Exclusion

Much has been said about the exclusion of a number of leading riders from this year's Tour de France on the grounds of allegations of drug use. Of course, allegations of drug use in cycling or indeed in any professional sport are nothing new. Personally I think anyone who thinks there's a totally clean professional sport anywhere in the world is living in dreamland. Nevertheless, what's astonishing about this story is that we have a number of riders being excluded from the race on the suspicion of drug use, but as yet nobody has been proven to be guilty. This would seem to run contrary to most other trials in the world, where people are (at least in theory) presumed to be innocent unless actually proven guilty. Funnily enough, I seem to recall tabloids in Europe making similar (unfounded) allegations against Lance Armstrong in the past, but he was never prevented from starting a race.

Watching the first couple of stages on SBS this week, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the tour was missing something this year. While it's still been entertaining, and the exclusions may have left us with a more open race than for many years, I do feel that so far it's missing something. That said, if this catches on it mightn't be such a bad idea. All I need to do now is convince one of the local tabloids to run a story claiming that half of the accountants on the Gold Coast are on drugs, and I'll never have to worry about unemployment again.