Out with the Old, In with the King.

Tom Danielson, all up in the news last week, trying to gum up the glory of the Tour of Utah with some filth.  Before this, I'd actually put Tommy D. about half a rung up on the scumbag ladder of my moral compass from Hesjedal, but it turns out maybe I was giving him too much credit.   Naturally, they tossed him and resumed racing.  What else can you do?

Tommy D still has a right to have his B sample tested, and given the fight he's put up so far, I envision him denying this one out right until the bitter end.  That's fine.  The system affords him that right, and honestly no one really cares if he did or didn't dope this time around simply because the net results of the whole thing was so profoundly good; that when you get rid of the old dopers who continue to mire the otherwise beautiful potential of the sport - rightly or wrongly doesn't matter - the genuine, youthful talent finally gets a chance to bubble up to the top.

And bubble right up they do.  
When you get right down to it, drugs can be effective, but there are certain things - genuine toughness for example - that cannot be ingested, injected, shoved up your ass, or otherwise bought:

Only thing worse than crashing at 50 mph is quitting the race... And waking up the next morning! Still in business. Some riders in front of me overlapped wheels and laid it down on the descent. Broke my shoe, glasses, helmet, and about everything near me, but no bones. Thank God. #blessed #tourofutah #bacon

A photo posted by Ben King (@bking137) on Aug 6, 2015 at 6:40am PDT

There's no pill for that.  
Good week to be a Virginian.  Proud of those guys.

In a way, I hope Tommy D's B sample comes back clean, just so it can be even more obvious that it doesn't matter why he needs to go, only that it's time.

Into the darkness, I say.  There's a light at the end of the tunnel.  We'll get there just fine without you.

Up, up, up.