In the doping circus, there's once again a real howler that I saw today in the Tour ticker:
Dear cycling friends! For good reason (the case of Patrik Sinkewitz), coverage of the 2007 Tour de France will initially be suspended until the allegations against Sinkewitz are clarified. We thank you for your interest! À bientôt, your tour.ARD.de team
Ok. So another rider under doping suspicion. Just like it's been all the time. Nothing really new - Team T-Mobile probably has a lot more to work through. Uh - and what is the point of stopping the coverage now? I mean, it was already pathetic enough - stopping it now changes what exactly?
The media could of course, instead of the great outrage, think about how much they themselves are involved in the whole mess. Wasn't there something about direct cooperation between ARD reporters and Deutsche Telekom? Wasn't there the years-long hype of the media around Jan Ullrich and the free mega-advertising for Deutsche Telekom? Wasn't it the case that for the German media, hardly anything else existed except Telekom and their team?
And all of this is completely innocent in the pressure that was built up? The Tour commentators this time had sayings ready that one should also talk about the non-winners - and yet again, as every year, they have fueled the winner speculation and stirred up the hype. But certainly, stopping the coverage will help the non-doping riders (if there are any, I don't know if that's the case) tremendously. And ARD is setting a real sign - of their own stupidity and arrogance, because the media, the sports associations, and organizations have diligently built up all this nonsense.
Cycling is left in the lurch - but the hypocritical directors and functionaries couldn't care less about that. Doping once brought in ratings, so it was ignored. Now they're just playing the big critic - and make just as ridiculous a picture as back then.