For me, July starts with the red, white and blue, then quickly turns to yellow. The yellow jersey worn by the overall leader of the Tour de France.
I’ve been a big fan of the Tour de France for the past decade and a half. I admit that it was the success of Lance Armstrong that brought me to it. The dethroned champion taught us a few compliance lessons.
You can’t ignore the history of cheating in the Tour de France, just as you cannot ignore the steroid era of baseball. The cheaters were ahead of the organization’s will to enforce and ahead of the organization’s ability to catch the cheaters.
It now seems that cycling’s governing bodies are serious about keeping doping out of the sport. It also appears that the science of detection has caught up to the science of cheating. There is less disincentive to cheat if you think the chances of getting caught are remote. Mr. Armstrong was tested hundreds of times. The few times that an anomaly was spotted, it was washed away by the poor testing or whitewashed by the governing body.
You can’t have compliance if the rules are not backed by testing and enforcement.
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If you like the watercolor above, there is a kickstarter project for a book of these paintings: Book de Tour. The artist, Greig Leach, painted that scene from the 2013 edition of the Tour de France and I purchased it from him. Mr. Leach is painting key scenes from the 2014 edition of the Tour de France and compiling them in Book de Tour. If you like cycling, it’s a great project to sponsor.