It is always there, simmering away, even though 25 years have passed since the Festina affair of and more than a decade since Lance Armstrong confessed his doping sins to Oprah Winfrey. Vingegaard, like so many before him, is having to recite the same mantra: trust me, I work hard, I sacrifice so much.
Believe me, I am not taking anything. That is the unavoidable context, despite all the talk of a new generation. Yet some of the questioning of Vingegaard has been based not only on his results, but also on his taciturn nature and his undeniable Danishness. On Wednesday, after he pulverised Pogacar on the merciless slopes of the Col de la Loze, the questions came again.
His Jumbo-Visma team manager, Grischa Niermann, defended his rider. A winning margin of 30 seconds would perhaps not have been so remarked upon, but inflicting a defeat of in Vingegaard had done enough earlier in the race,by containing his rival.
Now, with Pogacar out of steam, he could press home his advantage. Fraud in cycling has long been a characteristic. In the earliest years of the Tour, riders took lifts, skipped sections of the course and even caught trains. Machines are X-rayed every day, including the race leader, stage winner, other classification leaders and some selected at random. The use of motors, surely the darkest of the dark arts, has long been suspected.
Femke Van den Driessche was suspended for six years after being caught using one in the Cyclo-cross World Championships. But other teams adopt the same policy for fear of leaking too much knowledge to their rivals. And it is obvious that athlete development has continued, sports science has moved at high speed, equipment is hugely enhanced, insight and understanding of performance and nutrition is now fine-tuned to the rigours of the Tour.
