What price sporting credibility?

Eddy Merckx and Christian Prudhomme in Qatar (Getty)

“Qatar’s Tour de France bid gains momentum�. That was the lead story on the back page of the Gulf Times today. In the words of John McEnroe “you cannot be serious�.

Qatar is trying to promote itself to the world through hosting world class sporting events. Something it is doing a fairly good job of – during their winter months of December and January thankfully.

Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray relieved them of some of their money just prior to the Australian Open.

The golfers also come here once a year for the Qatar Open to make the locals wallets a little lighters.

And, of course, Tom Boonen, Mark Cavendish and company are currently making the most of the cash on offer in natural gas rich Qatar.

As a minor beneficiary of Qatar’s desire to show itself off to the world I’m all for it.

However, a line has to be drawn at some point to ensure sporting integrity comes before the balance sheet.

Hosting the start of the Tour de France in London worked on many levels.

It helped with the globalisation of the sport by further extending cycling’s reach into the English speaking world and was hugely supported by the Brits.

The 1992 edition was another great success when it started in San Sebastian and visited most of the countries that were original members of the European Union.

These two examples, and the many other previous editions of the great race that have started beyond French borders, have worked because they were effectively in the same time zone and the travel has been limited to a one hour plane trip at most.

But how could you possibly hold a bike race in the Middle East in July?

Come July the temperatures here can reach 50 degrees. As an indication of just how hot it gets the average overnight minimum during summer is 27 degrees.

When Qatar first raised the prospect of hosting the prologue of the Tour de France three years ago Christian Prudhomme, the Tour director, must have thought it was going to be the easiest “thanks but no thanks� he was ever going to have to deliver in his life.

Dining room rumour has it his decline to the original proposal due to the heat was retorted with the offer of building an eight kilometre indoor air-conditioned course.

Even if Qatar could build an indoor course surely it would be prostituting the Tour if it were to take the six-hour plane trip from Europe just for a prologue.

It would be unfair to the riders and it would have a huge impact on the credibility of the race.

At the Tour of Qatar press conference when the topic came up Prudhomme politely answered that there would be a lot of logistical issues to consider, which the Qatar Cycling Federation said they were working through.

Eddy Merckx, who oversees the Tour of Qatar, showed some support for the idea suggesting the need to hire the latest A380 aeroplane and went onto say that Qatar has the perfect infrastructure.

They must be throwing some serious money Eddy’s way to get the support of the greatest cyclist of all time.

I’m hoping Prudhomme puts a stop to any further talk of the Tour starting in Qatar or any other country so far away from Europe - like Japan, which has also been discussed. Let them focus their energy on their Olympic Games and World Cup bids.

At some point the sporting credibility of the race must come first.

Plus there has to be some things money can’t buy. Surely.