sgreene said:
Once and for all, if any actual, official, undisputed evidence of doping by Contador, or Armstrong for that matter, ever emerges, I will happily admit I was wrong to all of you. In the meantime, we are all entitled to our opinions.
This is quite official evidence considering it is brought in by experts (scientists, ex- team mates), not just by frothing at the mouth fanboys. Undisputed evidence is a funny one, a lot of important evidence in life will be disputed (and that's a good thing), otherwise our judicial system would be a lot easier.
But some of these points
are undisputed, namely the links between the people involved and JB's ignoring of Puerto (hiring Basso without blinking).
This is what makes it so dificult to hold a moral high ground position and call Doping Cynics "Conspiracy theorists", implying we have tinfoil hats and just make up stories.
The one thing going for Lance and AC is that they never got caught by a control
(which in itself is debatable for Lance). But the trouble here is that indeed the big scandals are about people
not getting caught by controls. Festina, Puerto, the Austrian blood ring, Rasmussen, Riis, the involved riders pass tests due to the nature of their doping. And the names involved? Basso, Ulrich, Jaksche, a complete Liberty Seguiros team (except AC) and that is just for starters.
So against a significant mountain of evidence, the defense of AC and LA is hinged on faith in the tests which has been proven to be definitely less than 100%.
Should they get the benefit of the doubt? Of course! However, I do think it would be a lot better for the sport if Puerto was being investigated to the ground and a more independant sport judicial body (CAS) doing the sanctioning instead of the UCI (or ISU or FIFA for that matter) deciding for themselves. The UCI rightly guards the image of Cycling and that conflicts with dope scandals. There must be a genuine wish for it "to go away" and that doesn't have to be nefarious. If true that there is a coverup, I understand Uci's logic behind trying to keep appearances up. It still doesn't make it right though.