Frankly, the sport bores me to tears, so I haven't really followed the hullaballo very closely. But this snippet caught my eye:

World Anti-Doping Agency chief Dick Pound said the Landis furore and the Spanish blood-doping scandal that saw several pre-race favourites barred from competing in this year's event threatened the future of the sport.

The respected Canadian official said cycling had suffered from a "tradition of doping" that the sport's authorities had shown themselves to be incapable of stamping out.

"It is a nightmare for cycling," he said. "When you think that the second, third and fourth finishers in the Tour de France 2005 get busted in the Spanish investigation and this year's winner now is tested positive, you got a sport that is in crisis."

Unless the UCI and professional teams made a concerted effort to stamp out the drug scourge, fans could well start deserting the sport in droves, Pound warned.

"Cycling runs the risks that its fans will disappear and conclude that they are really not watching a genuine race, they are watching to see whose pharmacists are the best," Pound said.

It seems logical, and the cyclists I know are all health nuts, so I understand the risk. And yet- let me be a little off the wall for a moment.

What would sports look like if performance enhancing drugs were allowed?

As it stands, it seems to me to be a situation much like the other drug trade. Because it's illegal, it's underground. Because it's underground, it's unregulated. Because it's unregulated, it's very hard to know about the nature and quality of the drugs being used, either from the standpoint of the testing agencies, or the athletes who decided to take them.

I have no idea if he's guilty or not, but there are lots of accusations flying around; about irresponsible leaking of results, international politics, etc. But one thing is clear: athletes at top levels in sports of all kinds are taking drugs, and probably getting away with it a lot more than any sports authority wants to admit.

What are acceptable forms of performance enhancement, and why? That is- do you object to athletes taking superlarge doses of vitamins, or eating special foods before competition? How about sports drinks, some of which promise to enhance performance for hours? Testosterone and other substances are naturally produced by the body, and there are some chemicals that certain techniques can induce to higher production levels. Like...yoga. Should that be banned as well? What is more important to you as a sports enthusiast: seeing ever greater feats of athleticism, or the purity of the "natural" human bodies competing? I still remember being told that I could never be a pole vaulter, because it was "unnatural" for women. I'd be an Olympic athlete if I'd been born just a few years later, I swear.

I was a serious athlete for many years, and I never took or was tempted to take drugs to make up for whatever shortcomings I had. On the other hand, I can completely understand, for those who are within striking distance to victory on the global stage, the temptation. How would sports be different if there were a regulated, scientifically researched set of chemical performance enhancements? My gay boys tell me that Viagra has led to the creation of whole new categories in the Sexual Olympics, and not many are complaining.

I'm not really advocating the mix of drugs and sports be unfettered, or that children should be exposed to role models who are junkies. But doping has been around since before the East Germans put a group of moustached weightlifters on their "women's" teams, and I don't see it going away any time soon. I suspect just as in the failed War on Drugs, the old solutions of testing, banning, and villifying are going to work just as well. Which is to say, not at all.