Friends and acquaintances, knowing that I love competition of any sort (I once played Scrabble for three days for a teriyaki beef stick; one of my sisters took it but only after a loud discussion of what actually constituted victory), ask me how I feel about the Tour de France and cycling generally and the role that performance-enhancing drugs appear to play.
Depending on how you look at it I'm either a cynical idealist or an idealistic cynic. My instinct is that nearly all of them dope. On the other hand their skill is so far beyond mine, doped or not, that doping 1) probably doesn't mean much when comparing Tour riders to everyone else 2) probably doesn't mean much when comparing Tour riders to each other, since they're all doing it. I'm not sure what this means except that they're all light years better than I am or anyone I know is; at that level how much better do you really have to be?
Anyway, I've veered dangerously into murkiness. If I'll spend three days playing Scrabble for a 75-cent prize, it's probably no surprise I follow a number of professional sports very closely, and none closer than Major League Baseball. This article does a great job of pointing out that Americans having a good laugh at the expense of the Tour might be able to find their amusement elsewhere. I also wish more domestic sports fans could get a grip on the role of PEDs on their pastimes. Who knows how Scrabble would be different without them.
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I think the really crappy side of steroids is the number of high school kids taking them to push for a pro career that most will never had. That said, I also think a *lot* of non-athletes would be happy to take a drug that would improve their job performance (actually, caffeine, I'm talking to you).
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