Strydz wrote:
I am an "older" member and to be honest do not have a relaxed view on doping, Armstrong is the standout but for me it's not that he doped but what he did to others in destroying or attempting to destroy reputations and lives in general. That is the reason for a major dislike of him from me.
As for all the other riders you mentioned, well they are certainly not hero's and should be rated on the same level as basic fruads. Merckx is a little different for the fact it was mainly amphetamine type doping which will certainly give you a boost but wont turn you from a donkey into a racehorse, he certainly shouldn't be idolized but be respected for his obvious talent.

Squire wrote:


Can I ask you what is your view on Cadel Evans?

Strydz wrote:


That there is noway in hell he was clean, watching those tours when he was going blow for blow with Contador, Rasmussen, Kohl, Liepheimer just could not have been done clean

Squire wrote:

Thanks, I was hoping to hear that.

Couldn't you say the same for most top riders, though? Climbing times are still touching old records. Everybody didn't just unilaterally decide to stop doping in 2008/2010 or whatever. The exact same narrative was used in the mid 00s: "Cycling is much cleaner now". Unless there is a real incentive to clean up (which would mean making it impossible to dope, which is basically impossible), it will always be around.

If you think all dopers are frauds, then I don't really know why you are watching sports at all. With the amount of money involved, and with the hypercompetitive personalities needed to rise to the top, there is no way any sports star would shy away from any kind of competitive edge. If they did, they wouldn't be a sports star, because others without that moral handicap would beat them.

Spilak23 wrote:
One thing that I've never really understood is the different treatment different riders get. For example Valverde who you cant see on the tv or read about without commentators or writers mentioning that he was a Puerto client every 5 minutes. But while watching the Giro at no point did anybody ever mention Hesjedal's epo-past.

Another example is riders returning from suspension. Some are easily welcomed back in to the WT peloton without any problems or questions asked while others (Rebellin a good example, Di Luca after his first suspension, Rasmussen) have to go too small teams in the lower divisions to get a ride.

I've never understood some of the double standards.

Spilak23 wrote:
<snip>
I've never understood some of the double standards.

Squire wrote:


Zakarin is another where his doping suspension is mentioned everytime he is shown by the cameras. Really annoying. For English language media and TV, the anglophone riders always get a free pass, while the Spanish, Italians and Eastern Europeans are called out every time. It's a disgusting bias. I don't know how it is in e.g. Spanish media, but I can imagine the aforementioned bias is only apparent for us who follow the likes of Cyclingnews and Eurosport.

As for riders not getting back into top teams, I think that is mainly down to two things. One is having friends in the right places. The personalities of many of the so-called "blacklisted" riders, like Rasmussen and Rebellin, are a bit weird, and they wouldn't be as popular among other riders. Another reason, I think, is that those you think are blacklisted are just a bit too old when they return from suspension to have the top teams take a chance.

That's the double standard explained for you

TheManxMissile wrote:
I don't like doping but i'm able to accept that it is such a big part of top level sport, not just cycling, that to clear doping entirely is about as impossible a task as moving the Alpe d'Huez to Holland using only chopsticks. Yeah it could be done but the effort and resources required are just absurdly prohibitive and then you get into the commerical aspects where France need to keep one of their most famous mountains and resorts. Anyway the exact details of the metaphor arn't important.

For me i will be more ok with a doper based on their level of repentance and ethics post bust. For example David Millar doped but since then he's been about as outspoken as possible offering up genuine help to authorities and being quite open with the media about his experiences and things he's seen. Added to that he does have a likeable kind of rebellious personality. It makes it easy to forgive him and support him.

Contrast that with Vinkourov who never repented and has been as much of a hinderance to the pursuit of clean racing as possible. And then of course the team he works for get busted once a year. His attacking nature was good to watch but there are enough other aggressive riders to support instead.

Armstrong i think has to be separated slightly. His doping wasn't really worse than anyone elses. Just that he and USPS had a far more professionalised system than what had gone before.
Ontop of that was his tyranical defence of his own lie, the Armstrong Lie if you will. This wasn't just denial this was actual mafia style harrasment of anyone, even some of his best friends and closest mates, who spoke against him. Armstrong litteraly destroyed their careers, let alone the careers of riders on other teams that he just didn't like.
They guy is a nutcase and that should be treated differently from the pure act of doping where he was as bad as the rest. His "defence" is what makes him almost impossible to like with hindsight.

It's not a clear issue. Read the books by those more repentant guys and you start to understand how not black-and-white the issue is. Once enough guys are doping then it's better for others to dope to level the playing field. This is how it started way way back just post-WW2. Riders started seeing these no-bodies blasting past them on drugs and taking away their income. How do you get that money back? You start doping. A decade later and every is drugged to their eyeballs to numb the pain. There's very little science going on and we end up with riders getting career ending injuries and even dying.
So riders and teams start being more scientific in their approach. And all of this develops upwards to the present day. The authorities don't have the tech or resources to match the teams. The people that get caught are the real idiots using "old school" drugs like EPO or just make small mistakes and get busted a la Contador.

To be honest if we had a peloton of riders agressive enough and with enough energy to do crazy Vino or Landis style attacks every day and then have the GC favorites able to genuinely attack each other in the mountains, not just on the final km of the final climb or waiting for the TT's, the sport would be much more exciting and marketable. Sad fact but true. You've just kind of got to accept that doping is there and get over it. If you can do that then it doesn't matter who you support and it can just be based off riding style, nationality or whatever.

Wow that got longer than i thought...

TheManxMissile wrote:
Wow that got longer than i thought...