Drugs and the Tour de France

I've written about athletes and performance-enhancing drugs before, but I for some reason forgot to touch on cycling. With the Tour de France starting this 4th of July weekend, the question of doping in the peloton has started to run rampant again. The Tour has a long and illustrious history of performance-enhancing drug use (you can see the full history on Wikipedia here) and it's finally starting to get better- we think. More stringent testing for EPO (or Erthropoietin) and steroids have at least created a shield for the Tour to protect them from the scandals of the past. Floyd Landis, the last American to win the Tour in 2006, was tested and reported positive the day after his win- and was stripped of the title. He just made his comeback this past year after a two-year suspension.

The 2007 Tour was especially marked by rampant doping violations. The Tour winner, Alberto Contador, was not allowed to participate in the 2006 Tour de France due to his possible involvement with Operacion Puerto, a doping sting against doctor Eufemiano Fuentes and a number of accomplices, started in May 2006. He is accused of administering prohibited doping products to 200 professional athletes, to enhance their performance.

American cyclist Tyler Hamilton announced his retirement from cycling this past April, after multiple positive doping results. He had been battling depression for years and years, and stated that his doping and taking of supplements were taken in an unstable state of mind. An article in VeloNews, a cycling news organization, touched on depression in cyclists after the death of Marco Pantani.

It's well known that exercise can help combat depression and anxiety; that a healthful lifestyle will contribute to a better state of mind. Newsweek wrote about Phoenix Multisport, a group in Boulder, CO that I've written about before who use outdoor activities as part of a therapeutic lifestyle change.

However, when it comes to high-end, competitive athletics, doping has become a huge problem. We've seen it in major league baseball, as up to 103 athletes were named in the Mitchell Report of 2007. And now, with the Tour in the spotlight, we can look back in 2004 where 8 young cyclists died of doping-related heart attacks. In order to help these athletes, we need to provide a comprehensive education and accountability program. There will always be people who cheat, who seek the best edge, and who want every advantage available to them no matter the consequences; the best we can hope for is a level of accountability that provides stringent guidelines and punishments to those who violate the sanctity of sport.

Here's Greg LeMond, a very famous cyclist, talking about steroids and how they've changed sports:



And here's Lance Armstrong, talking about how to prevent doping:



Here's something funny.

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Michael Jackson's Tragic End

On June 25th, we lost one of the marvels of the entertainment world, a truly talented and tortured artist, Michael Jackson. With his meteoric rise to fame as the centerpiece of the Jackson 5 and then an amazing solo career, in total selling over 750 million records worldwide. However, this fame came at an amazing price.

Having been in the spotlight since the age of 5 or 6, Jackson seemed to struggle with his place in the world. Naming his home the "Neverland Ranch" lead us to believe he wanted to be a child who never grew up (which, of course, led to the infamous sleepovers on the Ranch and the molestation accusations). A documented addiction to painkillers, two failed marriages, and numerous lawsuits for pedophilia dominated Jackson's last 20 years, causing him to become a late-night joke mainstay and most of us to forget his talent.

The question remains- do we remember him for the art he produced? Has there ever been a more polarizing, successful individual? His death caused delays and nearly shut down numerous websites. He had become the centerpiece of a media storm- mostly negative in the last 20 years.

In 1993, Jackson abruptly canceled the remainder of his "Dangerous" tour after admitting on an audiotape that pain from a burn injury while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984 as well as allegations of sexual abuse have caused him to become addicted to painkillers. As of yesterday, June 29th, various news and entertainment outlets were reporting that Jackson had received a Demerol injection the morning of his death- but we'll only find out for sure after the autopsy is published. Lisa Marie Presley, Jackson's wife for a few short years, posted a blog entry on her Myspace page talking about his drug use. She talks about how she and Jackson had conversations about how he would end up with the same fate as Elvis- and it's looking more and more like he did.

Either way, we've lost the most tortured and talented artist we've seen in a long time. There will never be another like him, good or bad. Here are some of the telling articles from a series of Vanity Fair interviews. It will be interesting to see what unfolds from the autopsy results- but it seems as though we've lost another soul to the disease of addiction. Would it have been possible for Jackson to get help? Had anyone offered treatment? Had he BEEN to treatment? Was there support for him to get well, or just to prop him up and keep him out in the public eye? We may never know, but these are questions we can answer as we move forward to help other artists in the future. He was not a commodity- he was a person. And it's hard to remember that sometimes.

Here's a tribute to Michael Jackson:





In health news, here's a great video by Lance Armstrong's organization, Livestrong:



Here's something funny.

As always, connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on Twitter. Become a fan of the blog on Facebook. See you this week.