byu123 said:
If so why?
You are here presumably here because you are a fan of cycling. If you take the position, as many here do, that all top contenders now and in the past were dopers and moreoever anyone who wins in 2009 must surely also be a doper . . . why would you even watch the Tour or any other major race for that matter?
i've been debating with myself whether i would register just to answer your question or not. i decided i would because i think the answers you've gotten so far only illuminate one portion of the group of those of us who are following the tour, but yet still assume, nonetheless, that the riders are all doped.
missing are those like me, who've pretty much walked away from the sport entirely, but who still watch a race now and again with the same sort of half-hearted interest with which we read the titles of the tabloids while waiting in line at the super market. i don't really know what to call it--it's a mixture of boredom, and opportunity, and that odd pleasure we all seem to take in other people's scandals...maybe with also just a little a bit of wistfull yearning for something we once loved...kind of like when you cross paths with a former lover, who broke your heart into a 1000 pieces, but who has since become fat, and old, and ever so boring...
i followed cycling from the early 1980s until 2006. back when i first started following it, i was lucky to see anything more than a 1/2 hour coverage on the tour on tv once a year. in high school, i used to hang-out at the alliance française reading room to read their old l'equipe. but then espn started having more regular coverage (of the tour at least) in the early 1990s and i could watch most of the tour as it happened, and then finally oln started having comprehensive coverage (or what amounts to that for the US at least) (i can't remember if their coverage started before lance's domination or not--it's hard to tell because it was always phil and paul, regardless...).
i still miss all of those old festina adds that featured virenque. i miss the festina kit too...now, with hindsight, i can't help but think, "meh, why did festina have to be destroyed?...what point did that serve except to remove the only classy kit in the peloton?"
anyway, i was so naive when the festina scandal broke in 1998. it had never occurred to me that they were doped before that; and in 1999, i truly hoped and believed that it was going to be a clean tour. but it was obvious from the prologue that it wasn't, that at least one rider was doped to the gills--how else do you explain (rationally and not with magical thinking) how all of a sudden lance had gone from being an also-ran/dnf tour rider to beating some of the best time trialists in the world. that tour was all but over after he took advantage of the crash in the early part of the tour--time zulle never could win back, and the rest as they say is history (everyone these days seems to forget that most of lance's time in that tour was won by his just having been a shear ****, who attacked after a huge crash in the peloton...).
anyway, i kept following the sport--but i was one of those anti-doping loraxes, the kind who kept getting beat up by people like janna and vaughn over at the DP forum, back when it was just a single grey page and you didn't have to join to post
back then, the deniers would always say something like, "it's just the losers who dope--show me one top rider on a top team who dopes and maybe i'll listen to you."(come to think of it, not much has changed really). it's funny how festina and virenque were never considered a top team or a top rider to them--you weren't allowed to cite them as proof!
and even though every year, one top rider after another, like david miller, was getting caught without failing a doping control, and even though riders like manzano were coming forward and exposing the seedy underbelly of the sport, it was always rationalized away as a few, no-talent, bad apples and sour grapes.
at that time, i could still follow it because i saw the riders as victims and thought there was hope--i don't now; now i see them as willing accomplices with absolutely no compunctions about selling out their best friends, so long as they can keep their secrets safe--now they remind me of junkies. and the fans too became too much for me to deal with--too many, the most vocal and the most nasty, are like the worst sort of enablers...
so then operation peurto and landis's wild-ride happened simultaneously in 2006. and that was it for me--the fans didn't care, the riders didn't care, so i walked away. i didn't follow a single race in 2007 or 2008, and only got sucked into the mess again when an annoucer during this year's wimbledon final off-handedly marveled at the fact that "lance armstrong was 4th in this year's opening time trial in the tour de france!"
all i could think was "WTF! you gotta be ****ting me!" i turned on vs and watched the race and then came here to see if anyone was really taking that result seriously or not...but of course people want to believe the most unbelievable things, be it one guy challenging for the podium at 37, after 4 years a way from the sport...or another guy riding away from the peloton solo, gaining time the whole while, after having bonked so hard the day before that his race was effectively over...or that cancer can turn people into supermen....
in a way, i'm glad i did check out these boards, because now i have some possible answers to questions that never made sense to me after Puerto came to light: i was really confused after operation puerto was revealed about how there could have been any perceived advantage in the peloton, let alone real advantage, in everyone using the same damn doctors. all of it seemed so utterly, contemptibly, pointlessly stupid.
it had never even occurred to me that riders don't just dope--my naivety embarrasses me. but after reading these threads over the past week, i see that the riders also probably buy the officials and each other off, flush their teammate's doping products down toilets in fits of pique, and bribe couriers and doctors to tamper with another rider's doping products (which if true goes beyond simply being cheats to being attempted murderers--to purposely give someone tainted blood is to willfully put their life in jeopardy). all the jokes here about the affair du toilet and envelopes being passed around, have given me a hunch as to how lance beat jan all those years. that had never made sense to me before--jan was the natural talent, much more naturally talented than lance--if both were doping, then jan should still have won, unless his care packages weren't as potent as lance's...lucrative business model that dr. fuentes had: take in one small fortune from rider X to help X win and another one from rider Z to help Z win by ensuring X isn't getting his money's worth....
this has been really long, i apologize for that. i guess i just had a lot on my mind. ever since andy schleck reminded me about jan's win on arcalis in 1997--that it had been 12 years since i had truly enjoyed this sport--it just made me so sad and wistful...it made me feel old...and the thing missing from this thread was something representing all of us who don't "follow" the sport "for real" anymore. i think we are a sizable number--i went over to DP forums for the first time in years and saw that there are just a handful of posters there--mostly the same old hardcore, denialist die-hards from when i was there. and look here--the number of regular posters is quite modest. its the same names over and over in every thread--and the same conversations i was having 10 years ago--except now we have 10 years of police raids and confessions...
for those who say, "well, every sport is just as dirty and doped as cycling;" all i can say is that there are only 2 other sports i have ever followed closely, both of which i have followed longer than cycling, and both of which i still follow--horse racing and tennis. doping and match-fixing occurs in both--but the horses don't choose to dope, and the no amount of doping can give some one roger federer's forehand, pete sampras's serve, john macenroe's volleys, or bjorn borg's groundstrokes...all it can give you is nadal's stamina, no small thing to be sure, but a million miles away from being everything....
if i have offended anyone, i apologize, it was not my intent. peace.
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