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A great many readers have taken time from their busy lives to write about my column on cancelling this year's Tour de France.
The message from many of you is that scrubbing the Tour is too harsh a measure, especially since there have been cheaters and users in other sports such as football, baseball, basketball and yes, even hockey.
First off, The Globe and Mail has printed dozens of columns over the years chastising all North American sports for not doing enough to clean up their act. Baseball and football have drawn our strongest ire since both operate under the belief bigger is better, also stronger (see Barry Bonds home-run chase for full details).
Readers have asked if I'd call for a cancellation of the World Series or Super Bowl if a similar crisis occurred with doping players? Depending on the seriousness of it, how wide-spread and damning, I just might.
The problem is the business of pro sports on this side of the world isn't crying for a purge the way many are in France and elsewhere. Here, crowds still fill up the ballparks, sponsors still advertise and television networks pay fortunes for broadcast rights knowing people are watching.
Meanwhile in France, where the Tour is as much a national celebration as a sporting spectacle, there are fans and media calling for a shut down. One French newspaper even ran a mock obituary of the Tour de France, gone at the age of 104.
Like it or not, the Tour has been plagued by drug issues for more than a decade and is presently in a position where it can set an example for other sports leagues. No doubt, it has done some good work casting out the bad guys but the bad guys keep coming no matter the fines or suspensions.
So while scrubbing the show may not be a popular decision, certainly not among those riders who are clean, it would be a powerful statement in the fight against drugs.
For sure, it would grab the world's attention.
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