In this day and age of the anti-doping movement in cycling, the events of Wednesday in Belgium caught ol’ 10 Speed by surprise.

I thought, at the minimum, sprinter extraordinaire Tom Boonen would be suspended by his team because of a positive out-of-competition doping control for cocaine and that he’d be sent off to rehab to get his life back in order.

And from a marketing/sponsorship perspective, I expected the worst, thinking the news of Boonen’s cocaine bust would pretty much kill his team, which was in the last year of its deal with its two main sponsors — Quick-Step and Innergetic.

But wonder of wonders, both Quick Step and Innergetic announced Wednesday a three-year extension to their deals to sponsor the Belgian team. The companies and the team expressed support for Boonen, Boonen himself expressed contrition, and it looks like he is headed to rehab, though not under a team suspension.

Of no surprise Wednesday was that, first, the Tour de Suisse and then the Tour de France said Boonen is not welcome at their races. Quick-Step is, just not Boonen.

The support of Boonen by the sponsors and the team is surprising because it goes against the wave of quick dismissals in the cycling world over the past few years, with teams rarely standing behind their guys who fail doping controls. That kind of bugs me — the whole guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude. I’d hate to see anyone get Richard Kimbled — i.e. falsly accused.

(Having said that, I had no problem with Rabobank sacking Michael Rasmussen last year in mid-Tour on allegations that he lied about his whereabouts in avoiding pre-Tour doping controls. Maybe it was his body language that got to me, the way he was flicking away the spectators who were lambasting him on the climbs. Dude never failed an actual drug test, tho lying to avoid them is tantamount to a guilty plea according to the anti-doping code.)

Anyway, it’s nice that Quick-Step, Innergetic and the team are standing by their guy, though I hope it’s out of concern for him and getting his life back together as opposed to keeping on the payroll a high-end talent, one of the best sprinters in the world. Maybe it’s a little of both.

Now it’s up to Boonen. He has to find out the deep-seeded reasons for his fall, then work to make things right in his life. Getting busted for coke in an out-of-competition test could end up being a gift that prompts him to figure out how and why his life has been spinning out of control.

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