KEY POINTS:
The Tour de Farce it was called, and farcical it was the favourite and the yellow jersey-holder among five doping scandals. The biggest crisis in cycling, they said.
Well, no, it wasn't. That was a decade ago when doping, cheating and lying was the norm and when nobody
got caught.
Cycling is on the rack but there is reason for hope. The code of denial is broken and doping is beginning to be acknowledged for the cancer it is. It infested the sport so devastatingly because those with a vested interest shut their eyes, held their noses and spoke nonsense.
Some still do but crucially many have taken the first and most important step and acknowledged the problem. Teams are holding riders to account where once they doped them. Sponsors are opting for losing clean over winning dirty and the International Cycling Union (UCI), for so long an apologist, is showing signs of facing up to its obligation to deliver fairness as well as profit.
But changing a culture may take generations rather than years. Take German team T-Mobile's experience under new broom, and one of the good guys, Bob Stapleton.
It has abandoned for the meantime any ambition to win the Tour, employing young riders, organising extra outside random tests and, when they show irregularities, sacking the rider as it did Sergei Gonchar, the Soviet who won both the Tour's long time trials in 2006.
And yet its rider, Patric Sinkewitz, tests positive for testosterone in the Tour. That is a measure of the cancer's spread. Only the most naive would suggest all the dopers were caught this year.
What is the way forward? Wada (World Anti-Doping Agency) and governments, via law makers and law enforcers, are vital but teams and sponsors must reject the Enron ethos whereby doping is rationalised as simply what is required to attain the result and therefore what is "professional".
The question is whether those around during the explosion of doping from the early 1990s can be trusted to take it into a new era.
The abuse of synthetic blood-boosters such as EPO (Eyrthropoietin) coincided with the UCI presidency of Hein Verbruggen, a Dutchman with a background in sales.
The sport sold well during that period but it is where the seeds of its lost credibility were sown. Whistleblowers were rewarded for their courage and candor with excommunication (thank you for your attempts to warn us Jerome Chiotti, Christophe Bassons, Gilles Delion, Graeme Obree et al).
Verbruggen was succeeded in 2005 by his favoured candidate, Irishman Pat McQuaid. McQuaid's recent statements have been encouraging but what to make of his comment on learning of the testosterone positive of 2006 Tour "winner" Floyd Landis? Is Landis "trying to destroy cycling", he said angrily.
It reminded of athletics' attempt to paint Ben Johnson as the problem rather than a symptom when he was caught on steroids at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Surely the question is: how have we created a sport with such upside-down ethics that it corrupts good kids? Fixing that is the challenge cycling must rise to.
We trust McQuaid's judgment has matured from when, as a racing cyclist, he went to South Africa under a false name and in breach of the anti-apartheid boycott.
McQuaid has said he doesn't regret it - despite it resulting in him being banned from the 1976 Olympics - as he got to see the situation in that country the republic for himself and benefited from an extra two months of racing. It sounds like expediency and expediency has helped cycling into the mire.
When a book was published containing evidence that seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong may have doped, Verbruggen declared his belief in Armstrong's innocence while acknowledging he hadn't read the evidence.
Any hint of a closed mind is unacceptable when the UCI is the body responsible for sanctioning a case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The statute of limitations regarding six alleged EPO positives from Armstrong's 1999 Tour samples expired last month. In the week before the Tour de France began, the Herald asked McQuaid why the UCI hadn't seen fit to have the CAS test the evidence, thereby putting the debate to rest about the athlete who, through his victories (on the bike and over cancer) has brought more money to cycling than any other.
McQuaid said the evidence had been tested and rejected, including in a case between Armstrong and an insurance company where many of those who made allegations against the cyclist were cross-examined "and ultimately the judge found nothing credible against Armstrong".
That case was settled between parties before the three arbitrators were asked to rule on the evidence.
The Herald is unaware of any court decision of finality regarding the evidence. Armstrong settled with the London Sunday Times and withdrew his French lawsuits.
McQuaid has not responded to the Herald's email pointing out his errors. He earlier said his priority was "today and tomorrow". Cycling may find, as South Africa did, it must settle its past in order to secure its future.
* Phil Taylor has covered the issue of doping in sport for more than 10 years.
