It’s a doping dozen, a double hat trick, or maybe  just the Doping Super Grand Slam.

Whatever you want to call it,    six consecutive grand tours have been tainted  in the wake of  the  three-month suspension handed down to  2007 Giro d’Italia winner Danilo Di Luco on Tuesday.

This disturbing trend starts  with the 2005 Vuelta a Espana continues through this year’s Tour de France, hitting each of the big tours twice.

• Roberto Heras won the 2005 Vuelta on the roads …  but lost the title after failing a doping test. Denis Menchov of Russia was later declared the winner.
• Ivan Basso won the 2006 Giro d’Italia …  but he was implicated and ultimately admitted being part of the  Spanish Operation Puerto scandal. He didn’t have to give up his Giro win, but he’s serving a two-year suspension.
• Floyd Landis won the 2006 Tour de France …  but a positive doping test ultimately led to the Tour declaring Oscar Pereiro the winner after Landis lost his arbitration appeal. (Landis is appealing now to the Court of Arbitration for Sports.)
•  Alexandre Vinokourov won the 2006 Vuelta … but he was kicked out of the Tour de France this year and fired by the Asatan team after he failed  a doping test at the Tour. He retains the Vuelta win, however.
• Di Luca won the Giro this year … but the Italian Olympic Committee suspended him Tuesday. His crime: an association with  Carlo Santuccione, the Italian doctor who served a five-year suspension from 1995-2000 and was  the alleged ringleader of a  doping scheme that provided doping products to athletes — the so-called Italian “Oil for Drugs” scandal (which was a huge deal until the Spanish’s Operation Puerto knocked it out of the headlines.) Di Luco apparently gets to keep his maglia rosa.
• Finally,  Alberto Contador won the 2007 Tour de France … but got the yellow because Team Rabobank fired Michael Rasmussen, who was in the yellow jersey at the time and a sure winner in Paris, for  allegedly lying about his whereabouts while missing out-of-competition doping tests. So, even though Contador is apparently clean, ol’ chicken arms Rasmussen makes it  six in a row.

And thankfully, this streak appears to have stopped with the  2007 Vuelta, which was won on the roads this time by Menchov. The Russian’s  potential Vuelta win on the roads of Spain in 2005 was stolen by Heras and  his Tour de France this year was ruined because he had to ride in support of the soon-to-be disgraced Rasmussen despite entering the TdF as  the team leader.

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