It seems to me the real issue is terror that doping will cause cycling to become even more marginalized than it already is, with people employed in the sport losing their already tenuous livlihoods. For them Lance has been the answer to their prayers. He’s the Barry Bonds of Cycling. No matter what he took and when, the sport depends on his myth for its miniscule and hard-won recognition.

Even in Europe, cycling is at best a semi-marginal sport. Here it’s completely marginal. By the numbers, the U.S. public just doesn’t understand cycling and cares even less about it. I do agree that Times seems to be a lot more interested in "catching" Lance than they are at showing (just one example) what a farce baseball statistics have become. Why? because society –cares– about baseball, and steroids cannot be allowed to diminish our baseball mythology (and the daily three pages of mind-numbing nonsense that the Times allocates to it). . .

No one in the American press has ever tried to make the public understand that (European) cycling from the beginning never was clean, or that "cleanliness" was ever even an issue. In the old days the Tour really was a "tour." The first 100 miles of a stage were ridden at tempo, and the real race would start 20-30 miles from the finish. . . with breaks along the way for coffee, sandwiches, cigarettes, wine, champagne (for indigestion), and later on, diet pills for pep, etc., etc. The point of the sport was to be awed by the mountain exploits of Coppi, not to wonder what he was taking. What did it matter? European cycling today is a smooth evolution from those days, but with guys racing flat-out the whole way, and climbing walls in superhuman times. Naturally the stimulants have evolved along with them.

The issue of "Cleanliness" didn’t even exist until recently. It evolved during the cold war when the military arms race was sublimating into olympic sports, and doping became a subliminal form of "arms research." Now that the cold war is over, the "arms" still exist. Cultural attitude toward them is confused, and motivations for pointing the finger at athletes depend on who is pointing the finger and what’s at risk for them.

The American attitude (especially in the press) toward doping is (to me) a mirror reflection of the American character at large: puritanical, hysterical, and ultimately ignorant and hypocritical. Every day people cheat (and are cheated) in this society, now more then ever. Which is precisely why we need our myths and heros.

But the idea of a "level" playing field has always been a myth. With or without supposed doping, the playing field is in fact far more level in the pro ranks than in the amateurs, where people compete side-by-side with huge discrepencies between lifestyles, ages, jobs, incomes, available training/recovery time, coaching, sophistication of equipment, etc., etc. And this is considered completely acceptable (as it should be: otherwise there would be no sport). But the collective psychology cannot tolerate a threat to their professional myths and heros, because they are the remedy (in their inner moral universe) for all the unfairness that is a simple fact of life. In short, there is no answer to this conundrum, except to keep riding, visit cyclingnews daily, and picki and choose your heros as your moral needs dictate.

Whew, long-winded! Very sorry about that. Please don’t delete my profile, I’ll do penance! I’ll even blood-dope so I can carry water bottles for Axis riders, whatever. . . just don’t ban me from the "sport!"

G.Gilliland

Voet said retired riders Mottet, Delion and (I think) were clean. In his book he mentions that Mottet would have been a super-champion if he had doped.