Without Doping, Where's the Fun?

Nowhere, if this year's Tour de France is any sign
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 25, 2008 12:49 PM CDT
Without Doping, Where's the Fun?
New York Yankees' Jason homers against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 20, 2008, at Yankee Stadium in New York.    (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Doping in sports makes some fans uncomfortable, but it keeps others on the edges of their seats, writes Joel Stein in the LA Times. Case in point: This year's largely shenanigans-free Tour de France has been an exercise in boredom. “Before you argue that your favorite sport has to get tough about drugs,” Stein writes, brace yourself for “years of slow, amateurish, uninspired athleticism.”

“I've gotten so used to superhuman feats that I can't watch guys relying on only their natural talents,” writes Stein. It’s like “watching Spider-Man try to scale a building without his bug-bite-induced spidey skills.” If drugs are too controversial to be allowed, Stein recommends “a tax on performance enhancement”: linemen wearing weights on their ankles, or sluggers’ home-run counts being cut by a few. (More drug use stories.)

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