Cadel Evans has considerable sympathy for Alberto Contador, cycling’s latest drug cheat.Which is all very well.But what I want to know is: why isn’t Evans as mad as hell?Why isn’t he mad at Contador for sullying his sport’s reputation even further, if that’s possible?Why isn’t he furious that Contador has lowered Evans’ own sporting status, because that is in effect what he has done.Evans is a cleanskin at the top of what for years has been a dirty sport, and is trying hard to get clean.And a cleanskin on top of a dirty sport does not quite enjoy the same lofty position as a cleanskin on top of a clean sport.When you tarnish a sport you lower everyone in it.Think cricket. Every instance of bookie-inspired match-fixing has torn at the fabric of the game, turning fans cynical about every odd occurrence and turning many away from the game altogether.Cadel Evans and 2008 champion Carlos Sastre are the only two Tour de France winners since 1995 not to have been implicated in a doping scandal.Evans, last year’s winner, was beaten by Contador in 2007 by a mere 22 seconds, a result now inevitably due for scrutiny.Yet Evans says only that Contador is a simple guy who respects his team-mates and his family (who doesn’t?) and ‘‘from what little I do know about him, I do like his personality and character, and he’s a very good bike rider’’.Why be so polite?And why isn’t all-time cycling great Eddy Merckx as mad as hell?Instead, the Belgian legend said he was shocked and disgusted by the two-year ban on Contador and the stripping of his 2010 Tour win.‘‘It’s an excessive punishment,’’ said Merckx. ‘‘It’s bad for everybody, for the reputation of cycling, for sponsors. It’s as if someone wants to kill cycling.’’Excuse me? It’s the ban that’s bad for cycling’s reputation, and not Contador’s cheating?Contador tested positive for the steroid clenbuterol. The Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected his claim that he ingested the banned substance unknowingly in contaminated meat.Why do these excuses always sound like the ‘‘dog ate my homework’’ variety?Why did Contador blast the ban and protest his innocence, rather than cop it on the chin?And when he did complain, at a news conference in his home town near Madrid, why did the assembled media applaud him?If they had to react at all, why didn’t they boo him?It took a plain-speaking Aussie to get it right.John Fahey, the former NSW premier and federal minister, who is now president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), said Contador should be considered a ‘‘cheat’’.With the London Olympics just months away, WADA has more grim news for us.It relates to a new designer drug which mimics testosterone but is undetectable.SARMS, or Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators, are still being trialled for human use but are already widely available.They are believed to have been used at the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the 2009 Berlin world athletics championships.They have caused a spike in the number of cheating athletes from a generally accepted figure of about 1 or 2 per cent to an estimated 10 per cent.So which gold medallists in London will be clean and which dirty?In the meantime, why do we keep making excuses for the cheats?Drug cheats deserve zero tolerance, not sympathy.