DirtyWorks said:How many times do we have to sit through another "cleanest peloton ever" speech only to find out the era was rife with doping? I've been reading them since 1985.
Riders aren't killing themselves any more, but everything about the culture is still pretty much there. The riders defending Armstrong's past is a strong clue little has changed.
The culture is still there. Hmmmm. Yeah. You know, I think you're right. But, one of the biggest lessons I ever learned was to listen to things and try to figure out how EVERYBODY could be correct - because almost always the "3 blind men describing the elephant" is the description of human interaction.
Ok - riders aren't dieing now, at least not directly. But Vaughters and VdV, and others, are saying that you can compete clean now, and win. Ok, how can that be true and the culture still be there? Oooh! I have an answer! If the doping is strictly limited to such as gets only marginal gains, and incurs a large risk.
Have we heard this before? Sh!t yeah. I know. And that is a problem. But, I think I have to try and believe SOMEBODY in current time, don't you? If I went around not believing ANYTHING I hear, wouldn't that make it extremely difficult to get through the day? I have chosen to believe Vaughters and VdV, so far as I can and so long as they keep up with the current path. I chose to believe that Evans has been riding clean, at least for the past few years. There are some suspicious little factoids around JV, but at the moment I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
But, all this said, this way I can see how Papp's racing buddy is right when he told us the peloton was still filled with needles. Do you remember that thread? Some rider that Joe used to ride with said the peloton was still full of needles. I forget where it was said. and JV, Ryder, and VdV can be right when they tells us a clean win is possible.
This way all those riders responses to the LA thing make sense. If you arbitrarily said that all the riders with a "--" rating are doping, or are willing to dope when the circumstances are right, then you see how YOU can be correct, Joe Papp's race friend could be correct, and all the people saying it is better could also be correct.
So, I DON'T think you are right when you say little has changed. I think a lot has changed. I don't think this is the end of it by any means. I think that culture has to change some, because the chemistry of medicine will continue to change too, and rapidly. As fast as they are finding ways to test for one thing, something else is coming available, perhaps faster. We have to develop a flexible oversight, and it HAS to be supported, actively, from the top. The only other way for it to succeed would be for a huge portion of the fan base provide the public energy to support the change. But, as all this comes out about LA, it is also daily more obvious how complicit the UCI has been. It seems like they would be happy to head a WWE-like entertainment "sport".
We learn from management professors that organizational change must be supported from above to be effective. We learned from Michael Porter (competitive advantage) that one of the 4 legs a competitive business stands on is a discerning set of consumers. The people on this forum are pretty demanding of a good product, but we are hardly the market. But, our message is spreading.
A lot has changed. A lot has to continue to change to protect what we have gained.