The Tour de France was won by a rider who gained an unfair chemical advantage. This was confirmed when high levels of testosterone were found in his urine sample. To which I reply, "Eh?". Why the media fascination with Floyd Landis? He won, next to the America's Cup, perhaps the most insignificant sporting event in the world. It was a bicycle race. Stop and think about that for a second. All these headlines, all this fuss, over a bicycle race. In France. I try to live by a few simple rules. If there is a bear in my yard, I stay inside. If a telemarketer calls I hang up. I don't buy meat at the supermarket that is marked way down for immediate sale. And I don't watch sports where you have to wait on the contestants to provide urine samples before you know who won. I blame Lance Armstrong. The constant controversy over his winning the Tour de France created media interest. Not in the sport itself, in the controversy. Then he goes and gets involved with Sheryl Crow and it just gets worse. It was said that Armstrong was inspirational, and in the sense that he overcame cancer he was. But take away the controversy, take away the human interest angle, few would be aware there even was a Tour de France. The news today also says that Justin Gatlin, who won the US 100 meter title and tied a world record at the US championships was running with the knowledge that he failed his "A" drug test and was waiting results of his "B" test. Again, alot of publicity, alot of huffing and puffing over an event that hardly anyone cares about. Sadly, when we talk about track and field we are talking about the original sports. The games that brought us Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe, Bob Hayes, and Steve Prefontaine. There was a time when they mattered, when the athletes didn't have spokesmen or agents. When you never considered they weren't on the up and up. Today I would not walk across the street to see a track meet and generaly ignore reporting of track and field events. This is a cautionary tale for other sports. What if we lose faith, as we are losing faith, that baseball games are being decided on the field? What if we begin to assume, as we do, that any player whose stats go outside the normal ranges does so with a chemical boost? How long before baseball faces the same challenge it did after the 1919 WhiteSox scandal-the public's inability to know that the sport they are watching is real and on the level? Human growth hormone will take us places we don't want to go in sport. Very hard to impossible to detect. Very dramatic improvements in performance. We have already seen NFL players turn into freaks of nature, yet we somehow assume these dramatic changes are all occuring in weight rooms. Meanwhile, pro football and baseball injuries are multiplying rapidly and stress injuries to joints from unnatural muscle mass has become common place. Ten years from today will we have any idealism left at all about sports? Will we just accept the fact that the players are users and adjust to the new reality? Or will we be so turned off that our interest will become, if not lessened, at least not as satisfying? It's time for the powers that be in sports to figure out those answers. Modern chemical science already coming up with questions alot faster than we can find answers.