Why I fear for the very future of this crooks' Tour

It was a truly joyful day, with more than a million people thronging the streets between Whitehall and Hyde Park, and I found myself saying 'Well done, Ken,' for bringing the race here. But when London Mayor Ken Livingstone said doping was a problem 'in the past', he showed himself far too naive.

Scroll down to read more:

What was meant to be a new dawn, a drug-free race, has turned into the worst nightmare since the Tour began in 1903.

Not even the gloomiest among us had expected both the original favourite for the Tour, Alexander Vinokourov, and the race leader wearing the yellow jersey two days ago, Michael Rasmussen, to be slung out. In the process they illustrated the game's habitual 'denial' and hypocrisy.

Even before Rasmussen's team dismissed him for misleading them, the Danish cycling authority had belatedly announced that Rasmussen had missed out-ofseason tests and would not ride again for the national Olympic team.

And who was the first then to condemn the miscreant? None other than 'Vino' himself, who now stands accused of blood-doping.

Although this macabre practice of receiving a transfusion of the rider's own red blood cells or of someone else's is comparatively modern, there is nothing new in cyclists using artificial stimulants.

They have done so for more than a century.

At first it was alcohol, then cocaine ('for my eyes', the 1923 Tour winner Henri Pelissier said), and then, after World War Two, amphetamines.

We have just passed the bitter 40th anniversary of the death of Tommy Simpson, the first English rider to wear the yellow jersey, who collapsed and died on Mont Ventoux during the Tour, full of amphetamines and booze.

From the Seventies, drugs became more effective, harder to detect . . . and even more dangerous, in the form of steroids, EPO (which boosts red blood cells) and testosterone. All of them are synthetic or artificial versions of natural metabolic products.

By thickening the blood, EPO makes it harder to circulate, and since the surreptitious arrival of this wretched drug 20 years ago hundreds of young cyclists and other athletes have died of heart attacks during their sleep.

That is how you should answer, by the way, those who say, with seeming plausibility, that we should drop the pretence of keeping drugs out of cycling and just have a free-forall, with riders allowed to take whatever they like.

Do these people have children? And would they encourage them to take up Russian roulette as a sport?

But that is the technical side of the doping story. What is much harder to grasp is the human side.

Why do they do it? It might be silly to ask how Vino, Rasmussen and the others could behave so unethically.

But how could they be so stupid?

The simple answer is that these drugs do enhance performance.

With two riders of equal ability, the one using EPO will beat the one who is not, even if the winner is dicing with death.

For so many years past, a secret culture of doping operated within cycling. Decent boys who loved bike racing and showed ability would ride as amateurs, then turn pro, join teams and become inculcated into a kind of freemasonry with its initiation ritual. There was an omerta, a code of silence.

Many Tour riders have been waxing indignant these past few days. Even before Rasmussen was ejected, he was denounced by David Millar, the Scottish cyclist: "It screws us all," Millar said. "It's s*** for him, it's s*** for the Tour de France, and it's s*** for us, the riders and the fans."

When Vino went, the amiable Londoner Bradley Wi g g i n s reflected: "I didn't want to accuse people because they had beaten me outright. But when you saw him limping the week before you couldn't help thinking about it. I think everyone has been suspicious of Astana, Vinokourov's team."

All very well, but Millar speaks with the zeal of the penitent, having served a two-year suspension for EPO. And Wiggins has now departed the Tour with the rest of his Cofidis team after a team-mate tested positive. Wiggins will have known nothing of his comrade's dishonesty, but he and Millar, in their different ways, exemplify the problem.

Now the gravest threat is financial. Bike racing is unique, a professional sport with no paying audience except sponsors and broadcasters.

A week ago, two German TV companies cancelled their coverage of the Tour when a German rider tested positive; sponsors now ask whether their brand names are tainted rather than enhanced by association with the sport. That is ominous and so is the threat which is beginning to be heard to remove cycling from the Olympics.

Another possibility would be to suspend the Tour for a year. The race organisers say that would be to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, but those authorities are scarcely impartial — and their own optimistic claims that the Tour was being cleaned up now look ridiculous.

Alas, it is the pessimists who have been vindicated. A couple of years ago, Jean-Francois Lamour, a former Olympic fencing gold medallist who was then the French sports minister, said the doping culture was so deeply embedded in cycling it would take a generation to uproot. It looks as though he was right.

This week Lamour said we were witnessing the death throes of the Tour de France. I hope he is wrong, but I fear he might not be.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft's 'Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France,' has been reissued in a new edition (Pocket Books £9.99).