You make me sound like some sort of undercover 1960's KGB agent secretly in contact with the Kremlin (whilst having a barbecue) who acts in a "weird way" according to his neighbour mowing his front lawn across the street.
But, it seems normal to get most cycling news from elsewhere, no? This forum is a small island inhabited by polite people, i.e. not representative of the greater online sphere. And let me tell you, the "Slovenians" are red-hot thermonuclear in public perception over here. It swings from one to another based on who is on top but there's an element of sheer stubbornness involved, i.e. a refusal to accept their own favorites (Pinot, Bardet etc.) could never reach this level - ergo the only way to get this high is to literally "get high" with permanent needles in their arms.
I call these people who're obsessed with talk of Slovenian doping 24/7 hypocrites with selective memory & convenient blindness when it suits them (hello France 98 world cup as well). And many of these same critics unironically will also accuse riders like Evenepoel & Cavendish of doping... whilst saying Alaphilippe has a natural progression. All DQS riders of course.
Meanwhile I know what I'm doing watching cycling considering all the champions I've watched since I was a kid could have a ? on the "dark arts" aspect (some were busted, whilst most can be logically considered part of a peloton wide culture engrained in the sport since year zero).
Basically you can't turn a donkey into a racehorse with a doping program. If it was that easy, UAE wouldn't be paying Pogacar 6 million a year.
I've reached the conclusion there's actually something psychologically deeper involved as well, i.e. the broader "masses" prefer to believe in geniuses rather than hard work. Roglic represents the latter, i.e. a late bloomer who's reached the top with constant hard work (he's described as a literal robot by many).
I've noticed MvdP, Alaphilippe (& sometimes even Pog) get a "genius" label which acts as a giant encompassing all-in-one explanation regarding their performances. This "miracle" of genetics is comforting for the viewer because it doesn't reflect on their own personal lives in a negative way (i.e. essentially they don't feel like they could have achieved greatness in whatever field themselves if they'd worked harder, which is always, always, an uncomfortable feeling).
It happens in tennis as well, i.e. Djokovic is a robot who naturally gets accused of doping, whilst Federer was the "genius" who gets a free pass.
This is a Franco-French view FYI. Armstrong used to say "the French don't like winners", but that's not true (& certainly generalizing isn't correct either), i.e. what is true is they use the argumentation of "natural talent versus hard worker" to paint the latter as way more suspect in terms of doping. You'll hear the same conversations in football, also, where Ronaldo is described as a "machine" & Messi a genius. The latter gets way, way more love.
First of all I didn't want to accuse you or insult you, if my post came across as such I'm sorry. I was trying to find an explanation for your sentences that sometimes don't make that much sense to me simply because you state that people say xy all the time and I'm wondering "they do? where?"
Here, like I have mentioned very many times by now, the general interest in cycling is very low since decades now, so I don't have many German speaking sources. In general there is a high level of scrutiny towards cycling (cycling=doping), there isn't much difference between how single riders are perceived. If there were wildly successful German riders I'm sure they would be getting more excuses or less doubts than others, but there aren't, so... I also sometimes read cyclingweekly and cyclingtips, but I never read any doping allegations there.
I remember hearing the German commentators (who in strong contrast to the newspapers usually avoid the topic doping completely) be suspicious in the last years on two accounts (on a low level), that was Pogacar's PdBF time trial ("let's just hope the result will stand in the future" or something like that), and actually a recent, surprisingly good time trial of Urska Zigart, where they said this was quite sudden.
I haven't heard anything against Roglic or anyone else from them.
Of course you can have other sources and that will make you better informed, but hence why I need to understand you first.
Regarding this forum I think Pogacar is one of the riders who's most accused of doping and he has very few defenders (apart from a small Slovenian minority), his thread is quite active, and if it's not I think it's because everyone just agrees or has come to accept that this is the reality. At least personally I think he's one of the most obvious cases and don't bother much anymore of writing something about him in that regard.
Van der Poel is also quite on something, if you ask me, but as I have often enough stated he's not one of my favourite riders and he often wins against some of my favourite riders, like Alaphilippe, so I simply don't want to come here every time and scream "doping!!" because I would likely and probably rightfully accuses of bias. His Strade win though was something.
Alaphilippe - well, here's a case of a rider I kind of defended, mostly because not many others are doing it here (will be different in France, I'm sure), and I just like him and think that at least some perspective and level-headedness is needed, in the same way that I'm giving it to, for instance, Roglic. (But for Roglic I don't need to do it, because he has enough other fans and defenders here.
)
In Germany Messi gets way more love from
me than Ronaldo, but I can't say that's the state of the general discourse. Quite the contrary, Ronaldo gets admired more exactly because of his "work ethics", while Messi's character is seen quite critical (apart from the usual fandom of some and yellow-press hyperboling that of course happens in regard to him as well).
Doping isn't really talked about in regards to them (it's football), if anything, it's about Spanish football (suspicious) or Messi's growth hormones as a child.
I agree with the general sentiment though that in cycling those who seem to be there since they were children are under less scrutiny. The most striking case must be Evenepoel.
But then, in a way I find that natural, because what always strikes me and many others most is a sudden "whoop". Someone who delivers spectacular performances, but you cannot even say when it started, since he seems to have had that talent forever, is harder to point at.
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