We’re four days into this year’s Tour de France and that wooshing you hear isn’t 187 bicycle riders flying by; it’s the sound of cycling fans all over the world collectively exhaling, albeit ever so tentatively. As of this moment, no failed drug tests or accusations of illegal performance-enhancing substances have tainted this year’s Tour, and it’s only a matter of time before this extended clean streak becomes a bigger story than who’s rolling around France in yellow. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some spectacular performances that have led people to speculate, “Hmm… I wonder if he rode like that because he’s dirty.” After all, Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara not only won the opening prologue by an impressive 13 seconds, he pulled off an amazing last-minute surge in today’s stage #3 that left some of the world’s most powerful sprinters wondering what happened. Now, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Cancellara’s drug testing record is perfectly spotless and I’ve never heard anyone even suggest that his numerous cycling accomplishments are the result of anything other than hard work, good coaching and God-given ability. Still, it’s indicative of the sad state of professional cycling that the more impressive a rider’s successes are, the greater the suspicion they must endure.

None of this is to say that pro riders have anyone but themselves to blame. The lengths to which countless cyclists have gone to eke out an ill-gotten advantage over their competitors are the stuff of legend. All that’s changed in recent years is the level of sophistication that offenders have had to embrace in order to elude equally sophisticated methods of detection. What’s unfortunate is that the sport as a whole is now reaping the consequences of the actions of these riders, whether they represent 10% of the peloton or 90%. No longer can an individual cyclist think that the risks that they assume in taking a banned substance are limited to their own future. In the eyes of a semi-interested public, it’s no longer individual riders who are guilty - it’s pro cycling as a whole.

What strikes me the most about the current climate in professional cycling is how willing many people are to go along with ways of addressing the problem that would never be tolerated in other settings. Want to prevent a rider from participating in a race? Just accuse them of doping. No proof required - the accusation is all it takes to put someone on the sidelines indefinitely. Been accused of cheating? Too bad - the organization that runs the tests is the same body that sets the standards, prosecutes the case, appoints the judges, handles your appeals and, in some instances, appoints your defense lawyer. No wonder that in the entire history of doping cases no athlete has ever, not even once, won an appeal. And to turn up the irony factor to eleven, the body created to protect against sports doping in the U.S., the USADA, receives the majority of its funding from the federal government. Translated, that means that most of their budget comes directly from you and me, people who are accustomed to assuming certain standards of fairness and justice.

So, since you’re paying for it, what do you have to say about how doping in the cycling world is handled? But be careful how you answer, because it just so happens that the USADA doesn’t just govern pro cycling. It’s the same body that governs baseball, track and field and just about every other professional sport in this country in which doping has shown its ugly head. Do we embrace a take-no-prisoners approach and risk destroying the careers of innocent athletes in our zeal to eradicate the guilty ones? Are we comfortable with a system that takes a “guilty until proven innocent” approach? Or do we shrug our shoulders, write off the idea of clean athletes as a naive, outdated concept and settle for thinking that sporting events are still “fair” as long as everyone is equally dirty? Sure, in many ways doping scandals in professional cycling are almost totally unrelated to our day-to-day lives. However, how we react to these kinds of situations says a lot about who we are and what we think about concepts like fairness and justice. Like sports in general, they’re a microcosm of our values and aspirations. Whether or not you’re a cycling fan, your opinion counts, so let’s hear it!