OVERALL 1. Velonaouts VEL 2. Lapulapu-RUT LAP 3. Kalit KAL 4. Spark Kleen SPA 5. SC