Saddled with a bitter outlook

One thing about top level sport, things are always as bad as you thought they were. Usually worse. There's no room for being one of those goofy types who think the glass is half full. It ain't. You learn the hard way in this respect. Putting your faith in some sweaty muscled type and then getting the scales removed from your eyes without anaesthetic. People were questioning the East Germans from about the time that Shirley Babashoff had all her medals filched by human chemistry experiments. Now we know. Ditto the Chinese. Getting caught at airports with HgH, walking away with a shrug when Epo tests were introduced.

The same for Michelle and Flo-Jo and Linford. Maybe you looked at Marion Jones' gummy smile and tried to make a case for her on the basis of the excellence she has brought to her business since childhood. And it turns out she has been sharing a medicine cabinet with the most juiced man on earth. And you stick a little question mark over her head any time you think of her now.

You stopped wondering about cycling long ago. No need anymore. Between the time of Tommy Simpson riding to his death and Paul Kimmage spitting in the soup you allowed yourself the odd moment to believe that this great sport was still pure and filled with heroes. In your gut you knew though.

You knew but still the level of it has the capacity to shock. This past week in Lille they were reminiscing about the final business of the 1998 Tour de France. Remember that farrago? The farcical yet poignant Tour de France which began in Dublin in the summer of 1998 as a tourism gimmick and finished in Paris as a freewheeling roadshow of sports shame.

As the dominoes fell the stories came out. Willy Voet, a massuer and fixer, was arrested in a car which had 400 bottles of doping products. Voet was among the first to sing. In his book and in his confession he painted a picture of a sporting culture which surrendered to mass doping. To be clean was to be left out. And they shouted him down.

When Voet fell and ended up in prison for a couple of weeks the other names weren't far behind. The Festina boys, so long the beneficiaries of Voet's rub-downs and shopping trips, ended up as the scapegoats. The team's sports director Bruno Roussel and the doctor Erik Rijkaert were questioned and then nine team members were hauled in.

The scenes were memorable. Richard Virenque was the lachrymose star of the show. He and Pascal Herve were affronted to even be questioned about drugs. One bizarre and unforgettable afternoon, we watched with all of France and saw Virenque wandering around in the sunshine, tears on his cheeks, frantically looking for answers, apologies, explanations. So immense and unquestionable was their heroism, their purity, that Herve and Virenque were offended by the process of being questioned.

So last week, after two years of denials and legal threats and sullen insistence on being allowed ride, the guys had their day in court. In the Palais de Justice in Lille, Voet and Roussel face 10 years. Meanwhile, Richard Virenque arrived as a celebrity, signing autographs. What would he say? And Herve? Herve: "Yes I took dope. It took me two and a half years to say it. But I would have confessed earlier if there had not been just the nine of us idiots caught two years ago on the Tour."

And Virenque? Five times king of the mountains, one of the great heroes of the game and just back from the Olympics, what had he got to say? He spent one day stonewalling and tapdancing. Then on Tuesday he had a change of heart. "Yes I took doping substances but I didn't have any choice. I was the sheep, if they threw me out of the flock I was finished. I live in a world where the rules are set up a long time in advance. In 1998 the black sheep refused to leave. He wanted to keep doing his job. I told myself I was in a system where everybody did the same."

And then the little exposition of the philosophy of the peleton: "We don't say doping. We say we're preparing for the race. To take drugs is to cheat. As long as the person doesn't test positive, they're not taking drugs."

Ah, the wonder of doublethink.

When his testimony was finished Virenque left the court room. He faced Willy Voet, whose word he had denied for two years. Then he fell into Voet's arms, crying. It's been quite a cabaret. Laurent Brochard thoughtfully put together the heady days of 1997-1998 like a 1960s acid tripper trying to remember what he did after The White Album came out. He thought there were probably drugs in his body when he became World Champion in San Sebastien, but said they were probably left over from the Tour of Spain In Lille the bad stuff flew with abandon last week, splattering everyone. In absentia, Lance Armstrong finally got asked some questions by peers. Antoine Vayer, another Festina refugee was in the box and jabbing the finger.

"Armstrong rides at 33.5 mile per hour. I find this scandalous. It's nonsense. Indirectly it proves he is on dope."

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. Certainly nothing Armstrong has said or his biographer Sally Jenkins has written explains the phenomenon of a man taking one foot out of the grave and going from being a solid pack rider to being a supreme champion, breezing through two tours at a faster average speed than anyone has ever achieved. There seems to be nothing on earth which exhausts Lance Armstrong these days, except people asking how he does it.

Cycling is putting itself back together these days, putting its make-up back on and making itself presentable for television and sponsors and fans. Yet those ghosts linger and the current generation cycle under a cloudy question mark.

History has taught us bitter lessons. Expect the worst, it's only one positive test away. Sorry boys, sorry Lance. The questions continue until the answers are more convincing than Richard Virenque's tears were. Richard and Willy and Bruno were united in their sense of victimhood last week. Sad to say, but they are right. They are no heroes, but they are victims until the people who ran their sport and permitted - nay encouraged them - to thrive illegally and immorally are rooted out and tried themselves.

Until then it's the same old story and nothing is expected but a bad ending.