Doping: Attitude and bias...

[Boris Bajic]

I've been thinking a little recently about when doping became an issue, not in the press but for individual cycling enthusiasts.

I've been flicking through the Roche book and I recall the Year of Wonders when he just kept winning. I was 25-ish and as far as I was concerned steroid abuse (all doping) was restricted to Soviet Bloc rowers and field athletes. To me, Roche was clean.

Right through the mid-80s I knew there was the occasional problem with a naughty rider, but I did not see it as endemic and people rarely spoke of it. Spending a lot of time in France, I had an extremely positive view of Fignon, who we now all know was making sure of all the 'bonne preparation' he needed. I would have believed Abdu was a doper back then, because he was a Crafty Commie, but not the elegant, intellectual (he wore glasses) Fignon.

Then (in broad terms) came Festina and the bubble burst. But not for me... I was in France that summer, listening on the radio to the barmy TdF. Call me a fool, but at the time I thought Pantani's win was clean. All the evidence was otherwise, but I liked the way he rode so I knew he was clean.

My notion about how deep doping went in Pro-Cycling started to emerge in the early LA years when elements of the European media went after him.

I recall the romance of his first win and some whiff of suspicion that USPS were maybe doping but that there was no way LA would do it... He would have used doped Goobahs to pull him to the Yellow and win the race clean. That was not an unpopular view at the time. I began to think it was true.

I recall in maybe 2001 saying in company that pretty much anyone in the top three for any jersey was probably using something and that maybe most of the top 30 in GC were, too. I now think that figure conservative, but at the time I was looked on as a cynic of the worst type. Anyone who said that so many TdF riders were dirty must be a mad conspiracy theorist...

I have memories of the DM bust and I recall being surprised that top riders were still being caught. Had I believed the big post-Festina clean-up? Probably, up to a point.

My defence for my dark (but selective) cynicism was always that I loved the sport as much after coming to believe that doping was rife as I did in the earlier years when I just didn't think people were that naughty.

I like to say that I was always suspicious, but my recalled responses and reactions to certain races back then display a naivity and delight suggesting otherwise. I really just thought it was the naughty few... excluding Pantani and other riders I 'liked'. I remember being sad for Pantani when it all went south for him, rather than cross.

Because I do not now queue up to pour scorn on LA and the fanboys, I am told my view is rose-tinted. I'm not sure it is, but I am surprised at how long it took for the penny to drop with me.

Do others find that their imagined awareness of widespread doping in the 80s and beyond doesn't match their true recollections of that time?

 

[Arsen Gere]

[quote="
Do others find that their imagined awareness of widespread doping in the 80s and beyond doesn't match their true recollections of that time?[/quote]

In the 80's as a first cat I had a chance to go and race for a club in France, I was not particularly good but I wanted to see what I could do. I weighed up the options and discussed it with my wife and to be honest I was probably too old at 25 and went to uni instead. At that time doping never entered my mind.

 

[thom]

I've been flicking through the Roche book and I recall the Year of Wonders when he just kept winning. I was 25-ish and as far as I was concerned steroid abuse (all doping) was restricted to Soviet Bloc rowers and field athletes. To me, Roche was clean.

Right through the mid-80s I knew there was the occasional problem with a naughty rider, but I did not see it as endemic and people rarely spoke of it.

Call me a fool, but at the time I thought Pantani's win was clean.

I recall the romance of his first win and some whiff of suspicion that USPS were maybe doping but that there was no way LA would do it... He would have used doped Goobahs to pull him to the Yellow and win the race clean. That was not an unpopular view at the time. I began to think it was true.

I recall in maybe 2001 saying in company that pretty much anyone in the top three for any jersey was probably using something and that maybe most of the top 30 in GC were, too. I now think that figure conservative, but at the time I was looked on as a cynic of the worst type. Anyone who said that so many TdF riders were dirty must be a mad conspiracy theorist...

I have memories of the DM bust and I recall being surprised that top riders were still being caught. Had I believed the big post-Festina clean-up? Probably, up to a point.

My defence for my dark (but selective) cynicism was always that I loved the sport as much after coming to believe that doping was rife as I did in the earlier years when I just didn't think people were that naughty.

I like to say that I was always suspicious,

Because I do not now queue up to pour scorn on LA and the fanboys, I am told my view is rose-tinted. I'm not sure it is, but I am surprised at how long it took for the penny to drop with me.

Do others find that their imagined awareness of widespread doping in the 80s and beyond doesn't match their true recollections of that time?

Boris, so in general I like your posts but I do find at times they are attempts at stylistic vignettes, rather than content based. In quoting you above, I cut some of what you wrote.

Here are some previous comments that may contrast what you said above:

• It bothers me not at all whether he is guilty or not. I started to follow the TdF when doping of one kind or another was almost assumed.
• I've thought that pro cycling was dirty since before I started to read about it and watch it in the mid-80s.
• I love the extremes, the agonies, the beauty, the courage, the skill and the blunt intrusion of reality of Pro Cycling, but never for a moment did I think the sport clean.
• The world is more fun with a TdF. Cycling is more fun with a TdF. We all knew there was widespread doping.
• The drugs (in the top echelons and seeping elsewhere) were a given.

As for rose-tinted glasses, well : I cannot lose my continued regard for Sir Armstrong as a dramatic and powerful rider.
The thing is, I just think of the few riders who didn't dope, those the would have obtained more wins, the Nicole Cooke's of the male peloton and see that Lance is and always will be a personality unfortunately. For me, cycling is at it's lowest point and Lance is a large part of it.

I cannot fathom how you could continue to hold Lance Armstrong's cycling exploits with any degree of regard and purport to love professional cycling.

 

[Hotblack Desiato]

As far as us Brits are concerned Tom Simpson is the elephant in the room. However the adulation he receives is because he died in more innocent times when doping was a more primitive affair and the money to be gained was modest. The dangers of drug-fuelled performances were far less well understood and EPO was a long way in the future. Dope tests? What dope tests?

I'd suggest that had Simpson done what he did, knowing what we know now, his achievements would be as discredited as those of Armstrong.

And knowing what we know now, Greg Lemond is the only American to have won the TdF!

 

[Boris Bajic]

Boris, so in general I like your posts but I do find at times they attempts at stylistic vignettes, rather than content based. In quoting you above, I cut some of what you wrote.

Here are some previous comments that may contrast what you said above:

• It bothers me not at all whether he is guilty or not. I started to follow the TdF when doping of one kind or another was almost assumed.
• I've thought that pro cycling was dirty since before I started to read about it and watch it in the mid-80s.
• I love the extremes, the agonies, the beauty, the courage, the skill and the blunt intrusion of reality of Pro Cycling, but never for a moment did I think the sport clean.
• The world is more fun with a TdF. Cycling is more fun with a TdF. We all knew there was widespread doping.
• The drugs (in the top echelons and seeping elsewhere) were a given.

As for rose-tinted glasses, well : I cannot lose my continued regard for Sir Armstrong as a dramatic and powerful rider.
The thing is, I just think of the few riders who didn't dope, those the would have obtained more wins, the Nicole Cooke's of the male peloton and see that Lance is and always will be a personality unfortunately. For me, cycling is at it's lowest point and Lance is a large part of it.

I cannot fathom how you could continue to hold Lance Armstrong's cycling exploits with any degree of regard and purport to love professional cycling.

A very good riposte and a stance I admire. In part, my original post was an admission that despite claiming now that I had always assumed (even known of) widespread doping, close examination of my memories reveals that my damning of certain riders, teams or aspects of the sport was highly selective. Your quotes of my earlier writing just offer further proof of that. You are quite right.

I was moved by the Cooke speech abot LA. I admit to not following women's cycling. Not even a little bit. I am naughty that way. I don't follow women's footie either. I knew of Cooke only because of the Olympic medal. Her words struck a chord.

Nonetheless, I'm afraid I do still see LA as a dramatic and powerful rider. This doesn't stop me also thinking that he is a large part (or a significant part) of the reason why Pro-Cycling is at its current nadir. Not the only part, just the most visible and the most (until recently) successful doper.

There is a mindset currently at large that he was somehow an evil, doping Svengali (the only one) and that all others fell before his bullying ego and either agreed against their own pure ethics to dope or were chased out of the sport. I don't buy that for a moment.

On your final paragraph, I quite understand your disbelief at my willingness to separate the doping from the spectacle, but I think as I do despite the current whirlwind of animus for LA, not because of it. I condemn him for his bullying and his doping, but I marvel at his strength, his resolution, his climbing, his descending and his bike handling. It is not black and white to me and I never wore a yellow wristband.

Similarly, I continue to revere the memory of Fignon and of Pantani. I just loved the sheer guts and the unstoppable Duracell insanity of Ullrich and Vino and Eki... all almost certainly as dirty as LA, if less controlling. Voeckler is another favourite of mine (so often the gallent nearly man) but many of his feats would have cynics chuckling wryly.

I quite understand that many are extremely cross about what he did. At one level, so am I. But I do still love pro-cycling as much as ever I did and I have no more idea today whether Wiggins or Evans are dirty than I did in 1999 whether Armstrong was. He remains for me a dramatic and powerful exponent of the sport. And a dirty, cheating, lying, bullying one. Not the view of a fanboy, but of somebody who likes a spectacle and drinks in the romance of the grand tours in the full knowledge that some of the wine is badly corked.

 

[rich p]

I admire Thom but not Armstrong.
How he manages to read BB's posts is utterly beyond me .

 

[thom]

As far as us Brits are concerned Tom Simpson is the elephant in the room. However the adulation he receives is because he died in more innocent times when doping was a more primitive affair and the money to be gained was modest. The dangers of drug-fuelled performances were far less well understood and EPO was a long way in the future. Dope tests? What dope tests?

I'd suggest that had Simpson done what he did, knowing what we know now, his achievements would be as discredited as those of Armstrong.

And knowing what we know now, Greg Lemond is the only American to have won the TdF!

I agree - Tom Simpson's place in GB cycling history is undoubtedly clouded and it is hard for people like me to speak much of attitudes at the time but if pushed to absolute terms, he cheated too.

I did hear a podcast where Ned Boulting interviewed a historian who had written a book about attitudes to drug use in sport. The interesting point he made was that in the 60's and 70's, there was the theme of drugs as harmless facilitators of new experiences and human improvement. I'm supposing LSD and amphetamines are the obvious drugs of counter-culture. But perhaps more influential within sport would be the legions of GI's returning from wars in south east asia having been fed amphetamine to sustain their combativity. For some cyclists, aware of how states were prepared to feed their youth these superhuman drugs, it may have been hard to accept and understand the reasons why they were prohibited to them.

 

[thom]

I quite understand that many are extremely cross about what he did. At one level, so am I. But I do still love pro-cycling as much as ever I did and I have no more idea today whether Wiggins or Evans are dirty than I did in 1999 whether Armstrong was. He remains for me a dramatic and powerful exponent of the sport. And a dirty, cheating, lying, bullying one. Not the view of a fanboy, but of somebody who likes a spectacle and drinks in the romance of the grand tours in the full knowledge that some of the wine is badly corked.

Boris, I sincerely appreciate your ability and inclination to take my direct criticism in good humour.
I agree that it is a self deception to see everything in black and white terms. But knowing what we do about Lance, I just think it requires self deception not to think that there could have been better and truer spectacles during his time. And since Lance is unique amongst cyclists in cultivating a persona beyond cycling but based upon his cycling achievements, I think he has singled himself out for a particular form of opprobrium now.

 

[zizou]

The biggest bias on the doping issue is the one that focuses all the attention on doping in cycling and ignores the issue in more powerful, wealthy and popular sports.

 

[ayceejay]

All of us who have competed in one way or another seek to gain an edge over the competition in one way or another. In motor sports the vehicle has to comply to certain regulations in an attempt to make it a competition based on skill, the Monte Carlo rally struggled with this for years. In a race of Morris Minors you would consider the one with a Chevy V8 under the bonnet a cheat unless every competitor had the same. Doping is the same. Armstrong and others climbing mountains at a speed I could only match when going down the other side is spectacular and this is what we want: a spectacle, the problem is in the regulation. Perhaps there could be two categories one where anything goes and another, totally drug free: no energy gels, no caffeine, no painkillers etc. If someone wants to pump themselves full of chemicals to make a race more exciting for me as a spectator, who am I to complain?
At the Olympics in the US an interviewer asked fans and 'minor' competitors if they would take a drug that would guarantee them a medal but they would die the next day. A large (surprising) number said "Yes".
I think the culprits are people like me who encourage winning at all costs.

 

[Crankarm]

To presume that the top riders of the various eras weren't on something I think is a little naive. I say this as their performances were super human compared to mine. Nothing I could compare to my own experiences even moderate club riding, the pain the burning lungs, the sheer physical effort day in day out. How could they achieve what they did without a special diet without "supplements". I have always suspected the top Pro diders have been taking supplements of some sort to maintain or better their performances. How could you otherwise do what they did and get the results they did? I think if the authorities dig deep enough every Tour winner could potentially have some sort of performance skellington in their past. Just that some were better at concealing it than their rivals/team mates. I am sure Wiggo is clean though. I hope so.

 

[BJH]

All of us who have competed in one way or another seek to gain an edge over the competition in one way or another. In motor sports the vehicle has to comply to certain regulations in an attempt to make it a competition based on skill, the Monte Carlo rally struggled with this for years. In a race of Morris Minors you would consider the one with a Chevy V8 under the bonnet a cheat unless every competitor had the same. Doping is the same. Armstrong and others climbing mountains at a speed I could only match when going down the other side is spectacular and this is what we want: a spectacle, the problem is in the regulation. Perhaps there could be two categories one where anything goes and another, totally drug free: no energy gels, no caffeine, no painkillers etc. If someone wants to pump themselves full of chemicals to make a race more exciting for me as a spectator, who am I to complain?
At the Olympics in the US an interviewer asked fans and 'minor' competitors if they would take a drug that would guarantee them a medal but they would die the next day. A large (surprising) number said "Yes".
I think the culprits are people like me who encourage winning at all costs.

I agree with your final line

 

[BJH]

I can't recall the exact quote by Tyler Hamilton but he mentions how LA could have effectively prevented Landis from setting this train in motion by beeing a friend, on the basis hat if LA had wanted to he could easily have got Floyd back into a pro teaM post ban.

Yes he was that powerful maybe the ultimate patron, so big that he transcended the sport and could therefore influence the supposed governing body of the sport.

So could there have been better spectacles and truer action to watch without him. I think so because the power he wielded must have left every other rider desperate to stay on his good side. Being allowed to attack or press or even win would have been the subject of a yes or no decision by him and Bruyneel. Who wold want to risk a bollo£&ing from him for pressing at a point when Postal didn't want it to happen?

More importantly, just how did he get away with causing Simeoni to be forced back from a break and then do a zip the lips motion without ever being called in by the UCI ??

I bet every other rider in the peloton received a very clear sign that day

 

[raindog]

Perhaps there could be two categories one where anything goes and another, totally drug free: no energy gels, no caffeine, no painkillers etc.

That's ridiculous. In the drug-free category, you would simply get cheats gaining an edge by taking peds, which is essentially, what we have now.

 

[Hotblack Desiato]

To presume that the top riders of the various eras weren't on something I think is a little naive. I say this as their performances were super human compared to mine. Nothing I could compare to my own experiences even moderate club riding, the pain the burning lungs, the sheer physical effort day in day out. How could they achieve what they did without a special diet without "supplements". I have always suspected the top Pro diders have been taking supplements of some sort to maintain or better their performances. How could you otherwise do what they did and get the results they did? I think if the authorities dig deep enough every Tour winner could potentially have some sort of performance skellington in their past. Just that some were better at concealing it than their rivals/team mates. I am sure Wiggo is clean though. I hope so.

I don't believe that. I think it is well within human endurance to do a race like the tour nourished by ordinary food stuffs. This propaganda about it can only be done if the pros are on something is just that - propaganda.

After all if you cycle commute or do a century ride or whatever, are there not plenty of people who will hold their hands up in horror and say 'How could you do that?' 'You must be really fit' when we all know it isn't a big deal at all!