The Tour de France has been plagued with steroid abuse over the years considering cyclists like Lance Armstrong dominated the cycling scene for such a long time only to be disqualified and have their cycling career erased. This kind of left a void in cycling and left many followers of the sport questioning what they had witnessed for the all of those years.
The good or bad news depending on which way you look at the sport is the last rider who was caught doping at the Tour de France was Luca Paolini way back in 2015. That is eleven years ago and either the doping people are that far ahead of the game or the testers have finally caught up and there is no doping taking place. The penalties are just not worth it and it would wreck anyone's career if caught.
over the last few days the cyclists or the top contenders for this years race have been discussing the doping tests during the Tour this year. Tadaj Pogacar and were tested on Jonas Vingegaard the same day at 2am and 5am respectively along with a whole host of other riders. The International Testing Agency (ITA) does roughly 600 tests over the 3 weeks of cycling and they do not have a set number of tests daily and is completely random.
Over and above these blood and urine sample tests the bikes themselves are scanned daily and is known as mechanical doping. This is when a motor is found within the bike set up and no bike has come back positive. there w as a case in 2016 when a UCI mountain bike was found to have a hidden motor, but that is the only such case in professional cycling.
Jonas Vingegaard was tested at 2 am on Sunday morning that has just passed and crashed out later that day. Many blame the lack of sleep for his lapse in concentration because the test may only take a few minutes, but the entire process can take longer than an hour to complete. Team doctors have to also be woken up so they can make sure the process has been performed correctly.
Tadaj Pogacar mentioned that his test was at 5am and after that could not go back to sleep so he had a long day and still managed to win that mountainous stage. This unfortunately is where sport is these days having to monitor everyone in order to gain back any credibility lost over the Lance Armstrong era. I still think there is doping taking place and not naive enough to think it is not happening even though I wish I was wrong. Those who are involved in this will know how to avoid being found positive and are being treated by experts in this field.
We actually do not hear much about positive doping tests these day and the last one I heard was actually a week or two ago. This is the only one I have known of over the last few years and involved a 16 year old school boy playing rugby in South Africa. His ambition was to turn professional having been part of the SA Schools rugby program. This would have changed things for him in a good way because rather be found out at an early age than when you are a professional player.
What this does is send a wrong signal undermining all of those that do the hours of hard work training. I did not know this until researching this post that South Africa since 2015 up to 2025 had 89 positive tests with rugby players which made up 20% of the total positive tests world wide. This does tell me there is a doping culture within the school rugby system and this needs to be eradicated. Everyone knows it is taking place and instead of acknowledging this they need to be taking action.
