Why my respect for professional cycling is growing

Triathlon Forum
1

The Tour de France is “clouded” by doping scandals, and cycling is reeling. Fans are abandoning left and right because the sport isn’t clean. Teams fold, sponsors leave. Barry Bonds hits #whatever, breaks records, clearly more roided than any cyclist ever, and the fans cheer, MLB throws big parties, and the money keeps flowing…

I will watch and support cycling, I will not watch or support MLB, NFL, or the NBA. Why? Because all professional sports have PED problems, but ONLY cycling is trying to clean it up. Good for cycling in general that they are trying to catch the cheaters, good for Rabobank for pulling their own rider (to their own financial detriment) when they believed (no positive tests) their rider may have doped, good for sponsors like Cervelo that are helping teams institute anti-doping / ride clean programs. Cycling is not reeling, cycling is trying to clean up, and that is a good thing.

It’s good when my children ask, “why did he have to pull out of the Tour?” and I can answer, “Because he was cheating, and it’s not good to cheat.” Try explaining Barry Bonds to a 4 year old.

Thank you cycling, thank you teams that are trying to clean up the sport, thank you Gerard for your efforts, my next bike will probably be a Cervelo (because I like what they are doing for cycling). If other big sponsors have representatives on Slowtwitch, to you I say, keep sponsoring cycling, this is a fine hour for cycling. Vive le Tour.

2

Excellent post, it’s too bad the media can’t be bothered to pick up on this. If they would we might have a cleaner sporting world and cycling would not be looked upon as something it is not…the dirtiest sport out there.

3

I concur! I struggle to understand why cycling gets such a terribly hard rap, when other sports at least turn a blind eye to doping, or in reality promote doping (not directly, but perhaps as cycling did 10-15years ago), through pushing performance expectations with PED’s the only real option… I really hope cycling can come out the other side of all of this far better off, and that something is done in other sports to show that they are far worse…

4

I agree with your views on cycling. However I am not going to stop watching other sports, and I also think that the other sports know that they need to do some cleaning up.
BTW, I enjoyed your performance in Transformers.

6

Now I’ll have to watch Transformers.

BTW, I enjoyed your performance in Transformers.