Cycling should embrace its doping legacy

It is perhaps the biggest part of cycling - the neverending game between the testers and the dopers. The testers develop better tests and the dopers take less-detectable dope and the cycling cycle continues.

That will undoubtedly be the biggest topic again now that the Tour de France is under way - which riders were booted from the race for booting dope. Maybe, when it's all over, you'll remember who won. Maybe not.

The sport should end the ineffective charade. Cycling should legalize it - all of it, from steroids to growth hormone to blood boosters. Why not? If they're going to cheat anyway - and they are - you might as well have the most talented riders on the course competing for the best chemically enhanced times.

The approach would never work for the four major sports (or even soccer - hi, futbol fans). There's too much to lose, and there are plenty of "clean" stars to replace those who fail drug tests. Cycling, on the other hand, has next to nothing to lose in terms of fan interest (close to zero at the moment) or television ratings (ditto). At present, the sport has little to offer beyond scandal, hollow indignation, and misplaced morality - which, come to think of it, is actually pretty entertaining stuff.

Consider: Unless you live in the Pyrenees or you have an unchecked spandex fetish, you probably don't pay attention to the sport until one rider wars with another rider over yet another drug accusation.

Tyler Hamilton went on 60 Minutes not long ago, admitted he had been "instructed" by Dr. Michele Ferrari on how to take EPO, and did some snitching, too. Hamilton joined a line as long as a time trial and claimed his former teammate, Lance Armstrong, cheated.

"I can't say I saw Michele Ferrari ever give Lance Armstrong performance-enhancing drugs," Hamilton said. "But, do I know for a fact that they talked about performance-enhancing drugs and how to take it and when and - when, how and why? Yes."