a lot of us are confused by what's going on in the tour de france.  or what's not going on in the tour de france.  or what was going to be going on in the tour de france but has now been stopped.  probably.  almost certainly.  kind of. 

we are, of course, referring to dopage.  there's been a little mention of it locally on the m street blog but i do not get the impression that it has hurt turnout for the sweet benefit they are putting together for our local junior teams.  some people blathered on endlessly about it on email lists, confirmign that you don't need to know much about much to blather on endlessly.  and as you might expect, the definitive source of information here has got to be cycling news (follow that link to the bottom for a full and nauseating retrospective) if you're not up to speed.

there's a suprising amount to say about doping.  and much of it has already been said so we won't waste bandwidth.  but there's an area that has not been covered.  how do we talk to our kids about doping?  if your kids have posters up of all the top uci racing stars and were planning to glue their ass to the couch for the cyclgasm, or whatever the hell it's called, and follow ullrich or sevilla or basso, how do you talk to them about this?  we know how to talk with our kids about sex and drugs and peer pressure and even the evil powers of rock and roll.  oh wait, wrong link.  evil powers of rock and roll are adequately covered here.  but how do we talk with out kids about doping?

as a public service, the racing union offers:

a child's first primer on doping in professional sports.

there are some very lucky people out there.  but they are different from you and me.  do you know how?  they get to do something they love for their job.  they ride a bike!  do you like to ride a bike?  most people do.  they ride bikes very fast for very long periods of time.  and they get paid to do it.  the faster they ride, the more they get paid.  it's amazing.

but they also get tired from all that riding.  sports are very physically demanding.  you can get tired or sick from all that riding.  so many people seek the help of a doctor. 

a doctor is able to help you use special medicines to make your muscles big and strong and your blood work even better than it does now.  this is not easy, and the doctors need to work closely with their customers patients.  they sometimes have to use needles.  your doctor may have had to give you a shot from time to time.  those shots probably hurt, but these doctors give shots that make you go very fast on the bike.

the doctors use all sorts of machines and scientific gear to help them do their jobs.  you may not like to go see the doctor, but these cycling heroes do not mind.  they understand that their earning potential is closely tied to how fast they can ride.  so they know that seeing the doctor is a necessary step in becoming a famous bicycle racer.

inside your body is something called blood.  they sometimes pull some of it out of the cyclists.  don't worry, the doctor's won't keep it.  they just borrow it for a while, much like you might share a toy car with a neighbor or a friend from school.  the doctors will give it back just in time for an important event.  they'll take good care of it in the meantime as well.  you can get very sick if the doctors don't take good care of your precious bodily fluids.

the doctors sometimes proscribe medicines which help you to ride your bike very fast for many days.  the names of some of these medicines can be very long and complicated, but you don't need to worry.  in fact, some bike races make it easy by putting the names of the special "go fast" medicines right in the title of the race.

the doctors spend a lot of time thinking about how to make you go as fast as possible.  they collect data and make things called charts which show how much faster you can ride if you follow a specific "training" plan.  this is often referred to as the science of cycling.

science is filled with numbers and graphs.  lucky for us, the doctors take care of all that hard stuff.  we just get to sit and enjoy watching the cyclists pedal really, really fast.  but we should all remember to say a big thank you to the doctors who are able to make cycling such an exciting and vibrant sport.  thanks doctors!

note: there might be a very small number of you who are amateur athletes and taking performance enhancing drugs to compete in amateur bike races in our local area.  in subsequent installments of the primer, we'll get you all you need to know to explain what you do to your kids or the impressionable young cyclists who are just starting out including plasma withdraw and insertion logs, steroid cycles and cetrifuge operations.  and let's not forget how important cleaning those needles is.  keep the bleach handy!