Ok Kev, here is a post for you.

For those of you who don't spend hours of your day checking the latest cycling news websites, Tom Boonen (generally kick ass cyclist, who ass may be seen here) tested positive for cocaine in an out of competition drug test on June 10th. He has since been disinvited from the Tour de France (TdF), but that was a decision by the governing body of the TdF (the ASO). However his current team continues to stand by him (although the team he was in negotiations with has discontinued them) and is trying very hard to get the TdF organizers to relent.

What I find amusing is that the UCI (the cyclist union) will likely do nothing about this incident because:

anti-doping officials say the rider will not face suspension since use of the drug is not specifically banned except in competition.

The reason why this is so amusing is because at the same time Boonen takes only a slap on the wrist (and not even from the UCI) the UCI has instated a rule that any rider whose biological tests return even slightly questionable values will not be allowed to start a race:

“Under the new “no start” rule, riders may be prevented from starting a race for a period of 15 days if blood test results show an anomaly compared with values recorded previously in the biological passport.”

In some ways this all makes perfect sense, but it is still kind of amusing that you can have your career taken away from you for getting a blood transfusion (2 year suspension for doping), or better yet be fired from your team and pulled from the yellow jersey (first place) in the TdF for failing to tell someone where you are at all times, but have very little punishment (even from the law) for using an illegal drug out of competition. I’m not saying I disagree with how things turned out. I don’t want cycling full of doping and I don’t really care what the people do in their spare time, but I just find it interesting that people are trying to clean up the image of cycling and don’t take a stand on out of competition drug use.