beroepsrenner said:
I have just registered on this forum after reading so much trash about what people assume to be happening. I raced as a professional in the 1980s so I speak from personal experience. The first I heard of blood doping in cycling was when i heard about the 1984 US olympic team having transfusions of their own previously stored blood immediately prior to the LA games. At this time it was not illegal in the eyes of the sports governing bodies. At this time doping was much worse than it is now as the kind of substances being used ranged from anabolic steroids to amphetamines and was employed by almost everyone at the elite level. Greg Lemond was a brilliant athlete in his own right but I cannot accept, as he claims, that he was unaware of drug use when he was racing. The testing back then was nowhere near as broad and sophisticated as it is now. When EPO was first used in the 90s it was not on the banned list nor was it tested for. If everyone is using whatever is going around at the time then how is it cheating and until you have competed at an elite level yourself with all the pressures of expectation placed upon you then you have no right to judge the character of someone you have never met personally. And why single out Lance Armstrong?....yes the tall poppy syndrome! Just about every great champion in cycling at any time has been connected to doping in some way or another. It is no worse now than its ever been nor is cycling any worse than other endurance sports. Its just that cycling does more than other sports to get rid of it.
I don't think drug use when you road was any less common than it is today, however the science of doping is better today. As Kohl said he and his manager agreed that it was time to do a serious doping program to go for a podium Tour placing, which he began at the end of the prior season. Such a program involved an Austrian blood lab and a big sum of cash, which for the rider was merely an investment. So if you don't have that kind of cash, then you don't get the best doping which also includes paying the best medic: a Ferrari a Fuentes or whomever.
This is the real injustice. Because doping has become an elitest thing where only the well paid rider can keep up with the Joneses. Fine, you don't want people passing moral judgment (about people they don't even know)...then legalize doping and make it socialized so that we have a level playing field. Because as it is with the current doping system, we have a kind of aristocratic class of rider, whose money renforces his power, and a peon class of rider who may not even get a contract next season. Whereas in terms of people passing moral judgement, look, a pro athlete is a in a privledged world like a politician, so people, who are paying their salaries by buying their sponsors' products, feel they are entitled to pass a moral and character judgment on them in terms of doping. It comes with the territory under such privlidged circumstances. So if you can't stand the heat, then get out of the fire.
As regards to singling out Armstrong, well, he's brought it all upon himself with his megalomania, cynicism and nastyness, for which the Simeoni affair was only the most sensational and publicized portrait of his true persona.