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There is rather a long history of fraud in sport competitions, and doping has plagued the Tour de France almost since its beginning in 1903, culminating on 13 July, 1967 with the dramatic death of British cyclist Tom Simpson on the climb of Mont Ventoux, attributed to the use of amphetamines and complicated by the now defunct practice of drinking as little as possible.1 Nearly a year after the 2006 “Tour de Chaos”, when nine riders who were implicated in an international doping probe based on blood transfusions were ruled out of the race and the winner of the yellow jersey tested positive for testosterone,2 a sequence of events again plagued the 2007 competition. First, a German rider was tested non-negative for testosterone in an out-of-competition antidoping control a few days before the start of the race. Then, an Italian rider tested “non-negative” in a doping test for testosterone after stage 11 and a Spanish rider was found guilty of …
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Competing interests: None.