Mixing Cycling and Coke Seems Just Fine

Cocaine is, according to a popular saying, a helluva drug -- and is also really, really bad for you. It may be especially bad for you, though, if you are an athlete who makes your money by ramping up your heartrate into the 180s and taking your system to its physiological limits for hours on end.

Enter Tom Boonen, the Belgian cyclist who likes to sprint through his days on a bike. He also may have decided to spend his nights riding a fine, expensive white bike we call "blow," according to Belgian police. This variety of transportation, while exhiliarting for many, is illegal in Belgium.

While he may be in legal trouble, cycling authorities have a more relaxed attitude toward Boonen's arrest.

"It seems that it wouldn't be any violation of our rules because in out-of-competition tests cocaine is not a forbidden substance, for the WADA Code and the UCI anti-doping rules," UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani said from Switzerland.

That's an adult approach, there -- as long as you're not doing rails off the windshield of the chase car during the race and the blood's clean, no foul, dude. By the way, cocaine use and cycling go back a long, long way: in 1904, the Pellissier brothers won the tour and admitted to using "chloroform, cocaine, aspirin and 'horse ointment.'" If they didn't die doing it while cycling over the Alps in 1904, frankly, I don't know who would. 

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.