Tour de France Transcends Its Problems

The Tour de France had more than its share of problems this year. Three of the top riders were kicked out for doping problems, and one of them was wearing the fabled yellow jersey when he was kicked out.

This spawned many naysayers. Some wanted to stop the Tour before it was finished this year. Others pronounced the Tour to be dead and were ready to bury it for all time. That is just pure nonsense!

In the end, the Tour rose above the petty doping of the cheaters, and showed everyone why it is the world's greatest bicycle race. In fact, I think it rates up there with the world's greatest sporting events -- the Super Bowl in football, the World Cup in soccer, Wimbleton in tennis, the World Series in baseball, the NBA Championship in basketball, the Stanley Cup in hockey, the Masters in golf, and the winter and summer Olympics.

The Tour does have a problem with some of its athletes try to cheat by doping themselves. But unlike some other sports, the Tour is actually trying to deal with those problems -- even if it has to kick out some of its top stars. The fact that top athletes were kicked out of the Tour this year does not signal the death of the great event. Far from it! It shows a sport that is determined to clean itself up and assure the fans that the winners are great athletes and not cheaters. Other sports should step up and do the same.

If you were one of those who stopped watching this year because of the Tour officials cracking down on cheating, then you missed the end of what turned out to be one of the more exciting Tour's of any year. Of course, it had the flat stages with their exciting sprint finishes, and the mountain stages with their grueling heroism, as every year does. But Saturday's exciting time trial was one of the best stages I've ever seen in the Tour.

It was won by American Levi Leipheimer in one of the fastest time trials ever run in the Tour de France, and ended up with the top three individual riders only 31 seconds apart going into the last day. This is the only time in the Tour's history that three riders were that close together going into the final day. Imagine, after 21 days and over 91 hours of riding, these three were only seconds apart!

If you're an American, you should be very proud of how well America's Discovery Channel team did this year. In the individual competition, they placed two riders on the podium in Paris. Alberto Contador finished in first place and Levi Leipheimer finished in third place. But the whole Discovery team (pictured above) did great this year. For the first time, they won the team competition -- leading all the other teams by nearly 20 minutes at the end of the Tour. They were clearly the best team this year.

The Tour had some problems this year, but they transcended those problems and gave us 21 days of great cycling by great athletes. Personally, I think it turned out to be one of the Tour's better years, and I eagerly await the 2008 Tour de France.