Tour de France anti-doping tests and cheats

Tour de France route from Wikipedia uploaded by Sémhur

Cycling's premier event, the Tour de France, starts on Saturday. But even before the first stage gets underway in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, scientists are claiming that the Tour's anti-doping test are flawed and some riders have found new ways of cheating.

According to the BBC, Pierre Bordry, the head of the French Anti-Doping Agency (Agence Française de Lutte contre le Dopage, AFLD) has raised concerns over the reliability of tests scheduled to be carried out by the sport's governing body the International Cycling Union (UCI) during this year's Tour.

Last year AFLD and UCI shared responsibility for testing but, as the BBC reports, there was friction between the two bodies with the French claiming that the UCI had given some top riders preferential treatment and had relied only on screening samples rather than backing them up with customs information and police investigations.

The UCI will conduct tests alone this year with observers from the World Anti-Doping Agency, Wada, on hand to oversee the screening process.

As far as Bordry is concerned, that's proof that Wada also has some doubts about the UCI's ability to keep the Tour drug-free.

"I think if this year there are three people from Wada to control UCI, surely there is a reason for that," he told the BBC.

Bordry is also critical of the new passport introduced by the UCI to establish a "biological profile" of every rider based on blood and urine samples taken throughout the year.

It's supposed to set a norm of levels for each rider but Bordry says it can be easily foiled by taking small but regular amounts of doping substances.

Bordry is not alone in his concerns ahead of this year's Tour.

Bloomberg News reports that while testing in cycling has become more rigorous, riders have found new ways of cheating.

"Cyclists are transfusing less blood and injecting smaller doses of stamina-building drugs to try to get around more intensive doping tests, according to four scientists who analyse exam results," it says in a report that looks at the general problem of doping in cycling.

“I’m afraid things are as bad as they’ve ever been,” Michael Ashenden, an anti-doping researcher on Australia’s Gold Coast told Bloomberg News.

"What I see is the incidence of riders trying to dope and avoid detection isn’t very different to how it has been throughout history.”

The UCI has defended both its passport and its testing, insisting that it does more than most other governing bodies to try to combat drug-taking.

"We have created the most sophisticated tool that many other international sports organisation would like to introduce," Enrico Carpani, a UCI spokesman told the BBC.

"We are explaining, we are selling the biological passport to other federations so that's proof that this new approach is the most important and the most reliable that sport has today to fight against doping."

This year's Tour de France, the 97th edition of the race, will begin on Saturday with the prologue in the Dutch city of Rotterdam.

The final stage will be on July 25 with riders crossing the line on the Champs Élysées in Paris.

A French firm where workers are busy doing nothing - and getting paid for it

Every day Carmen Girard turns up for work at National Power Packs in Pontarlier in the département of Doubs in eastern France.

The 36-year-old has been working for the company, which assembles rechargeable batteries, for 15 years.

But since June, Girard and her four female colleagues have quite literally had nothing to do.

And they're getting a regular monthly income for not doing it.

A month earlier their boss informed them that assembly and production were being transferred to facilities just outside of Rotterdam in the Netherlands where he lives and that the company in Pontarlier was effectively ceasing its activities.

The machinery has remained in place and so have the five employees. They weren't fired - and still haven't been.

Instead they have received their regular monthly salaries for doing absolutely nothing apart from turning up each day.

A typical day starts for Girard at 8.30am.

"First of all I deal with my personal letters and emails, then we watch television, play Scrabble, Rubik's Cube or Sudoku," she said on Laurent Ruquier's afternoon radio programme, On va s'gêner.

"It's like a phantom company right now - 440 square metres with nothing to do," she added.

There has been no sign of life from their boss, apart from a couple of emails informing them of the closure and instructing them to tie up loose ends with customers.

And in spite of repeated attempts to reach him, he's no longer answering his mobile 'phone.

The big question of course is why the five women haven't been fired. And it's one to which Girard says she has no answer.

They've contacted union representatives to find out where they stand legally and have have been told that if they look for and accept jobs elsewhere they'll be considered to have resigned from their current positions, thereby losing eligibility to any redundancy packages that might be coming their way - eventually.

Girard admits the situation could be worse, realising that there probably aren't that many bosses around who would continue to pay salaries to employees for sitting around doing nothing.

All the same she and the other four woman find themselves in employment limbo, knowing that they have no future with the company but just wishing that their employer would take the necessary steps so that they can all move on.

"Sometimes we do a tour of the building just to talk to employees at another company," she says.

"We feel useless and as though we don't really deserves our salaries."