Has Pro Cycling Cleaned Up Its Act?

The Tour de France and professional cycling as a whole appear to have cleaned up their act, with the share of participants found guilty of anti-doping violations dropping continuously over the past two decades. Given the sport’s history, you don’t have to be a cynic to at least put an asterisk to these numbers, however. Too often have allegedly clean champions later been found guilty of doping as anti-doping agencies caught up with the latest performance enhancing drug of choice. Looking at the data compiled by French website cyclisme-dopage.com is sobering to say the least. It reveals that the Tour de France winner in 44 of the last 57 years has been found guilty of doping at some point in his career, many of which having retroactively been stripped of their Tour wins.