Another Champion Disrobed? Rebellin Rumored to Be Positive at Beijing Olympics 2008

The sport of cycling just can't seem to stop the bleeding. One by one, our sport's greatest heroes are falling by the wayside, discovered as cheats and liars. Tyler Hamilton. Jan Ullrich. Marco Pantani. And on and on and on. And now today another death blow: Davide Rebellin. This year's winner of the Fleche Wallonne race and 2008 Olympic silver medalists is rumored to have tested positive for CERA at last year's Olympic games. At an event that celebrates fair play and competition, one of the best riders of the past decade now looks to be on the way to ending his career disgraced as a cheater and liar who willfully tried to circumvent to rules to gain victory, an affront to every clean athlete at the games.

In fairness to Rebellin, no official announcement has been made. However, the rumors are so widespread at this point that it seems hard to believe that they aren't true. In what has become typical in the world of cycling, a rider can one day be celebrated as one of the best around, while the next day he is villified and condemned as a cheat. Such is life in the cycling world, where many riders still believe that they can evade the testing and continue to cheat.

In looking at Rebellin's career, a disturbing fact immediately catches your eye: he was a part of the Gerolsteiner team right up until it's collapse. His teammates Bernhard Kohl and Stefan Schumacher both have been banned from the sport for being positive for CERA, and it is looking more and more like the Gerolsteiner team was rife with doping, despite what former manager Hans Michael Holzer claims. That powder blue Gerolsteiner team is starting to look very similar to the Phonak team of many reputed dopers, among them Tyler Hamilton, Enrique "The Buffalo" Guttieriez, Oscar Camenzind, and Floyd Landis.

So what does it say for other members of the Gerolsteiner team if yet another rider is found to be guilty of doping. How does it make Fabian Wegmann look? Or Sebastian Lang? Or Marcus Fothen? Or even Heinrich Haussler? In what could be a sad series of events, there may have been systematic doping at Gerolsteiner, similar to another German team, T-Mobile. Also now defunct, it has taken years for the truth to come out concerning the doping program at T-Mobile, In fact, the truth is still coming out. Ditto with Phonak. Hopefully the rumors of Rebellin's positive are only rumors. Of not, cycling may have to brace itself for yet another wide-spread doping scandal.