Escarabajo said:
How did you make it riding without the doping? Was it really impossible or with hard training you could beat these guys? Sometimes I have the feeling that the riders that dope decrease on the level of training and therefore loose the edge completly when it comes to racing.
Well I didn't make it. I mean I could do some good rides, but in the end the engine wasn't big enough. The cream keeps rising to the top and I wasn't the cream, thus wasn't picked up by a pro team.
Now if everything was at an even playing level, and my training was optimal and the head was as good as the legs then I could have my chance on a climber's course. But really that meant top 5. If there were guys on EPO, then probably I got ripped off you know.
The problem is that while you know if you're clean (or not), you don't know who among your competition is clean (or not). That's the bad thing, the doubt. Yet I know that there were guys who "got help," which meant you never knew your true worth. And I had guys recommend doping as the only way to win, some believed that without "getting help" it was just impossible to win beyond a certain level.
I don't want to make any excuses though. There were guys who could just ride harder, faster, longer. Period. In the end, it was enough that I got to ride in races with them. But it is that "doubt" which is the really ****ed-up, nasty thing. Becuase doping exists and sometimes you got droped not by someone who was naturally superior, but by one who had less scrupples, was all the more sly. But they weren't the true champions. Not those guys. They'd probably score a year's contract, then blow their engines cause they by doping put a Ferrari motor in their Fiat body. No the real talents moved forward cause they're the real cream and were
born with a Ferrari motor. And so when it came time to dope, for them it was just like putting in optimal fuel and not an entirely new and incompatible engine. Their motor's systems could just handle it no problem and they'd carburate in the smoothest and most efficient manner.
No it's not impossible to finish races without dope, but you need to be super prepared. The problem isn't finishing it's getting a noteworthy result without doping once you arrive at a certain level. Unless you are just that damn good. But after a certain level, being that damn good becomes an increasing rarity when doping is involved. So even the best talent who know's he's clean, has to either accept living with the torment of doubt (unless one believed doping doesn't exist), or increasingly sees that playing the game by his ethical standards is in direct conflict with getting the major results which may mean the difference between signing a contract or not. Many an aspiring damn good cyclist simply can't resist the temptation of doping and often finds an alibi in the conviction (not unwarented) that his main competitors have caved in as he's about to do. So to him doping isn't cheating any more, in so far as cheating means one is looking to get an unfair edge on the competition through ilicit means. No to him it is simply bringing his body back up to a fitness level where he can no longer live with the doubt, because he knows, or at least believes, that he has put himself back in a game that's played "in a certain way." And that if everyone were on bread and water only (which he is fully cinvinced can't be the case), he would have the same chances for honest victory as he does by doping with everyone else.
This to me seems to synthesize what is meant by a "culture" of doping. And from a certain perspective its rational is at least rationally based and thus comprehensible. The problem is, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, the DOUBT. Of course in strickt terms of the rules doping is unethical, however in terms of the psychology of doping it is pointless to try and preach absolute morality (especially in today's society), when, as in the example above, there are rational means to transform what is legally against the rules into valid practice; when the very concept of cheating upon which ilegality of a practice is based is itself cast in doubt if not cancelled by this culture.