frtour1-6, Exercise 3: "The Tour is clean now"

Model answer (check the details):

Evidence that would support the claim:
- Fewer positive tests and sanctions over many years, particularly in out-of-competition testing.
- Biological passport data showing stable values across the peloton.
- Performance figures (climbing times, power outputs) that fall back to levels consistent with clean riding.
- Testimony from riders and doctors that practices have changed, supported by independent inquiries.

Evidence that would count against it:
- New scandals, new admissions by former riders, or police investigations.
- Evidence that testing is still easy to evade, or that new substances and methods are untested.
- Statistical anomalies in the data.
- Patterns of secrecy by teams.

Why a final answer is hard:
- Absence of positive tests does not prove the absence of doping, as the past showed.
- Evidence emerges late: confessions and investigations often come years later.
- Different groups (organisers, teams, anti-doping agencies, sceptics) have different interests.

A careful statement: the controls are much stronger than in the 1990s, and the best-documented scandals are in the past, but nobody can prove a negative.

Care: avoid claims about named riders without public findings.