I know that everyone has heard enough about doping already so the last thing I want to do is write yet another article about it, but there is still a little more I want to say. I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about how frustrating I am that people have an over-simplified view of this issue; demonizing riders instead of trying to understand why they made the choices they did. Focusing so much on how "evil" the dopers are and meanwhile ignoring the riders that had the courage to stand up to the system and say no. I thought I had made my point but just after I wrote that I read Dan Coyle and Tyler Hamilton's book, "The Secret Race" and it shifted my opinion on some of these issues.
While I wouldn't call him a "scumbag", Tyler is no hero (to his credit, he takes full responsibility for his actions and time and time again points the finger at himself before pointing it at anyone else). The book forces us to ask the question, "What would you do?". What would you do if you had worked your whole career to get to the highest level of the sport and then suddenly you are there and you realize you have no hope of ever being anything but pack-fill without drugs... which, oh by the way, everyone else is taking. Your team management offers you drugs, something they don't do for everyone. But they do it for you because they believe in you. What would you do? We would all like to think that we would just do the right thing and walk away. But the truth is, if these guys had walked away, we wouldn't even know who they were (think Scott Mercier) and someone else would have taken their place in a heartbeat. Whatever we would choose, the fact remains that it's a shitty choice to have to make. We have blamed individual riders far too long for a bad system that forced them to make that choice in the first place.
Personally, I feel lucky that I never felt like I had to make that choice. I have had opportunities to take drugs, I have known people (including some former teammates) that doped, I have been "retroactively upgraded" in past results, but I never really felt like drugs would do anything positive for me. If I have any sadness or anger, it is as a fan. This book made me think back to a lot of races that were so inspiring to me when I first watched them. When I watched Lance win in 99', when I watched Tyler finish the 2002 Giro with a broken collarbone, when I watched Floyd come back from 8 minutes down and win the 2006 Tour I was inspired. These performances made me love my sport. Did I have my suspicions about doping? Of course. But I have always thought that it was important to give riders the benefit of the doubt because amazing things are possible without cheating. As my old boss, Brian Walton always said, "If I didn't believe that it was possible without drugs I wouldn't be able to be a coach". The truth is, they are still amazing athletic achievements, drugs or not, but they are forever tainted, and that is very sad.
It seems like Lance will keep lying until he has lost every single supporter
Until recently, my opinion on the Lance scandal was "Yeah, he doped, but does it really help the sport to go after him now?". I figured that the USADA had a vendetta against Lance because he never got busted and he was cocky. But for me the central question for me was always, "What is best for the sport?". I thought that going after Lance would only hurt the already tarnished image of the sport, hurt the Livestrong charity, cause more sponsors to pull out of cycling and more teams to go under. (By the way, all of these things have happened). Besides, everyone agrees that the sport is cleaner now. Even if there are still dopers out there it isn't the same culture of doping there once was. Riders today aren't faced with the lose-lose choice of "dope or quit", and people have started to realize that eventually everyone gets caught. If Lance was doping, so was everyone else, right?
Reading this book changed my opinion on what is best for the sport. First, Lance wasn't just doing what everyone else was doing. Lance was a gangster. He viciously went after his detractors, often ruining their careers. He bribed the UCI to cover up a positive test result. He turned his competitors into anti-doping authorities just to get them out of his way. He intimidated witnesses. He lied... lies on top of lies on top of lies. Even now, in the face of an insurmountable pile of evidence he continues to lie. It is important that everyone sees that he does not continue to get away with this behavior. If there was ever a case where an individual rider was the real problem, it is Lance.
Marco Pantani leads a "sit-in" to protest the exclusion of the Festina Team during the 1998 Tour. At least things got better in 1999, right?
Floyd Landis was the first rider to have his TdF win taken away after the race was over. We never would have thought that it would happen again. Certainly not 9 times in 12 years.
Second, it may hurt our sport in the short term but maybe we need to hit rock bottom before we can rebuild. After every doping scandal people have said "This sucks, but at least things are better now". They said it after Festina, after Floyd Landis, after Operacion Puerto... but it wasn't true. Maybe we needed the whole house of cards to fall. I don't know if this is rock bottom, but it feels like it. Hopefully now things can only get better.
Tyler Hamilton first confessed to everything in his 2011 60 Minutes interview
Third point: I think that there will always be cheaters. We can never completely eliminate that. We just have to make sure that a) The culture of cycling is never again one where the only way to be successful at the top level is to dope and b) Those that cheat always get caught and they are punished appropriately. I believe that we are almost there now, but we have lost an awful lot to get here. It's been really painful for our sport, so let's make sure that we rebuild in a safe, healthy and fair way so that this never happens again. A big part of that is stringent anti-doping controls that stay one step ahead of the cheaters instead of the other way around. To do this it is important that riders, doctors and anyone else that has been on the inside come forward and share their knowledge. We do need to know the specifics. We do need to know the ugly details. Just like we need confidential informants and we need financial regulators that have worked on Wall Street we need former dopers to come forward and share everything. Some might say that is like telling people that want to dope how to do it, but to me this sounds like some of the arguments against sex-education. If we want anti-doping to work and if we want riders to be prepared to make the tough decisions they may face, people have to have all the information.
George Hincapie's reputation was unsullied even after he admitted to doping during his career
I know that everyone has heard enough about doping already so the last thing I want to do is write yet another article about it, but there is still a little more I want to say. I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about how frustrating I am that people have an over-simplified view of this issue; demonizing riders instead of trying to understand why they made the choices they did. Focusing so much on how "evil" the dopers are and meanwhile ignoring the riders that had the courage to stand up to the system and say no. I thought I had made my point but just after I wrote that I read Dan Coyle and Tyler Hamilton's book, "The Secret Race" and it shifted my opinion on some of these issues.
Finally, I just want to share an observation. No judgement, just an observation. So many of the guys that tested positive in years past: Virenque, Pantani, Ullrich, Landis, Hamilton and so on and so on... were disgraced in the public eye. They were shunned by sponsors, fans, other teams and by the peloton as a whole. They lost their jobs, their money, their marriages, their mental health and even their lives. In some cases they retired and in some cases they returned to racing. However they dealt with their respective scandals, either successfully or unsuccessfully, they had to deal with them. Years of lost time, millions of dollars in lost salaries, lost endorsements, lost pride, lost results and lost face. Even then, no one ever recovers 100% from a doping scandal. Once you are labeled a doper that distinction never truly goes away. I don't have a problem with any of that. Anyone thinking about doping needs to realize that this is the price you pay for cheating. But here's what I find interesting: all of these former US Postal guys either admitted to doping or were outed as dopers recently: Hincapie, Leipheimer, Vaughters, Livingston, Danielson, Vande Velde, Zabriskie and others. What happens to their reputations? Not much, really. Hincapie was at Interbike a few days later signing autographs. The guys that are still racing got 6 month bans starting in October so they will be back by mid-April like nothing happened. Now that everything is out in the open, I think that most people feel like they were just doing what everyone else was doing; just following the program. So all I am saying is that it is interesting that some people's lives were ruined and some people were almost entirely unaffected, all for doing the same thing. The only difference is that they didn't admit to it until they had a gun to their head. I guess it's like my Mom always said, "Life isn't fair".