Well..........................................sorry to not have blogged in a while but I thought it appropriate to express my opinion (hence the title of this post) based on the latest events in the cycling world regarding doping, Lance, and a whole bunch of others.................
Many of my cycling pals and non-cycling buddies are asking my take on Lance and doping so here goes.
Like many fans of the sport I am disappointed but I am absolutely amazed at the finger pointing by others in the sport. From my view Lance is being painted as the architect of some insidious doping conspiracy that was all his idea...............too late to ask Marco Pantani and Tom Simpson for their opinion.
So......................what is also amazing is the hypocrisy of the sports fan. It seems so easy for USADA and UCI to strip Lance of his titles but in baseball there are but a few asterisks next to the steroid users and their homerun titles, no one is taking away the world series rings from other players or players that contributed to a championship. How about a good portion of professional football players and their PEDs? In America it would be tantamount to high-treason to have the NFL take away the Lombardi trophy if it were put out as public knowledge that key players to a championship were on some PED right? Are these athletes "leveling the playing field" as cyclists were?
Therefore......................if we strip Lance of his titles let's do it right..................let's strip Kornelia Ender of her gold medals and give them to Shirley Babashoff, how about going down the line and taking away records from baseball players, probably a handful of track and field stars, and who knows who else and what sports. Golf anyone??
Lance and a bunch of others cheated..........no doubt..................but what is important to consider is the culture of the sport during that time. The only thing I see that Lance did differently was professionalize doping. He was not some drug cartel kingpin but an athlete that paid his mortgage and provided for his family as a cyclist and a businessman--with cycling as his business. To paint him as a conspirator of all conspirators and that his dominant personality pushed other cyclists to dope is flawed. It is the concentration camp prison guard defense.We have cheaters on Wall Street, the mortgage crisis swindlers, politicians, and bunches of others in all kinds of career fields looking for an edge.
Okay.....that is it for now. I only hope that cycling cleans up its act and the rest of the dominoes fall so we can move forward................
JOCMO: The moment will come when this is no longer big news in cycling and we can applaud guys like Froome, Hushovd, Phinney, Wiggins, Evie Stevens, Judith Arndt, and many others for their great talent.,
