I've had the intention for some considerable time now (don't know exactly for how long) to write up my own experience in the hope of achieving some sort of personal catharsis on this awful story of deception and betrayal. Events of the last few weeks finally gave me the kick that I needed.
I’ve followed cycling as an armchair fan since I moved to Holland in 1989, and found that there was all sorts of cycling to be seen on the cable here. I enjoyed watching, but was never as seriously ‘into’ the sport as many on here are. I rode/ride a bike most days, as most in Holland do, but no racing, nothing serious, purely functional and recreational in the normal Dutch way.
The first thing I saw that got me excited was Lemond’s 8 second win in Paris.
Then, I happened to watch LA win his world title in the rain in Oslo, and immediately became a fan.
My wife and I were shocked and saddened to hear that he was diagnosed with cancer. No one can ever know for sure if prior doping practices played any part in him becoming sick, and quite frankly, I could care less. There is virtually never one, clear-cut reason why someone gets struck by cancer.
(Foxxy, I honestly think that your suggestion that he somehow 'faked' his cancer and made the deception complete by voluntarily losing a testicle - all to cover up prior doping and to facilitate future doping - is really way too ****ing bizarre to take. Despite everything that has come to light, I feel now as I did when I first joined this forum, namely that there are a worrying number of deeply, pathologically, compulsively obsessive and hate-filled posters here, who appear not to have lives outside of posting about doping in cycling, and who are now all enjoying multiple orgasms of Schadenfreude.) I’m not having a pop at anyone in particular, nor am I looking to start any kind of row, just a general observation about how you people who live here in the Clinic look to the rest of the world.
I can actually understand the mindset of the hard core Clinic obsessives much better now than when I first joined this forum. It’s just not in my nature to be like that, or to carry that much hate and bile in my heart for years at a time. Life's too short...
My wife became a LA 'fan' on his return to racing for the same reason that millions of other people who weren't really cycling fans did - it was awesome to see someone return to top sport after what he'd been through. So, from LA's return to racing up until around 03 we both cheered him on, shook our heads at the 'stupid dopers' who kept getting caught, and marveled at his and his team's dominance. Of course, LA had to be clean because he was a cancer survivor, and therefore surely would never consider doping, and because he kept passing all the tests. I think that my first, occasional pangs of doubt may have surfaced around 03, but I had no trouble shrugging them off. 'So what if he does,' I rationalized to myself, 'they all do.' Yes, the Simeoni episode occasionally nagged from the back of the mind…..
My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 03, so when the yellow bands came out in 04, we were naturally all over them and both wore one. For us, they symbolized not only our support for the fight against cancer in general, but also represented a sort of 'badge of courage' because 'we' had cancer too. My wife had lost her hair several times during this period and had a mastectomy. She saw wearing the yellow band as a gesture that was important to her. I bought and gave away around 80 yellow bands during the next few years, something we saw as one of our small contributions in the great global fight against cancer.
We lost our particular battle when my wife died in May 07. I took the yellow band off her wrist, put it on mine, and vowed never to take it off.
I can’t remember how or why I wound up on CN two years later, I imagine it was because I wanted to engage in some English (as opposed to Dutch) tour talk. I was immediately labeled a fanboy who only watched in July, and roundly set upon and abused for my naïve ignorance, and for not buying into the astonishing – and to me, completely new – amount of LA hatred that was going on here. I really had no idea that there were people who felt like that, I was gobsmacked. I was also so disgusted by the largely unmoderated and unpunished abuse that went on, that I decided, ‘I don’t need this sh!t’, and disappeared for a year or more sometime after my BoB brainwave.
I should point out that I had been a regular forum user since before the turn of the century, and also a mod and admin, which made my shock at the state of affairs here on CN even greater. I had literally never come across such a ‘lawless’ forum, nor had I ever seen posters ‘get away’ with the kind of abuse that was commonplace here in the summer of 09. Extra mods were added after I left, and the Clinic was set up. Today’s CN, while far from perfect, is an altogether different, and better forum than it was then.
During my CN free time, I read, watched, and listened. Since I like to think of myself as a rational man who is open to reason and argument, I gradually but inevitably came to the unavoidable conclusion that LA had indeed been a liar, cheat, and fraud for a long time. This realization was pretty depressing, since it meant that I had allowed myself to be fooled, despite my occasional misgivings going back to his tour wins. Why hadn’t I listened to that voice? The cancer angle, that was the hook he had in me, because surely Livestrong was above board, and was doing good work? Surely? And anyone who did such good work for cancer sufferers just couldn’t be the kind of evil ******* that he was made out to be here. Surely?
Since (occasionally) posting again on CN over the last couple of years, I’ve kept my eyes and brain open, even though I’m not the Clinic poster type. I began to question and analyze my motives for still wearing my wife’s yellow band. Earlier this year, my revulsion at my own hypocrisy finally reached breaking point, and on the fifth anniversary of my wife’s death last May, I had a serious word with her picture on my bedroom wall, and articulated (in Dutch) why I could no longer wear her band, even if I only thought of it as one last keepsake of hers. I took it off and put it in the box with a few other small things that were hers, and there it will stay until they clean up when I’m gone. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, simply because it had been hers, because she had worn it on her wrist.
I have had nothing more to do with Liestrong for years now, there are plenty of other cancer charities and organizations doing good work. Here ends my confession, and with it a weight off my chest.
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