My Long(o) response...
My thoughts...
Cloxxki said:
Joe, for a guy with a tainted past, your logic really matches mine well...
Thanks. That's great feedback and a huge moral victory for me, to receive such a public and direct validation. I understand the need to make it conditional, for it's the fact that I have a tainted past in the first place that makes everything that follows subject to doubt or rejection. I really appreciate the fact that you can admit that it seems like we're thinking alike in this situation, and it gives me hope that others won't reject me out of hand simply because of the tainted past.
Benotti69 said:
I agree with JP ^^^^ on his idea that competing into your fifties to then drop it and your main goal less than 6 months away screams of doping.
It certainly does seem to reveal a fear of more intense scrutiny and having to answer direct questions about one's past. While Armstrong rarely turned down the opportunity to note that he never tested positive or to otherwise reject doping allegations, he also never followed through w/ threats to sue his accusers in recent times, IIRC. That's another feature of Ciprelli/Longo affair: Ciprelli (through his attorney) publicly claiming at least twice to reserve the right to sue me for allegedly fabricating the email evidence against him (which we know is a hollow effort to deflect attention from the truth), but never following through. If the evidence was really fabricated (which of course it wasn't) then brewing up a case against l'Equipe, me, and anyone else they could target is something one would've expected immediately.
Benotti69 said:
Her silence to me is because she sees this as damage limitation rather than fight and have everyone find out much more, ie she doped not after 50 years of age, not after 40 but all of her career.
...which of course speaks to what you suspect...that any public response or frivolous attempt to use the courts to protect her legacy would only throw a very unwelcome light on what may have been happening for decades - information that Ressiot may have collected and organized off-the-record in the form of accusations that would explode the myth of her career if they ever came out and were corroborated.
webvan said:
...So I'm still not clear on why Joe Papp was selling EPO, is that legal?...Doper and reseller, not terribly moral but I guess people should be given second chances. This does mean that Ciprelli was no longer buying from JP after 09/2007 (hopefully...).
The why is complicated but also straightforward: I was stupid, desperate, and corrupted in various ways to varying degrees. At the end of the day of course I regret my activities and apologize for them. And I can assure you that I had no business w/ Ciprelli/Longo after 09/2007 - earlier, even.
frenchfry said:
I often say that I find this situation pathetic, and I do, but I can also understand why the Longo/Ciprelli act continues. She still is "competitive" (even if she needs PEDs to be so) and just maybe has difficulty finding "normal" activities to replace the life she has known forever...
I hope in my testimony and public statements, interviews and any private discussions it's clear that I don't have anything personal against Longo or Ciprelli, I don't have an anti-French bias or a desire to "raise" my profile at the expense of someone more well-known. In fact, I can sympathize with anyone trying to replace something like the life of a full-time athlete (even if NOT as well paid as a footballer, or even not as well paid as Longo may have been)...especially with "normal" activities. It can be terrible, discombobulating, heart-breaking, despairing. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. That is, I wouldn't want anyone to have to try to make the transition I'm still caught up in. My #1 piece of advice to young athletes now is to cultivate interests outside of their sport and never ignore reality that they could find themselves kicked back into the "normal" world without warning. So I can sympathize with Longo to some degree (Ciprelli less so).
Le breton said:
...About 20 years ago she said that she wanted to start a family, then nothing more was heard. Her bike seems to be her substitute for kids...
Something said to me by someone close to the situation and positioned to know was that, seen through a lens different than that which gives the image of national athletic heroine, Longo's life is not a happy one. Of course only she can tell us if she has truly been happy and fulfilled, and regardless it's not an excuse for cheating or criminal behavior (did I ultimately turn to doping and help others to dope because my dad died on the day before my 14th birthday? no, but at the root of it that's a big reason why I was cycling and so determined to continue cycling...), but for as black and white as some of the "issues" appear ("Did you dope, ever, in your career?"), I think they also resist simple explanations. That could be very frustrating - you want a yes/no answer and clear delineation of what = "good" and "bad" but this phenomenon of doping is one that genuinely corrupts a process and its practitioners, but without necessarily compromising their inner goodness.
Those who are evil/cynical aren't necessarily made any worse when connected to doping, but good people still get lumped-in with them because of their mutual involvement in something that so clearly goes against the spirit and rules of sport. But then the "good" people, if they were
really that good wouldn't have gotten into that situation to begin with...
But then we start considering the case of Ullrich...
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