Scandal Muse

I heard on the news this morning that Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso have been barred from the Tour de France this year. I was excited to follow the Tour this year because, with Lance out, the Tour is up for grabs. If you had asked me who I thought was going to win, I would've said Basso or Ullrich. Guess not.

Now, I have been following the Tour a bit closer the past few races because I have a friend who LOVES cycling and all things cycling. I feel bad that I asked her about her thoughts when she hadn't heard the news yet. She called me sounding very disheartened after reading as much as she could on it on the web.

I read in the local paper that it's not just Ullrich and Basso that are out. There are several other folks out, too, or affected because of the scandal. I read that Ullrich's team, T-Mobile, is now demanding proof of his innocence or they're going to cut ties with him. Ullrich won the Tour in 1997 and was runner-up 5 times since.

I think that these riders had so much pressure put on them to win this upcoming Tour that they did what they needed to to guarantee their victory or maybe the organizers are under a microscope to ensure no doping scandals and they cast a wide net of potential offenders and offenses. Too bad.

Like Forrest Gump said, that's all I have to say about that.