The Future of Sport Is... Dope

The use of drugs in sport has always been regarded as an unquestionable voilation. But as PEDs become more and more wide spread, many experts see doping as the logical next step. Men's Health debates whether the next olympic games should be a drty one.

- Kevin Donahue

IT REMAINS ONE OF THE MOST ENDURING SCENES IN Tour de France history. Tyler Hamilton, aged 32 and on his seventh Tour, grits his teeth as he sprints away from a 12-man breakaway group at the front of the race.

For two weeks, he has been riding with a double fracture in his right collarbone, the product of a nasty crash. Yet, after suffering through his five-hour 198km ordeal on the road from Pau to Bayonne, Hamilton is leading the pack by four whole minutes. Wiping tears of pain from his face on the climb, he nevertheless sails into a comfortable first place. As a spectator it’s nigh on impossible not to be swept up by the emotion of the occasion.

One year later, in 2004, Hamilton tested positive for blood-doping. He received a two-year ban and, after a shortlived comeback, retired from the sport in a cloud of ignominy. He later admitted that, on the night before his heroic effort up to Bayonne, he had injected a bag of his own red blood-cell-enriched blood.

BY THE LETTER OF THE LAW, HAMILTON WAS A CHEAT. HIS TEAMMATE Armstrong, who would go on to claim overall victory, was also a cheat. Then again, so was the rider who finished second. In fact, of the top 10 finishers of the 2003 Tour, only two men have never served bans for doping. In his autobiography, The Secret Race, Hamilton would later write, “You can call me a cheater and doper until the cows come home. But the fact remains that in a race where everybody had equal opportunity, I played the game and I played it well.”