dont get me wrong, we make the same point
Lance went over to take on a pack of dopers and came out tops. Everyone was on it so everyone is guilty of the peripheral charges of pushing and possession.
It sounds like he had a deal to get some immunity from tests, but it was long obvious that winners are selected in the tour. Its no coincidence that the team leaders are the best looking, most articulate, charismatic riders too. Cycling is so heavily political - you cant even pass someone without thinking of heirarchy. The tour was happy to have an all american hero emerge and it worked out that he had the cancer backdrop.
People are acting like scorned lovers. The psychology is understandable since many had a man-crush on this guy for a decade then feel like they have been disgraced for a relationship that they now percive to have been based on lies. You have the faithful lovers that will love even when slapped in the face, and the others that are spiteful and narrowminded in thier revenge seeking. These are the ones hungry for a pound of flesh.
Lance et al. went in and got the job done. The job description that they took on looked alot different than anyone could let the public know, but within the peloton it was understood. How many cyclists just said, " I dont want to talk about it" " I am not angry" I can think of loads... it was already the ingrained culture and his crew was the alpha pack.
The whole thing makes me think of war in that people are conflicted by they want to love soldiers but most are naive to the details of warfare. Winning the tour is war.
I think its natural that Lance lied since lieing is as much part of the culture as the doping itself. The outwardly clean image had to maintained during thousands of interviews by everyone. When he thought that people were outing him, he protected himself and probably felt like he was protecting the entire cycling industry from exposing the ugly head to the public. So then the cost was to try to lower the credibility of a couple of witnesses to sve cycling in the eye of the public ... thinking proof was impossible. The whole thing was ugly and dispicable and now reached the point of almost no return. Who would have thought the investigators were going to spend half a billion to prove that a tour de france rider doped in the ninties ?
Cycling in the tour is one of the most serious and straining jobs in the world job. People should stop acting surprised that people are going into battle as well armed as they can. Even making the tour completely non publicised and amateur wont stop people cheating. People were snorting coke before the sprint in fixie bike races in new york, for local bragging rights. I think in the earliest tours people were caught doing things like catching a train. Its just in nature of the game.
The whole investigation only proved that doping is expected and that tests are fallable. If anything I think the court cases have made doping more acceptable in society.
Am I pro doping? , no way ! I would love a clean race between men that fell in love with the whir of a clean chain while riding into the sunset as a kid.
This all wont be possible unless penalties are heavier. Letting people come back to the sport definately sends out the message that its not abhorrent, but human to dope. Almost like.. its okay, we know. The only way to say that it has zero tolerance is to punish the team so that the pressure is locally. All this is futile without effective testing since it seems that everyone was under the limbo bar on those protocols. As it is I dont know if they can deter someone from being the best through a bottle while threatening that they probably wont get caught but if they do they are welcome back in a couple of years, and will probably even have an advantage being tagged as a "now completely clean and anti drugs rider".
I know that people are going to say , well this is what they are doing with US postal now... but its too focal. There is no glory in blaming men who did thier jobs perfectly in the eyes of thier teams given the culture of a drugs arm race. They helped riders win the tour while testing clean. Thats what they were paid to think about how to do day and night. The millions and millions from the court cases should have been used to get testing up to speed since all they did was ruin cycling reputation and end up at square one with shitty testing.
