sandybeaver wrote:
What most people don't get about Lance doping is that it doesn't matter. Cycling is so dirty throughout that if you're clean, you don't make the Tour at all. The playing field is fairly level. This is why I have
1) accepted a long time ago that Lance doped,
2) have no problem with it at all.
the sport has been rotten to the core for years. Scottish cyclist Graham Obree was sacked from his TdeF team for refusing to take drugs.
"But the pros were so glib. It wasn't like, how was your flight, or what did you have for breakfast - it was what did you use for the hour record?
"I was like, what? And they would say, who was your doctor? I'd say, oh, a GP in Irvine. And they'd say, no no - who's your doctor? Who's your trainer?
"I'd say, I don't have a trainer. They'd say, what did you use? I'd say - nothing. And I could see their impression of me going down and down. They're thinking - 'amateur'.
"That opened my eyes. You'd heard all the stories about drugs, but you'd dismissed them. And here it was, almost openly being done.
"I must have had five or six different invitations to get involved in the process of doping - from teams, doctors, people who knew somebody.
"We all knew who was doing what, years before they were getting caught. And we all know people who didn't get caught.
"It was like two worlds - we knew what was going on, but we weren't meant to tell anyone outside our world. But I didn't want to be part of it. I didn't want to be involved."
But my career was cut short because of other people's drug-taking. To put it more bluntly, my career was cut short because I wouldn't take them.
"I wasn't accepted; I was considered a risk to have in a team. I was considered a loose cannon, so that was it - wallop. Persona non grata. And I couldn't even say why at the time, because I would have been sued.
"I know that there's still a big pile of it going on, and it's so hypocritical that I can't stand to watch these guys come past. Their ilk in that sport have robbed me of my career.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/6748587.stm