Kazakhstan Not Helping Themselves

Seeing as though I'm not yet a world traveler, my first impression of Kazakhstan came from watching the movie Borat which wasn't particularly positive.

This article just came through VeloNews:
Kazakh federation expresses support for Vino'

..."We are going to support the position that the results of the A and B samples were a direct result of the violent fall Alexander suffered during the fifth stage of the cycling race," said the executive director of the federation, Aleksandr Antychev.

Dumb move. I, like most everyone else, thought Vino was a great cyclist and great person. Though at this point, let's forget about him and the others who have doped and spend valuable press space on the clean winners and upstanding individuals of the sport.

While on the subject, it's important for everyone to keep the doping scandals in perspective. The sport can be cleaned up internationally, and locally, we can all keep having fun racing and not worry about what's happening with the really well paid pros who are overseas and may or may not dope. This is not the end of the sport unless we, the amateurs, decide to leave it.