I’ve been a non-fan of Matt Cooke since he won Columbia Tri back in '00 or '01 and thanked himself for all his hard work during his victory speech (and allegedly drafted Peter Reid).
But, he is an excellent example of the opportunity cost of pro cycling implicitly tolerating doping. And, this interview is outstanding. I’m changing my opinion of Matt Cooke. I’ll write off his arrogant victory speech at Columbia to youthful arrogance.
Great interview. He sounds so bitter, and for good reason. I can’t imagine how frustrating that would be.
Great interview. Also (I’m a silver lining kind of guy) encouraging to see that even somebody with such strong anti-doping views believes it is now possible to win clean. Couldn’t agree more that those proven to have doped in the past need to be cleared out. Sucks to have the likes of Vino and Riis still involved in the sport.
4 year ban seems appropriate for somebody proven (whether through testing or other evidence) to have taken something like EPO, I (possibly naively) do think that more ambiguous offences (e.g. something for which the athlete has plausibly just been careless like taking a non-approved cough medicine) should warrant a lesser punishment.
Thanks for posting! Great read. Love how raw he is about everything. Pros in all sports walk a fine line whether it is to retain/get sponsors or out of fear of losing their jobs. Many just say the typical “press dressed” answer. Like: “It was tough out there, had to lay it all on the line, Joe fought hard, I have a great team behind me.”
It is nice to have pros who just tell it like it is as well.
Definitely bitter, justifiably. A few things that struck me:
Very outspoken and makes clear he is going to USADA with names.The cascading effects of being beaten by known and celebrated dopers: loss of podium = loss of sponsorship = loss of money = loss of opportunityHis “loss of imagination” statement was interesting to me. Certainly pros motivate themselves and dream about being the best: winning tours, Olympics, classics. When you realize that you cannot beat those who are “lubed up” and you lose that dream, what is left? Leave, dope, or struggle to scrape a living clean in mediocrity. Sad.
He’s clearly bitter about the Mancebos, Fast Freddys, Horners, Zabriskies, Hincapies, Levis, Ryders. The dopers of the '00 decade who lingered around. Are things better now? Can a 20yo now enter the peloton and stand a chance?
His “loss of imagination” statement was interesting to me. Certainly pros motivate themselves and dream about being the best: winning tours, Olympics,
classics. When you realize that you cannot beat those who are “lubed up” and you lose that dream, what is left? Leave, dope, or struggle to scrape a living clean in mediocrity. Sad.
I found this part interesting. In no way is that quantifiable but it is definitely real. I can relate in part to that in triathlon in the context of “I can see what it takes to podium at 70.3’s (consistent 25+ hrs/week for years and very little other commitments, job/family/etc) and I just can’t do that” and it is frustrating and real and influences your mental state in some ways. I think that’s the real emotional heart of his argument.
I hear Dimond bikes is hiring. Maybe time to get out of cycling and into a related, but mostly clean sport. I know a lot of top AG would have major respect for a guy that raced clean and voiced his opinion about it.
Looks like a dude that never made it out of Little League complaining about what goes on at the World Series.
Looks like a dude that never made it out of Little League complaining about what goes on at the World Series.
Yes, he was explicit that he was complaining about exactly that.
Terrible metaphor.
I think some guys like Matt are delusional about their natural talent and how far that could have taken them. He’s justified to some extent, but it’s equally likely that he didn’t have the talent, drive or skill (or a combination of) to be anything more than what he was. Some guys like to boil the argument down to “if I’d have doped, I’d have made it,” which is indicative on it’s own. If it were that simple, Danielson would have bagged 5 Tours.
His anger and bitterness doesn’t make people want to rally behind him, and, for example, has gone after other clean riders who proverbially buried the hatchet with the past doping generation. Like Neil and Lucas mentioned in the tweet. I know Matt called out Lucas simply because he went to Levi’s fondo and Matt, as some sort of self-appointed moral arbiter, felt it appropriate to suggest he supported “Levi the doper” as a result. Neil was also there, and if you want to point at anyone who was truly cheated, look no further than the Tweet included of him being 3rd on the nats podium. But you don’t hear him lamenting about what was/could have been, in that manner.
So while I appreciate his position, to me he just sounds angry and unsettled. The pros I do know at the top level don’t waste energy on that.
Yea I have no way of judging what his actual talent was, but I’d equate domestic pro racing to at least single A baseball compared to the majors (World Series). Maybe. Plus, a lot of really shitty baseball players participated in or won a World Series…
His anger and bitterness completely influence the “following” behind him, no doubt about that.
I think some guys like Matt are delusional about their natural talent and how far that could have taken them. He’s justified to some extent, but it’s equally likely that he didn’t have the talent, drive or skill (or a combination of) to be anything more than what he was. Some guys like to boil the argument down to “if I’d have doped, I’d have made it,” which is indicative on it’s own. If it were that simple, Danielson would have bagged 5 Tours.
There are a lot of guys in that position, and the sad thing is we will never know. Maybe matt knows his hematocrit is low and he would get an 8% bump in power and knows where that would take him.
His anger and bitterness doesn’t make people want to rally behind him, and, for example, has gone after other clean riders who proverbially buried the hatchet with the past doping generation. Like Neil and Lucas mentioned in the tweet. I know Matt called out Lucas simply because he went to Levi’s fondo and Matt, as some sort of self-appointed moral arbiter, felt it appropriate to suggest he supported “Levi the doper” as a result. Neil was also there, and if you want to point at anyone who was truly cheated, look no further than the Tweet included of him being 3rd on the nats podium. But you don’t hear him lamenting about what was/could have been, in that manner.
So while I appreciate his position, to me he just sounds angry and unsettled. The pros I do know at the top level don’t waste energy on that.
I like the anger. A lot of the pros who seem mysteriously not angry have turned out to be not angry because they were part of the problem.
I think some guys like Matt are delusional about their natural talent and how far that could have taken them. He’s justified to some extent, but it’s equally likely that he didn’t have the talent, drive or skill (or a combination of) to be anything more than what he was. Some guys like to boil the argument down to “if I’d have doped, I’d have made it,” which is indicative on it’s own. If it were that simple, Danielson would have bagged 5 Tours.
His anger and bitterness doesn’t make people want to rally behind him, and, for example, has gone after other clean riders who proverbially buried the hatchet with the past doping generation. Like Neil and Lucas mentioned in the tweet. I know Matt called out Lucas simply because he went to Levi’s fondo and Matt, as some sort of self-appointed moral arbiter, felt it appropriate to suggest he supported “Levi the doper” as a result. Neil was also there, and if you want to point at anyone who was truly cheated, look no further than the Tweet included of him being 3rd on the nats podium. But you don’t hear him lamenting about what was/could have been, in that manner.
So while I appreciate his position, to me he just sounds angry and unsettled. The pros I do know at the top level don’t waste energy on that.
You are right, and we’ll never know. There is a point at which clean guys are getting walloped by other clean riders and they simply aren’t that good, and blaming it on others’ doping is making excuses. But, to the very first sentence in Matt’s interview, sport is supposed to be about fair competition, and he did not have that.
Also, Matt was one hell of a runner, and a good enough swimmer to be in position to allegely draft off Peter Reid before outrunning him.
I agree that this could be viewed as a bitter guy who never made it to the top level. That’s the easy conclusion to come to.
However, we know enough now, enough of the curtain has been pulled back, that a lot of what he’s saying makes sense - the dots are starting to get connected. Go back even 2 - 3 years, and those dots were not connected. They were random stories/anecdotes - now their is a narrative that can be pulled together - with more to come I am sure.
Two of those anecdotes/stories that quickly come to my mind are:
Tom Danielson WAS just an average higher level road cyclist. Then all of a sudden in a very short time, he was crushing race fields by minutes up big climbs? How did that happen?
Ryder Hesjedal just “tried” PED’s just as a test a number of years ago? But nothing after that . . or so he says. But then spent time on Rabobank, USPS, and Phonak, 3 teams that we know were riddled with heavy PED use, and very possibly team wide and systemic usage, but Hesjedal never touched any of that?
Yea I have no way of judging what his actual talent was, but I’d equate domestic pro racing to at least single A baseball compared to the majors (World Series). Maybe. Plus, a lot of really shitty baseball players participated in or won a World Series…
His anger and bitterness completely influence the “following” behind him, no doubt about that.
If you’re comparing it to baseball then that seems like a fair comparison. Somewhere between single and double A.
I think some guys like Matt are delusional about their natural talent and how far that could have taken them. He’s justified to some extent, but it’s equally likely that he didn’t have the talent, drive or skill (or a combination of) to be anything more than what he was. Some guys like to boil the argument down to “if I’d have doped, I’d have made it,” which is indicative on it’s own. If it were that simple, Danielson would have bagged 5 Tours.
His anger and bitterness doesn’t make people want to rally behind him, and, for example, has gone after other clean riders who proverbially buried the hatchet with the past doping generation. Like Neil and Lucas mentioned in the tweet. I know Matt called out Lucas simply because he went to Levi’s fondo and Matt, as some sort of self-appointed moral arbiter, felt it appropriate to suggest he supported “Levi the doper” as a result. Neil was also there, and if you want to point at anyone who was truly cheated, look no further than the Tweet included of him being 3rd on the nats podium. But you don’t hear him lamenting about what was/could have been, in that manner.
So while I appreciate his position, to me he just sounds angry and unsettled.
Given the circumstance, would you not to be angry if you were in his shoes? Of course, one could be zen about such things, but that’s the decision of the wronged party.
The pros I do know at the top level don’t waste energy on that.
I’m not sure what you are attempting to say here
Great interview but I am surprised by that attitude after keeping a lid on it for his entire career.
After all, Navigators team was “dripping in dope”.
Two of those anecdotes/stories that quickly come to my mind are:
Tom Danielson WAS just an average higher level road cyclist. Then all of a sudden in a very short time, he was crushing race fields by minutes up big climbs? How did that happen?
Ryder Hesjedal just “tried” PED’s just as a test a number of years ago? But nothing after that . . or so he says. But then spent time on Rabobank, USPS, and Phonak, 3 teams that we know were riddled with heavy PED use, and very possibly team wide and systemic usage, but Hesjedal never touched any of that?
Of course not. Travis Tygart decided the best way to “clean up” cycling was to use the standard method sports use to handling doping: Blame everything on a few scapegoats. He carefully crafted the affidavits to tell that story. By coincidence I am sure, such a plan resulted in mucho publicity for his agency and himself, a coincidence that Tygart has used for the last two plus years to travel the world to promote himself.
Tygart had all the information about the exent of doping that goes on in professional cycling. His witnesses rode for a large number of teams. Exposing Armstrong could have been used to expose a systemic doping problem that goes back a hundred years and involves everyone in he sport, the riders, the team staffs, the race promoters, the national and international governing bodies, and the cycling media. That honesty could have been used to transition or at least talk about transitioning to an environment where doping would not be the norm. That opportunity was thrown away for the sake of self-aggrandizement.
The temptation to blame a few individuals, who are only a product of cycling’s environment, is apparently too strong, so the underlying problem is not dealt with.
The reason the American supporters love them so much is they just want to be around famous people. That is where most of these “journalists” fit in.
Man, if that ain’t the truth, I don’t know what is. Look at Bill Strickland and his relationship with LA (or any of the old guard at VeloNews, with the exception of Charles Pelkey).
There is on journalist today in the cycling press, and that is Joe Lindsey, IMO. Everyone else fits the description above. “Ooh, I’m in Boulder and hanging with the pros!!”.