Climate change is a bigger threat to the Tour de France than doping
A spate of recent doping scandals in the cycling world has severely undercut the sport’s credibility, starting with the discovery of a French team’s rolling pharmacy in 1998?s Tour and culminating in Lance Armstrong’s televised admission to using performance enhancers. Either because of doping or the pitch of the recession, large international sponsors are becoming rarer at the Tour.
But in the long run, doping may not be the Tour de France’s biggest problem. Another looming—and arguably less fixable—threat to the world-class competition: climate change.
The maps above, taken from an online climate change simulator, show the change in temperatures expected for summers in France by 2050 and 2100. If warming is moderate, then temperatures in the south, where stages of the tour are often held, will increase by around 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit (two degrees Celsius) by 2050. If warming is extreme, then the increase will be closer to eight or nine degrees (roughly five degrees Celsius). The average high temperature for July in Toulouse, a southern city, is already in the low 80s; if it increased to the upper 80s or low 90s, that would be brutal for riders.
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http://qz.com/103669/climate-change-is-a-bigger-threat-to-the-tour-de-france-than-doping
