Benotti69 said:
He withdrew from the 1989 TdF for which he was writing the diaries and it was the Delgado positive that raised its ugly head in that TdF that he felt required to be written about he couldn't, Kimmage didn't write about it in his diaries because as he says " I was not ready to write about the drug problems in the sport. They could not be explained in five hundred words" and subsequently gave up as a professional.
Yes, however, the point remains, Kimmage never spoke out about doping when he was an active cyclist. Even when he did speak out, after he retired, he still didn't name names and point fingers. That doesn't make his decision to speak out a sham.
Bennotti said:
if a rider cant talk about it now in this the clean age of cycling when will they ever be able to talk about it? Never by your consensus due to things have never changed.
Actually, things
have changed in this regard. Currently active riders can now and do now say that doping exists in the peloton, which was in previous generations an unforgivable breach of omerta. Remember, when Kimmage was being monstered by the cycling authorities in the wake of Rough Ride it wasn't because he named names, because he did not even though he was retired. It was because he said that doping went on at all.
What hasn't changed is that naming names and pointing fingers would still cause a rider and his team serious problems. Firstly, you have the potential legal liabilities - after all, it's the big names that people like you demand they name and the big names tend to be pretty wealthy.
Secondly, and more importantly you have the nature of cycling as a sport and the centrality of temporary alliances, decisions as to who can go into a break, who will be chased etc. Naming names (assuming that a clean rider even knew beyond all doubt what names to name, which is ulikely these days when dopers have to be more careful) would earn that rider the undying enmity of the riders named, their teams, their friends, their former team mates and probably also other current dopers who would want to avoid the normalisation of such breaches of omerta. All it takes is for a handful of influential riders to have it in for you and your chances of ever again achieving a good result are significantly curtailed.
Thirdly, clean riders just like dirty riders have a vested interest in the viability of the sport. Telling the authorities what you know is one thing, causing another series of massive scandals another - if sponsors and broadcasters desert the sport, the clean rider can't pay his mortgage any more than the dirty ones.
There are strong pressures on clean riders not to name names and point fingers, most of them stemming from rational self-interest. This is why clean riders have never gone around naming names, even though we know that there have always been clean riders.
Benotti69 said:
Riders still dope the omerta is as strong as ever because almost everyone dopes!!!!
Look at that statement again. "Almost everyone". Which means that you are of the opinion that there are in fact a few clean riders. Yet they don't name names and point fingers.
Benotti69 said:
not going to are they when fingers could be easily pointed back at them.
A rider like Millar has nothing to fear in that regard: He admits that he used to dope, he has been riding for Garmin since he came back, so if he says that "I doped with X, Y and Z back on team A", what exactly are those people going to say about him that would cause him any trouble? He already admits that he was doping. What he does have to fear is being singled out for the special attention of those he names and their friends, allies, team mates and sympathisers.
In fact this line of argument is idiotic. Do you really think that some rider who is named as a doper by some other rider is going to respond by saying "Yeah, well, so is he, when I was jacking up, he was doing it right beside me"? No. What he's going to say is, "that rider is lying, I have no idea why. I've never done such a thing". And then he'll go looking for an opportunity for payback within the peloton. That's why it isn't just in the interests of liars and hypocrites to avoid naming names, it's in the interest of clean riders who have to ride alongside the riders and teams they accuse.
Kimmage (who was a doper) didn't speak out until he retired. Bassons (who was not a doper) didn't speak out until others drew attention to his cleanliness and even then didn't name names. The fact that someone doesn't name names doesn't imply that they themselves are dirty or clean, merely that they have no desire to bring a vast amount of hassle on themselves.
Whatever pace it takes otherwise you are a hyprocrite to be pronouncing cleanliness with dirt in your team. Unless the dirt can somehow pronounce themselves reformed, but the sport is so engrained that who is gonna believe it, look at Riis, clean? no chance!
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