The reason these guys are doping? It seems almost every year the cyclists are caught during tests in the mountain stages in the Alps and Pyrenees. Have you ever seen the mountain passes these guys ride over, cols de Galibier, col du telegraphe, col iseran and col plaine joux? I need to take drugs to settle my nerves when I drive over them, and it is cold and hard to breathe outside. The riders need the blood changes to be acclimated to the altitude and difficulty of the climbing. If the tour selected a more realistic route, although perhaps less pleasing to spectators, doping would be less of a problem.

servoz2002:

The reason these guys are doping? It seems almost every year the cyclists are caught during tests in the mountain stages in the Alps and Pyrenees. Have you ever seen the mountain passes these guys ride over, cols de Galibier, col du telegraphe, col iseran and col plaine joux? I need to take drugs to settle my nerves when I drive over them, and it is cold and hard to breathe outside. The riders need the blood changes to be acclimated to the altitude and difficulty of the climbing. If the tour selected a more realistic route, although perhaps less pleasing to spectators, doping would be less of a problem.

That's a bit dubious. It's a competition and there's money at stake, so you can be sure some people will try to get an edge any way they can. Scaling down stages to 50km wouldn't change anything to that state of mind.

An interesting experiment was performed this year by a journalist at Le Monde: he rode the complete Tour, one day ahead of the race, to see what would be the effects on an athlete doing it while staying "clean". The results: it can be done if you're properly trained (he rode 12000kms since January as training) although it's a challenge, and he wasn't a total wreck at the end of it. These guys will have to look for another excuse.

The link to the story (in French): <link>

Doping also touches sprinters, the guys who win the flat stages. They need the fast switch power to spirnt. EPO and blood doping can also help time trial specialists. One idea going around is to go back to the pre-1968 format where national teams competed, that way the burden of sending doping-free riders falls on the country federations, who have more to loose (just like the Danish federation exluded Rsamussen from its team while he was still being allowed to ride by his team and by Tour organisers).

I've ridden the climbs and they're not that hard. Racing on them is hard and racing on them faster than anyone else is really hard. Riders don't dope because the Tour is hard. They dope because they want to win. Making the tour easier won't make it any cleaner - it will just make it boring.