Big cookies and dope

I read with interest today the astonishing news that Leonardo Piepoli has demanded a counter test to his Tour de France positive for CER-EPO. He was one of seven riders in this new era of cleaner cycling to test positive in Le Tour. He joined fellow countryman and big mouth Ricardo Ricco, a.k.a. the Cobra, Austria's Bernhard Kohl, Germany's Stefan Schumacher, the Spanish duo Manuel Beltran, of Liquigas, and Barloworld rider Moises Duenas, and Dmitri Fofonov, a Kazakh who rides for Credit Agricole, who tested positive for a banned stimulant and has since been banned for three months.



Now add other high-profile positives like Tom Boonen's cocaine addiction that was recently documented through hair sample testing to the mix and it seems like many of the riders in this new, cleaner era of cycling haven't caught up with the program.



Frankly I think these cheats need to be stripped. Not stripped of anything particular, for now, just stripped. Make them undress for two years and leave it at that.

We've all seen the "Dopers Suck" t-shirts and stickers. And I agree, cheating while racing your bike isn't cool. But I think to get the point across that filling your body with harmful amounts of drugs is indeed dangerous, we should allow doping at an unprecedented level.

Here are my suggestions for what should be allowable in the professional ranks:

1. Bikes should be equipped with IV poles mounted to the chain stays, carrying bags of blood — your blood, Basso's blood, bull's blood, Ullrich's blood, whatever — so you can receive your transfusion en route. Riders could turn the flow of blood on and off with a regulator on the IV and we as viewers could see them race up climbs like a Japanese motorcycles at full throttle. Now that would be some exciting racing.
2. Instead of having race radios, team car cameras, or heart rate monitors shown on the TV, we should be able to hear the racer's sludge, err, I mean blood, surging through their veins like the sound of a Slurpee being dispensed. You'd also be able to switch to real-time heart rate sounds where every 12 seconds you'd hear a distinctive yet dull thud of the heart pumping gelatinous cells to the muscles.
3. As part of the pre-race team presentations we should be able to watch teams inject each other with various drugs and bet on the outcome of the race based solely on dosages.
4. Just once, instead of seeing a team director drive up next to his star and offer a bottle of water, I'd like to see the director offer a small mirror with a line of cocaine for the rider to snort. That would take real bike handling skills to accomplish that.
5. Forget the biological passport that the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) is pushing, fans should be able to buy their favorite rider's favorite stimulant in branded packaging...Ricco fans could have their very own CERA-EPO viles in a collectible cardboard container with Ricco on the front smiling. If you're lucky, you could even get his autograph before he has to strip and can't find his pen.

While there are certainly other ways I'd love to see doping enhanced in the sport of cycling, these are but a few of the early adopter ideas I've envisioned. I welcome your suggestions also.

And while I would never dope, and I wish no one die from doping, perhaps a tragic mishap on the lower slopes on Mount Ventoux would shake some sense into these idiots.

I myself have tried various different types of fuel while cycling: gels, bars, gummy things, and an assortment of beverages are the usual and expectant fare.

I've also tried some non-traditional foods hoping they'd give me both the energy I needed and the satisfaction of taste from eating them.

• Frozen cookie dough balls: You must eat these early or you just have a warm mess of unmanageable dough in a bag melting in your jersey. Tasty, but no EPO effect.
• Tater-tots: If you've cooked them the night before and salted them thoroughly, they're delicious on a long ride...especially if they've had time to reheat in your jersey. Again, tasty, but no EPO effect.
• Turkey sandwich: Just make sure you go heavy on the wasabi mustard and you'll be fine. Filling, tasty, and good for ultra events like LOTOJA
• Lofthouse giant sugar cookie with pink frosting: Like a surge of crack cocaine (not that I know what it's like, but I'm guessing here) that leaves you wanting more. Worst part is you have no milk to wash it down with.

Many of the things I've eaten while riding have done nothing more than hasten the lower GI distress — not a particularly enjoyable experience while riding with a wedge of leather underneath you. And some have simply tasted good.

And so to commemorate the memory of Leo P. and his doping friends, I've opened betting on the next to be caught. This will be a simple "call your shot" type of contest. Correctly identify the next doper to be apprehended (and who will soon thereafter deny everything) and you'll win a bag of my frozen homemade cookie dough for your July century ride.