Former Danish cyclist Bjarne Riis said he's willing to give up his 1996 Tour de France title after admitting on Friday to taking a medicine chest full of performance-enhancing drugs.
So who would be worthy to receive it? We might have to go pretty far down the list of finishers to find someone.
No. 2 that year was Jan Ullrich. No way. With 7 Telekom teammates already admitting to taking banned performance boosters, and doctors saying they readily dispensed them, is anyone serious about giving Ullrich the title?
No. 3 that year was Richard Virenque of the Festina team. We got a problem here, too. Virenque served a suspension after admitting in 2000 to doping in a case that went back to 1998 involving the Festina team.
No. 4 at the 1996 Tour de France was Laurent Dufaux, once again on the Festina team. Maybe the entire team was clean in 1996 when a doped-up Riis won, but two years later one of the team's soigneurs was found to have a car full of EPO, growth hormones and testosterone.
That takes us to No. 5, Peter Luttenberger, an Austrian cyclist on the team Carrera. He finished 7 minutes out of first place in 1996. Luttenberger was 24 years old when he finished fifth in the Tour, his best finish ever. Last year, however, he won the national time trial championship for Austria as a member of Team CSC.
So No. 5 might be a candidate for the 1996 Tour de France title.
CBC Sports says it's up to the Union Cycliste Internationale, not the Tour de France organizers to decide what will happen with the 1996 Tour victory. No word yet from UCI.
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