Why Alberto Contador is Cycling's One True Champion

[Campervan man]

How can he be a true champion as a convicted doper?

Does that make Eddy not a true champion? What's a doper? Someone who fails a test right? After? During? Never caught? Who's a truer champion? Alberto, Eddy, Lance, Landis or Froome? They're all guilty/proven or suspicious/protected. It's an impossible call to make.

 

[rhubroma]

What I don't like is the market dictating who the "clean" champs should be and marginalizing phenomenons. One could say this is an ugly sequel.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

Good posts &#10153 &#10153

What I don't like is the market dictating who the "clean" champs should be and marginalizing phenomenons. One could say this is an ugly sequel.

Does that make Eddy not a true champion? What's a doper? Someone who fails a test right? After? During? Never caught? Who's a truer champion? Alberto, Eddy, Lance, Landis or Froome? They're all guilty/proven or suspicious/protected. It's an impossible call to make.

 

[LaFlorecita]

I have to ask: why would a convicted doper be worse than an unconvicted doper ?

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re: big

How can he be a true champion as a convicted doper?

big doe eyes.................and rides with aplomb

Mark L

You're onto something.... why is Contador so much more popular than Froome? He is simply way easier on the eyes both on and off the bike (and he doesn't badmouth his rivals)

 

[Campervan man]

I have to ask: why would a convicted doper be worse than an unconvicted doper ?

What I like as Alberto being a true champ is rides like Funte De, last years Giro, the TDF where he attacked from90km out to trouble the GC, when he knew he was losing. These are moments I pluck from my shocking memory that make him a champ never say die etc.
Whereas Lance was smash the opposition into bits in the first mountain stage, thousands of disappointed Ulrich fans leaving France after the first decisive stages. Froome and the Skyborgs absolutely mugging Nairo Alberto Pinot etc etc off with a ridiculous show of dope. Eddy before my time. Pantani a much derided rider but a hero/champ like Alberto. Froome is Lance no media empire can alter the hate the boring precision lack of flair. That will always be their undoing power can't buy love or a following. A people's champion is so much more than outright success. Oh and anyway you weigh it up Froome will never rival Alberto's achievement's by the time he's busted or retires.

 

[Campervan man]

doper

What I like as Alberto being a true champ is rides like Funte De, last years Giro, the TDF where he attacked from90km out to trouble the GC, when he knew he was losing.

........reminded me of floyd.....chicken....................champion!

Live by the sword.............. http://youtu.be/X4bYxG4fTPc ...........


When Froome goes from 90............

Mark L

 

[Electress]

How can he be a true champion as a convicted doper?

big doe eyes.................and rides with aplomb

Mark L

You're onto something.... why is Contador so much more popular than Froome? He is simply way easier on the eyes both on and off the bike (and he doesn't badmouth his rivals)

I am of course not going to disagree with you, LaFlo.

Fact is, it is a lot easier to forgive an attractive person (and I don't limit that to merely handsome). We seem predisposed to try to ignore the bad bits. And there's a lot in AC that comes over as rather engaging (quite irrespective of doe-eyes). But seeming a nice, down to earth kind of guy doesn't mean he doesn't inject every known PED into his eyeballs. The world isn't black and white - 'nice guys' do 'nasty things', we just try a little bit harder to not really believe it.

I'm not sure it makes him the one true champion, though. For all I admire many attributes of the guy, there are many others who can claim to have inspired above or beyond their contemporaries. For some its Hinault, others Pantani. They might not have inspired me, but they clearly did other people.

A lot of what appeals about anybody, I suppose, is probably how a person's attributes resonate with our own world view - something as simple as whether we admire individual endeavour over a collective enterprise, or whether we go for opportunists vs. idealists; the risk takers vs. the thorough planner - the tortoise vs. the hare, etc. I know I'm more inclined to some high risk heroics, even if eternally doomed, because I have the boredom threshold of a gnat and hence like stuff to tend towards unpredictable. I honestly find some dastardly opportunist more engaging - no matter the unrepentant cheating a la Vino - than some pious choirboy type of person be they ever so noble and decent and puritanical. The attempts of Sky to paint their guys as decent and upstanding beyond reproach - the ZTP mantra and the 'its all about the earnest sacrifice and the pillows' - is not only a problem for me because it's insulting and impossible to swallow, but I find it insufferably sanctimonious. But the same reasons one set of characteristics inspires people is the reason another dislikes them - there really is no way of being objective on such things - we like who we like, and then find reasons to justify why we're right about it. It is an emotional, not an intellectual decision.

Being a champion transcends merely winning, though, and I would say that, for me, Contador embodies many admirable qualities. He's not a loud mouth. He's not a fame whore. He's self-contained and self-restrained - I can't offhand think of any time he's behaved like a petulant baby. He appears to have avoided Cipo like vanity. He lets his wheels, on the whole, do the talking. Whilst he's clearly no Einstein, he displays more than a little race nouse. He seems professional to his duties beyond the racing. Above all, he seems to have a genuine love of the sport and its traditions, together with a somewhat awe-inspiring will, not merely to win, but to overcome and rise above adversity. I find that perhaps the most inspiring quality of all, because I think about stuff like Contador riding with a fractured tibia, (or Fabs. with a fractured spine or all such heroics), and it inspires me to get off my backside and work a bit harder.

I guess I don't need him or anyone else to be perfect; I'm not young and naïve any more; I can take my 'heroes', for the want of a better word, to be all too human. And in the context of a sport so systemically corrupt as cycling, there's enough to set him above the herd, IMO.

 

[StryderHells]

But Hitch, isn't praising an exploit in cycling always romanticising doping, in some way?

well yeah, and that's where the whole circus starts, the primitive fact that so many still need heroes to worship.
there's nothing principally wrong with that, we're all human and all need something to help deflect from our mundane problems. For some that's sport, for others its music, and some just grab the bottle.

But it explains the insane amounts of gullibility among fans and their blind trust in pro athletes, and so it's the seed of fraud and cheating as it creates a culture among fans and press alike where fraud and cheating is tacitly accepted.

Football is the most clear-cut case in point, all these guys making millions a year and still defrauding the tax system. Yet the fans/press don't care.

Contador being heroified by some in spite of his doping is also a symptom, although peanuts compared to what soccer players get away with and are apologized for.

I'm pretty happy to have no sporting heroes left, even if in the clinic this is often awkwardly claimed to mean that you can't enjoy cycling (or sport in general).

I don't really have any sporting heroes except Muhammad Ali. But when someone does something heroic, especially in a sport as corrupt and controlled as WT cycling was under Verdruggem and Armstrong/Bruyneel, then I think they should get credit for it.

How was it Heroic? Even if the Clen case was payback it still wasn't even close to Heroic taking it on, Contador was just protecting his revenue stream and image whilst contuning the lie that he's clean. There is nothing Heroic about a liar/cheater taking on other liars/cheaters to protect and continue the lies and cheating. The closest thing to heroic acts in modern cycling would be Bassons

 

[rhubroma]

Re: Re:

Of course Pantani was a victim, he was a victim of the corrupt leaders in the sport.

Fleur,

You are young, you are lucky enough never to have seen those riders live. So you do not need to jump on this nostalgic bandwagon, nostalgia of the worse era in the cycle sport. You do not have to repeat the crap that oldies keep on throwing. Pantani was the victim of his own pride,his own thirst for glory and his doping and he died from it. Is he an example for the use? I don't think so. Do you realize how cycling's image has been tarnished because of guys like him? How many riders have been victims of his doping? You are Dutch, so why find heroes down in the Med while there are so many close to home? Guys like Frans Maassen or Peter Winnen. They were true Dutch victims. On the other boards I spend quite some times trying to do justice to the likes of Frans Maassen and Edwig Van Hooydonck in the hope that they would some day make people like Pantani frgotten. It was a losing battle of course but I could not not do it.

If eventually Pantani paid for other cheaters, that is not my problems, he shouldn't have cheated, period. Cheaters among themselves? hmm I'll always side with the honest people whoever they be. This is like Al Capone versus George Bugs Moran at Bloody Valentine. Should Moran's men be pitied because they were killed by Capone? The obvious answer is no. Cycling needs credibility. When I had your age I was a big fan of Johan Museeuw. I was bitter against Belgian justice during the Landuyt-Versele affair. I was young and ridiculous and I needed to make a huge effort of self-introspection in order to reform and understand that Museeuw was a crook, in my opinion the biggest in the history of the sport. And even if it seems simplistic, it's obvious to me that there's just one wway to go. Condemn blood doping and hormone-based doping in an absolute and uncompromising way.

Cheers

At least don't discuss things you don't know what you're talking about.

Pantani was taken out by the Mafia in a repugnant gambling satire of the sport. His big fault was his psychological frailty, though on the bike he was as tough as they come, which ultimately led to his downfall and death.

Whether this was exploited by organized crime and the sport's establishment to pave the way for Armstrong's dominion is a matter of conjecture, though it has been entertained by a number of people not completely ignorant of the facts.

And yes Pantani paid for others.

 

[dacooley]

it's alright, discussing fan preferences and trying to persuade each other on something is pretty senseless. the only thing i cant understand is why many fans are willing to toletate any amount of doping just to see bertie beat one huge laboratorian experiment nicknamed the dawg, though, all of us clearly realize what kind of mental, physical and medical (what is not less important) effort itll demand.

 

[Jakub]

Re: Re:

Of course Pantani was a victim, he was a victim of the corrupt leaders in the sport.

Fleur,

You are young, you are lucky enough never to have seen those riders live. So you do not need to jump on this nostalgic bandwagon, nostalgia of the worse era in the cycle sport. You do not have to repeat the crap that oldies keep on throwing. Pantani was the victim of his own pride,his own thirst for glory and his doping and he died from it. Is he an example for the use? I don't think so. Do you realize how cycling's image has been tarnished because of guys like him? How many riders have been victims of his doping? You are Dutch, so why find heroes down in the Med while there are so many close to home? Guys like Frans Maassen or Peter Winnen. They were true Dutch victims. On the other boards I spend quite some times trying to do justice to the likes of Frans Maassen and Edwig Van Hooydonck in the hope that they would some day make people like Pantani frgotten. It was a losing battle of course but I could not not do it.

If eventually Pantani paid for other cheaters, that is not my problems, he shouldn't have cheated, period. Cheaters among themselves? hmm I'll always side with the honest people whoever they be. This is like Al Capone versus George Bugs Moran at Bloody Valentine. Should Moran's men be pitied because they were killed by Capone? The obvious answer is no. Cycling needs credibility. When I had your age I was a big fan of Johan Museeuw. I was bitter against Belgian justice during the Landuyt-Versele affair. I was young and ridiculous and I needed to make a huge effort of self-introspection in order to reform and understand that Museeuw was a crook, in my opinion the biggest in the history of the sport. And even if it seems simplistic, it's obvious to me that there's just one wway to go. Condemn blood doping and hormone-based doping in an absolute and uncompromising way.

Cheers

At least don't discuss things you don't know what you're talking about.

Pantani was taken out by the Mafia in a repugnant gambling satire of the sport. His big fault was his psychological frailty, though on the bike he was as tough as they come, which ultimately led to his downfall and death.

Whether this was exploited by organized crime and the sport's establishment to pave the way for Armstrong's dominion is a matter of conjecture, though it has been entertained by a number of people not completely ignorant of the facts.

And yes Pantani paid for others.

Don't dance with the devil. He was simply uncapable to play the dirty game, and I always had a feeling he was not very intelligent. Of course it's human to feel for him, on the other hand he was no hero and he was a victim of his own dancing with devil, although the game was very cruel to him.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

it's alright, discussing fan preferences and trying to persuade each other on something is pretty senseless. the only thing i cant understand is why many fans are willing to toletate any amount of doping just to see bertie beat one huge laboratorian experiment nicknamed the dawg, though, all of us clearly realize what kind of mental, physical and medical (what is not less important) effort itll demand.

You chose the right word, "tolerate". I've seen people accuse me of encouraging heavy doping. Indeed, some fans tolerate any amount of doping. Why? Well for me:
1. I don't know how much he dopes so I can't say if it is too extreme.
2. No matter what the fans think of heavy doping, he will do whatever he feels is right. I don't think the fans' opinion has ever swayed a doper.
3. I don't like doping because of, as you wrote, the mental, physical and medical effort it takes but he is a 33-year old adult and I'm not his mother, I can't wrap him up in cotton wool, it is up to him to decide what sacrifices he is willing to make.

 

[rhubroma]

Re: Re:

Of course Pantani was a victim, he was a victim of the corrupt leaders in the sport.

Fleur,

You are young, you are lucky enough never to have seen those riders live. So you do not need to jump on this nostalgic bandwagon, nostalgia of the worse era in the cycle sport. You do not have to repeat the crap that oldies keep on throwing. Pantani was the victim of his own pride,his own thirst for glory and his doping and he died from it. Is he an example for the use? I don't think so. Do you realize how cycling's image has been tarnished because of guys like him? How many riders have been victims of his doping? You are Dutch, so why find heroes down in the Med while there are so many close to home? Guys like Frans Maassen or Peter Winnen. They were true Dutch victims. On the other boards I spend quite some times trying to do justice to the likes of Frans Maassen and Edwig Van Hooydonck in the hope that they would some day make people like Pantani frgotten. It was a losing battle of course but I could not not do it.

If eventually Pantani paid for other cheaters, that is not my problems, he shouldn't have cheated, period. Cheaters among themselves? hmm I'll always side with the honest people whoever they be. This is like Al Capone versus George Bugs Moran at Bloody Valentine. Should Moran's men be pitied because they were killed by Capone? The obvious answer is no. Cycling needs credibility. When I had your age I was a big fan of Johan Museeuw. I was bitter against Belgian justice during the Landuyt-Versele affair. I was young and ridiculous and I needed to make a huge effort of self-introspection in order to reform and understand that Museeuw was a crook, in my opinion the biggest in the history of the sport. And even if it seems simplistic, it's obvious to me that there's just one wway to go. Condemn blood doping and hormone-based doping in an absolute and uncompromising way.

Cheers

At least don't discuss things you don't know what you're talking about.

Pantani was taken out by the Mafia in a repugnant gambling satire of the sport. His big fault was his psychological frailty, though on the bike he was as tough as they come, which ultimately led to his downfall and death.

Whether this was exploited by organized crime and the sport's establishment to pave the way for Armstrong's dominion is a matter of conjecture, though it has been entertained by a number of people not completely ignorant of the facts.

And yes Pantani paid for others.

Don't dance with the devil. He was simply uncapable to play the dirty game, and I always had a feeling he was not very intelligent. Of course it's human to feel for him, on the other hand he was no hero and he was a victim of his own dancing with devil, although the game was very cruel to him.

Sorry, but how exactly do you reckon a mandate that "il piccolo romagnolo" wasn't to make it to Milan by the mob was Pantani's own fault? How was it his fault that the sport found its "black sheep" scapegoat, but than apotheosized and covered-up its new Texan cash-cow darling?

Pantani, because he was so good, unwittingly made enemies of which, however, he himself was completely ignorant. And then the sport found it more convenient to throw him under the bus and cash in on the Anglo-American market, than to allow for a real confrontation with equal arms.

When I said I agreed with Maxiton, it was in part owing to the sense that with Froome and Sky the whole charade seems all too familiar. But Contador is much stronger mentally than Pantani was. It remains to be seen, though, if a battle on equal arms will be permitted, or if we will get the same fixed farcical war as before.

 

[Jakub]

Re: Re:

Of course Pantani was a victim, he was a victim of the corrupt leaders in the sport.

Fleur,

You are young, you are lucky enough never to have seen those riders live. So you do not need to jump on this nostalgic bandwagon, nostalgia of the worse era in the cycle sport. You do not have to repeat the crap that oldies keep on throwing. Pantani was the victim of his own pride,his own thirst for glory and his doping and he died from it. Is he an example for the use? I don't think so. Do you realize how cycling's image has been tarnished because of guys like him? How many riders have been victims of his doping? You are Dutch, so why find heroes down in the Med while there are so many close to home? Guys like Frans Maassen or Peter Winnen. They were true Dutch victims. On the other boards I spend quite some times trying to do justice to the likes of Frans Maassen and Edwig Van Hooydonck in the hope that they would some day make people like Pantani frgotten. It was a losing battle of course but I could not not do it.

If eventually Pantani paid for other cheaters, that is not my problems, he shouldn't have cheated, period. Cheaters among themselves? hmm I'll always side with the honest people whoever they be. This is like Al Capone versus George Bugs Moran at Bloody Valentine. Should Moran's men be pitied because they were killed by Capone? The obvious answer is no. Cycling needs credibility. When I had your age I was a big fan of Johan Museeuw. I was bitter against Belgian justice during the Landuyt-Versele affair. I was young and ridiculous and I needed to make a huge effort of self-introspection in order to reform and understand that Museeuw was a crook, in my opinion the biggest in the history of the sport. And even if it seems simplistic, it's obvious to me that there's just one wway to go. Condemn blood doping and hormone-based doping in an absolute and uncompromising way.

Cheers

At least don't discuss things you don't know what you're talking about.

Pantani was taken out by the Mafia in a repugnant gambling satire of the sport. His big fault was his psychological frailty, though on the bike he was as tough as they come, which ultimately led to his downfall and death.

Whether this was exploited by organized crime and the sport's establishment to pave the way for Armstrong's dominion is a matter of conjecture, though it has been entertained by a number of people not completely ignorant of the facts.

And yes Pantani paid for others.

Don't dance with the devil. He was simply uncapable to play the dirty game, and I always had a feeling he was not very intelligent. Of course it's human to feel for him, on the other hand he was no hero and he was a victim of his own dancing with devil, although the game was very cruel to him.

Sorry, but how exactly do you reckon a mandate that "il piccolo romagnolo" wasn't to make it to Milan by the mob was Pantani's own fault? How was it his fault that the sport found its "black sheep" scapegoat, but than apotheosized and covered-up its new Texan cash-cow darling?

Pantani, because he was so good, unwittingly made enemies of which, however, he himself was completely ignorant. And then the sport found it more convenient to throw him under the bus and cash in on the Anglo-American market, than to allow for a real confrontation with equal arms.

When I said I agreed with Maxiton, it was in part owing to the sense that with Froome and Sky the whole charade seems all too familiar. But Contador is much stronger mentally than Pantani was. It remains to be seen, though, if a battle on equal arms will be permitted, or if we will get the same fixed farcical war as before.

That's the risk you must take when you dance with the devil, you use banned substances and you lie. It's similar to Bertie's clen positive, it was also ***, but what we can do? Did he use Clenbuterol? Very likely. Did he do blood doping? Almost certainly. I wish we had a doping clean sport, but that's impossible, proffesional sport always includes doping. When someone decides to go into it, he must count with bad consequencies.

 

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

This was awesome. Thanks.

Thank you, King Boonen. I appreciate it.

No worries, it's an enjoyable read.

 

[dacooley]

the entire discussion invisibly boils down to the thought that in clean cycling bertie (or il pirata) would've won grand tours or at least they might have had much bigger chance of winning than sky (lance). however it seems grasping at a straw to me. we have no clue how doping free cycling would look like because without doping professional sport is not a professional sport.

 

[rhubroma]

They all were "dancing with the devil," not all, however, were thrown under the bus and not all were targeted by the Mafia, while others were protected. It was this hypocrisy that devoured Pantani. He was certainly an egomaniac, I'll grant that. However, this shouldn't be construed as making the exceptionally negative way he was treated "his fault." It though did make him incapable of swallowing being the fall guy, which he undoubtedly was at the time.

 

[hrotha]

Those stories about Pantani and the Mafia... Are they like those other stories about Pantani's murder?

 

[Echoes]

I have to ask: why would a convicted doper be worse than an unconvicted doper ?

There's no reason but in our societies, you are innocent until proven guilty. A convicted murderer is neither any worse than an unconvicted murderer. Remember that clean riders exist (there's no reason to think otherwise, it's too easy to claim "they're all doped" in order to clear one's favourite rider if the latter falls) but how can you know who they are? It's impossible. So that's why I've returned the good old adage. I mean I'm a fan of Sep Vanmarcke's at the moment but I'd disavow him if I learn that he had been blood doping or using testosterone for example. It would even make him a hypocrite, in his case. The future always reveals any secret, anyway. At least I believ it. Almost every big doper of the nineties have been exposed by the end of or after their caree, so we might expect the same for the current riders . By 2025 we might -might know everything.


By the way, it seems that some here still can't make any difference between stimulants and blood doping. Eddy Merckx has only been convicted of stimulant doping at the end of his career after the heavy crash of Valloire. Even if all of these substances are gathered together under the signifier "doping", you are not talking about the same products. Stimulants, though not commendable, are a minor offence, comparable to deviating of one's line in a sprint. That does not make you a joke of a rider. Blood doping does.

 

[rhubroma]

Re:

Those stories about Pantani and the Mafia... Are they like those other stories about Pantani's murder?

If you're trying to be sarcastic, you should not be doing so to someone who's lived in Italy for 21 years.

The thing is Pantani is known to have been defrauded by the Camorra here, it is just that, as with so many Italian "mysteries," when it comes to organized crime not all the secrets get officially recognized as facts, but smothered as being a "dissimulation" of truth to deflect attention toward a false simplification narrative. There are too many interests for it to be generally accepted that Panani's exclusion from the 99 Giro was a Mafia set-up, in other words. You certainly won't read about it in any US news sources.

At any rate this il Sole 24 Ore reports it baldly.

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/noti...messe-104511.shtml?uuid=ABSkb83B&refresh_ce=1

I disagree, however, with speculations about him being clean.

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

Pantani was taken out by the Mafia in a repugnant gambling satire of the sport. His big fault was his psychological frailty, though on the bike he was as tough as they come, which ultimately led to his downfall and death.

Whether this was exploited by organized crime and the sport's establishment to pave the way for Armstrong's dominion is a matter of conjecture, though it has been entertained by a number of people not completely ignorant of the facts.

And yes Pantani paid for others.

They all were "dancing with the devil," not all, however, were thrown under the bus and not all were targeted by the Mafia, while others were protected. It was this hypocrisy that devoured Pantani. He was certainly an egomaniac, I'll grant that. However, this shouldn't be construed as making the exceptionally negative way he was treated "his fault." It though did make him incapable of swallowing being the fall guy, which he undoubtedly was at the time.

Quoted for truth.

. . . the sport found its "black sheep" scapegoat, but than apotheosized and covered-up its new Texan cash-cow darling . . . .

Pantani, because he was so good, unwittingly made enemies of which, however, he himself was completely ignorant. And then the sport found it more convenient to throw him under the bus and cash in on the Anglo-American market, than to allow for a real confrontation with equal arms.

When I said I agreed with Maxiton, it was in part owing to the sense that with Froome and Sky the whole charade seems all too familiar. But Contador is much stronger mentally than Pantani was. It remains to be seen, though, if a battle on equal arms will be permitted, or if we will get the same fixed farcical war as before.

You're right, it does remain to be seen, but if past is prelude to future, no battle on equal terms will be permitted. The thing with Pantani and then the ensuing dominance of U.S. Postal could be considered one big tragedy for the sport. The thing with Sky is one big farce. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out vis a vis Contador.

The thing is Pantani is known to have been defrauded by the Camorra here, it is just that, as with so many Italian "mysteries," when it comes to organized crime not all the secrets get officially recognized as facts, but smothered as being a "dissimulation" of truth to deflect attention toward a false simplification narrative. There are too many interests for it to be generally accepted that Panani's exclusion from the 99 Giro was a Mafia set-up, in other words. You certainly won't read about it in any US news sources.

At any rate this il Sole 24 Ore reports it baldly.

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/noti...messe-104511.shtml?uuid=ABSkb83B&refresh_ce=1

I disagree, however, with speculations about him being clean.

The article you linked is dated Oct 2014. Where does the investigation stand now, still ongoing?

 

[Maxiton]

Anyway, I think this story - Pantani, Contador, and everything in between - points to one conclusion: doping is a sideshow, a straw man. Doping isn't the central problem in cycling. The central problem is corruption in the governing body.

An honest governing body could control for and minimize doping in a big hurry. The riders are more the victims of doping than they are its perpetrators. If there were as many Twitter accounts devoted to corruption in the governing body as there are to doping, we might have some hope of getting an honest UCI, and an honest sport. Until then, riders will continue to jeopardize their health, and their careers.

 

[peloton]

Re:

Anyway, I think this story - Pantani, Contador, and everything in between - points to one conclusion: doping is a sideshow, a straw man. Doping isn't the central problem in cycling. The central problem is corruption in the governing body.

An honest governing body could control for and minimize doping in a big hurry. The riders are more the victims of doping than they are its perpetrators. If there were as many Twitter accounts devoted to corruption in the governing body as there are to doping, we might have some hope of getting an honest UCI, and an honest sport. Until then, riders will continue to jeopardize their health, and their careers.

Citius, altius, fortius

That's the very slogan for Olympics.
To think that ANY top sports are clean is naive at best, and as we've seen, it's not just UCI but all governing bodies trying to dismiss the doping part, but which is an unfortunate and unavoidable part in top sports.

Great OP btw Maxiton, totaly agree with it

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

Anyway, I think this story - Pantani, Contador, and everything in between - points to one conclusion: doping is a sideshow, a straw man. Doping isn't the central problem in cycling. The central problem is corruption in the governing body.

An honest governing body could control for and minimize doping in a big hurry. The riders are more the victims of doping than they are its perpetrators. If there were as many Twitter accounts devoted to corruption in the governing body as there are to doping, we might have some hope of getting an honest UCI, and an honest sport. Until then, riders will continue to jeopardize their health, and their careers.

Citius, altius, fortius

That's the very slogan for Olympics.
To think that ANY top sports are clean is naive at best, and as we've seen, it's not just UCI but all governing bodies trying to dismiss the doping part, but which is an unfortunate and unavoidable part in top sports.

Great OP btw Maxiton, totaly agree with it

Thanks. I'm going to put my reply in the "What body would you like to see the UCI model itself after?" thread.