Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Tour de EPO
Welcome to the Tour of California. Brought to you by EPO.
In sharp contrast to the 1998 Tour de France, this time it's legal. In a way. The Cal Tour's main sponsor -- Amgen -- is the manufactuerer of EPO (EPOgen) and another drug widely used to enhance performance in cycling. And with the penultimate stage ending just in front of Amgen's Thousand Oaks headquarters, many European-based pros will get to see where their drugs are made for the very first time!
Ok, so I stole that last line from one of the more clever of the European news sites which are having a field day with this one. And given my last post on cycling's image problem, maybe I should pile on as well.
But the sponsorship -- in my mind at least -- rather underscores a completely different aspect of Lance Armstrong's legacy. And that is for much of the wider American audience, cycling is now linked to the fight against cancer. Lance's little yellow bracelets -- in addition to making grown men covet the same fashions as my grade school nieces -- connected cycling's highest prize with his battle against cancer. Cheering for Lance to win the Tour and cheering for a cure to the Big C are now somewhat inseperable. Or at least conflated.
Not to drag the point out too much, but while most cycling fans will only think of cheating when they think of EPO, most non-cycling enthusiast Americans -- whom the Cal Tour must certainly be trying to attract -- would probably find it natural that the producer of a drug involved (legitimately) in cancer treatments would sponsor a major race.
Amgen's media release -- "We're hoping to demonstrate the dangers of doping" -- may be laughable, but the legacy of Armstrong on American cycling, linking it with the fight against cancer, certainly is not.
In sharp contrast to the 1998 Tour de France, this time it's legal. In a way. The Cal Tour's main sponsor -- Amgen -- is the manufactuerer of EPO (EPOgen) and another drug widely used to enhance performance in cycling. And with the penultimate stage ending just in front of Amgen's Thousand Oaks headquarters, many European-based pros will get to see where their drugs are made for the very first time!
Ok, so I stole that last line from one of the more clever of the European news sites which are having a field day with this one. And given my last post on cycling's image problem, maybe I should pile on as well.
But the sponsorship -- in my mind at least -- rather underscores a completely different aspect of Lance Armstrong's legacy. And that is for much of the wider American audience, cycling is now linked to the fight against cancer. Lance's little yellow bracelets -- in addition to making grown men covet the same fashions as my grade school nieces -- connected cycling's highest prize with his battle against cancer. Cheering for Lance to win the Tour and cheering for a cure to the Big C are now somewhat inseperable. Or at least conflated.
Not to drag the point out too much, but while most cycling fans will only think of cheating when they think of EPO, most non-cycling enthusiast Americans -- whom the Cal Tour must certainly be trying to attract -- would probably find it natural that the producer of a drug involved (legitimately) in cancer treatments would sponsor a major race.
Amgen's media release -- "We're hoping to demonstrate the dangers of doping" -- may be laughable, but the legacy of Armstrong on American cycling, linking it with the fight against cancer, certainly is not.
