Tour Files: The Teflon Spaniard

How defending champion Alberto Contador shrugs off controversy and appears to carry none of the burden that surrounds him is beyond Anthony Tan’s comprehension. The Spaniard and his Saxo Bank-Sungard team must be made of Teflon, he figures.

How defending champion Alberto Contador shrugs off controversy and appears to carry none of the burden that surrounds him is beyond Anthony Tan's comprehension. The Spaniard and his Saxo Bank-Sungard team must be made of Teflon, he figures.

It will make the sport a laughingstock. When the world's most famous English-speaking cycling commentator says the sport will be further reduced to something resembling the Cirque du Soleil, should Alberto Contador win this year's race and later be stripped of the title, you know the situation's rather serious.

The buzz within the Tour de France salle de presse is still there, albeit not as fervent, but what is abundantly clear is that I am not the only one who has come to the Vendée with a heavy heart.

As I made the day-long journey from Sydney to Paris, then drove 400 kilometres to Nantes (due to afternoon traffic on the capital's boulevard périphérique, I moved an excruciating 12km in the first two hours), I had plenty of time to ponder what I might want to get out of this 98th edition of La Grande Boucle.

But like a constant migraine, one thought kept circling in my head, and continues to do so: What the hell am I doing here?

What the hell am I doing here, when the race winner is likely not to be known till after me and the millions of fans leave and return home? When the integrity of the sport has reached rock bottom (again)? When, before a pedal is turned, Contador is vociferously booed as if he were a serial rapist, while Andy Schleck, his likely greatest nemesis, is cheered with such clamour you'd think he'd already won?

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"The problem is some fans are used to this controversy and it has actually become part of the appeal," Bob Stapleton, the owner of the HTC-High Road team, told the New York Times. "In Europe, there's almost an addiction to this supermarket drama, this soap-opera drama. It wouldn't be the Tour de France without it."

Drama fans desire – good versus evil is a theme as old as humanity itself – but do they really want the sport perceived the way it currently is? As a bit of a joke?

For the majority, I would argue non.

After the tart response he received Thursday inside the colosseum of the Grand Parc du Puy du Fou (a recent poll claimed two-thirds of French cycling fans preferred the defending champion stay home in Pinto), I'm certain Contador would also agree. Though just like Paul Kimmage's question earlier that morning designed to rile him – "Why should we believe you?" asked the pugnacious Sunday Times journalist – the negativity seems to slide off the Spaniard as if he were made of Teflon.

"The idea that I could lose the Tour seems ridiculous," Contador, from his raised position and flanked by team owner Bjarne Riis, said, the unlikely duo staring down Kimmage who placed himself middle-seat, front-row (and from my position a few rows back, the Irishman looked to be staring straight back). "I've undergone a lot of [anti-doping] controls and during my career because I've won a lot. It's ridiculous that I could lose the Tour. I'm confident in the outcome of my case."

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At the Saxo Bank press conference, before the questions came a rare moment of humility from Riis, who begged – yes, I said begged – us, the media, "to understand. If you don't agree that Alberto is riding, you should question the system and not so much us or him.

"Everybody would love to have had a solution a while ago, before the Tour, but that hasn't happened. Unfortunately that's the way it is. That's the rules we have to respect, we can't do anything about it.

"Alberto was cleared by the system," declared Riis, "and has all the right to ride. As long as he is cleared we will continue to support him and that's also the reason why he is starting in this Tour. I don't see why he should be punished or suspended when cleared. I don't think it's fair so that's also why he is here."

Okay, Contador was cleared by the Spanish "system" – though we still don't know why – which, in the absence of a national doping agency, was his national cycling federation (RFEC) and which clearly struggled not to show bias. But he is not yet cleared by the system known as the Court of Arbitration for Sport and until then, it's a bit of a fib to say "cleared by the system".

And as far as the "system" is concerned, Riis has in the past been critical of the protracted and muddled nature of the anti-doping process – one of the hen's teeth-rare items he and I agree upon – but now seems to support it. Don't forget, from the day Contador tested positive on 21 July at last year's Tour to 15 February this year, the day he was cleared by the RFEC, almost seven months had elapsed – and each stall within that period was caused by none other than the sport's governing body, the UCI.

Given the lamentable situation cycling finds itself in, how Riis managed to secure yet another year of funding from title sponsor Saxo Bank (who was ready to pull the plug last year, before the Dane got on his knees and sweet-talked them into staying one more season) is beyond me.

It's about as comprehensible as the best-looking podium girl running up to me in the Tour village and asking me to marry her, and demanding we make sweet love each night for the rest of our lives.

Though, just like Contador and the way he shrugs off controversy that follows him round like chewing gum stuck to your shoe, it seems not to bother this team or its members, while others like HTC-High Road with their squeaky clean record struggle to exist.

"He's going to carry the weight of whatever the final decision is of his case [with CAS]," Liggett said. "That's got to affect him somewhere down the line."

I'm not so sure, Phil. I think he's quite ready to win maillot jaune number four.

Follow Anthony on Twitter: @anthony_tan