Tour de Farce
Jul 30th, 2007 • Posted in: CommentaryIt’s almost August. How could I have been so dumb? I had the whole winter to write the annual column on doping among cyclists at the annual Tour de France race, and I missed the opportunity.
The column would have been a template, of course. I’d have left blank spaces where the names of this summer’s cyclists, teams, countries, and specific drugs could be slotted in. After explaining how, yet again, the Tour de France was descending into a tour de farce, the story would list the various renowned cyclists who had been sent packing for using performance-enhancing drugs. It would describe how their teams had either (a) brazened it out, (b) admitted surprise at having been duped, or (c) packed up and gone home.
After a few paragraphs, the quotes would begin. From a race official would come the defensive it’s-a great-sport and-we’re-doing-our-best line, paired with the hand-wringing I-know-how-it-works assessment from a whistle-blowing former cyclist. It would then segue into the dire someday-they’ll-go-too-far prophecy from a drug-testing-lab official, followed by the what-causes-them-to-be-so-unethical question raised by an academic. It would end on the closing kicker — the ain’t-it-awful-but-hey-I-love-this-sport blurb from a fan perched on his bike high in a mountain pass waiting for the racers to come over the crest.
With a bit of extra effort, this template could even be expanded to address the almost-central questions. It could look at how cycling will seek to reform itself and why drugs are so dangerous for athletes to use.
The trouble is, those aren’t the real questions. Why? Because in the end, this isn’t a story about cycling. It’s about us, the public. Who are we that, year after year, we find ourselves again lamenting the unresolved? Is it merely a function of late July, known among journalists as the silly season, when newsmakers are on vacation, governments are running on batteries, editorial desks are scantily staffed, and any halfway serious story lands on the front page? After all, without a doping scandal, Tour de France coverage would languish in the sports section. Is it just a fluke of the season?
I doubt it. That doesn’t explain the story’s maddening persistence. Like a weird morality play, this story returns precisely on schedule each year, with different actors filling the same parts in a ritualized script whose well-known ending never changes. But what is the ritual celebrating? This is not a script about building a better world by exposing, denouncing, and reforming the illicit drug culture of professional cycling. The message is quite the reverse. Each year’s reporting makes it plain that drugs are nearly universal in this sport and that while the occasional high-profile cheater gets nailed, the average racer’s chances of succeeding without being caught are quite high.
Are we paying homage, then, to a culture of anything-goes competition, of which cycling is merely a symbol? Are we idolizing the derring-do of anyone — athlete, CEO, corporate raider, rock star, preacher, vigilante leader — who will hazard everything for the prize? Are Tour de France stories like the latest techno-spy thrillers, where the heroes — handsome, graceful, smartly attired, and in perfect physical shape — accomplish their impossible mission by embracing the geeky edge of bio-innovation with a cavalier disregard for self, future, or anyone else?
Thriller, morality play, religious ritual — however it plays out, the myth is the same. Here is Everyman, locked in intense competition with relentless adversaries. But with a twist: In this version, Everyman must abandon all moral restraint if he intends to win.
In a morality play, the adversary is the ultimate victim. But in today’s culture, it is we — society at large — who are the victims. The test of a good society is how it treats its elders and raises its young — in other words, what it reveres and what it teaches. The upcoming generation looks to the adult culture for lessons on what to hold in high regard. As kids watch us watching cycling, what are they learning? Seven lessons stand out:
- Doping is easy and harmless. Guys this cool wouldn’t do it if it were dangerous.
- If professional cycling officials really cared, they could eliminate doping with a serious testing program. They seem indifferent, so it must not be that important.
- Most cheaters in this sport survive just fine. Seems to be just like life: The odds of not getting caught are heavily in your favor, so just do it.
- Even if they nail you, you’ll become a household name. “All publicity is good,” the Irish playwright Brendan Behan once observed, “except an obituary.”
- The public wants superhuman winners. After some ritual complaining, they’ll give you the wink and the nod of approval.
- Building a better body is the whole point — just look at the magazines. Who cares whether you do it through food, exercise, surgery, or drugs?
- Watching the way adults watch this event, the only visible ethical standard is, “Don’t get caught.” The end justifies the means.
The real farce here is that this is what we’re teaching about our public passivity — the glazed indifference, the moral shrug that telegraphs so much to the young. Absent outrage, what stands between us and the next generation of Enrons and Watergates — led by those who grew up watching us tolerate the Tour de France?
©2007 Institute for Global Ethics
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