Alpe d'Huez said:
Well, if no one speaks out - be that Roche or someone else - for fear of retribution, then there will be no change. He doesn't have to call Contador out specifically as a doper, but I think Paul has a point. If Roche is clean, and wants a clean sport in a sport dominated by dopers and cheaters, to take a stand and flatly state that if Contador doped, then good riddance indeed, and all other dopers should be stopped as well, is the right thing to do.
If Roche speaks out, others should follow suit. As fans we should encourage them to do so and support them for doing so. And criticize them and pester them for remaining silent. People want to believe Evans and Sastre are two big names who are clean. Well, if they're clean, and being robbed of rightful victories by dopers who cheat them out of money and glory, if there ever was a time to take a stand against doping, with Contador about to be sanctioned, and Lance about to be indicted, now would be it.
I have to applaud Kimmage for having the guts to say some of the things he does, because he's speaking the truth. A truth that desperately needs to be repeated out loud.
Thanks for posting the link Dim.
It is one thing to have guts to speak out when it doesn't put your own livelihood on the line (arguably, it improves it). It is another thing to insist that others, who will risk their livelihood, should stick their neck out for your fight. Even if that is one for the greater good.
I have never been a fan of making other people risk far bigger things than I am putting on the line.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that Kimmage should stop saying what he is targeting just now, or that we should simply accept things and roll over.
But my main problem remains that if it is correct that dope is so engrained in the sport that the gatekeepers are complicit, it is not
totally fair to say "good riddance" to sheep who still need to feed from the field they are put in.
I too feel that this is a/the chance for riders to force a change if they have the guts to do so. But it is very easy for me to insist that others should be heroic to a level I don't need to be, as an outsider. I genuinely struggle to hold what is going on just now against
individual riders.
If a rider has kept stumm about dope, kept his head down, didn't go for public theatrics, just got on with earning money the only way you can earn what your natural ability would roughly make you if there was a clean environment.... "good riddance?".
That is too strong for me. Honestly. I don't condone it, but I can't get myself to be that black and white either. Black and white is easy for me. For riders, it ain't.
Those that do pick white regardless. Heroes. They also pay the price. And they pay it up front. Warts and all.
Cycling as it is now and has been for a long time? It is a rock and a hard place.
Top gatekeepers however, they have the soft comfy place. They have genuine control over the place they are in, and the place that they create for others. For me it is a bit less about the riders, and more about the real instruments behind the institutionalisation. If there is genuine guilt: that's where it is.
That's where that "good riddance" is genuinely a wholly-deserved kick out of the door. They have a real choice in all of this, as their entire livelihood is based on the skills of others. For Contador?
Wholly or partly I think. And since he appears to have oodles of base talent, and doesn't sit on any doping high horse but just got on with it, I'm probably leaning more towards partly than wholly, to be frank.
Now if the majority is clean and the dopers we get are indeed the few rotten apples, I will eat all the humble pie in the world, and "good riddance" to the few spoiling it for the others is totally in place.
But if folk have only one realistic option when they get their talent to where it ought to take it, and that is to make sure you compete at the level that you should be competing at if doping was no factor....
Let's just say I have less problems with Contador coming back than some/one.
But I hope this is the period that things finally do crumble and take cycling into a brighter future.
I expect that some riders are quite happy with the status quo though. Like someone said here on in another thread, accountants wouldn't probably be keen to get back to a PC-less era. I suspect some of the riders genuinely prefer some drugs to make the suffering a bit more bearable, to make the energy come a bit easier too.
I hope riders find the courage to try to change their own working conditions (and the conditions for those that follow) for the better.
But I have seen enough about people to know that that sort of bravery is far less common than you want it to be, and far less common than folk being brave about issues when it doesn't really put their own bones at risk.
To insist they should,
for ultimately mostly me rather than them...... Nah. Sorry.