Maybe Robin Williams’ collection up for auction will make you feel better. Some of these are historic items. A Phonak frame? Speaking of dopage.

https://m.paddle8.com/auction/robin-williams/

awesome, what a cool guy.

https://m.paddle8.com/auction/robin-williams/

Fuck sake.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/mechanical-doping-inventor-says-uci-obstructed-police-attempts-to-find-cheaters-at-this-years-tour/

Can’t have Sparty getting caught his last time out, eh???

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/mechanical-doping-inventor-says-uci-obstructed-police-attempts-to-find-cheaters-at-this-years-tour/

David Millar, Stephen Hodge et al

Agreed, the occasional villain will never tarnish the sport (and every good story needs some villains).

The sports figure that really broke my heart is Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers.  Man, that guy was fabulous after he first came up.  He could do anything, and I really held him up as a hero to my kids.  Surprise surprise, he got caught.  And then, much like Armstrong, he compounded the deed by lying about it and ruining other people’s lives in the process.

I think that’s what sickens me the most–not the fact that they cheated.  I’m grown up enough to know that cheating is rampant in a lot of professional sports.  It’s when they fail to face up to it when they’re caught.

Its not the odd athlete here or there.  PED’s are known, the risks are known, and the marginal benefits are known.

What ruins it for me is not the “cheating” per se I can never tell the extent of most cheating – its that I view competitive sport as a healthy substitute for actual conflict.   Much better than war or a real fight.

So the more I realize this, the more my spectating gravitates away from sports where there is too much risk of injury: american football is almost out for me, boxing and MMA is out.  Hockey barely hanging on.

I cannot take joy in watching others put themselves at actual harm for my amusement.   Cycling would be perfect if not for the actual, although very small, risk of death or serious injury.  But that risk is small and hardly the “point” of the sport.

So the main downer for me is whether the PED in question involves an exchange of health for performance.

Otherwise its just one degree away from a cortizone shot.

All professional sport, by definition, has lost its Corinthian values. The Operation Puerto findings revealed bigger cheats than the cyclists, but cycling is an easy target and other sports have more financial backing that helps to bring pressure to bury these sort of allegations. Criticism of McQuaid is warranted, but he was defending the position of cycling in the same way football has done. Protecting its reputation and right to an assumption of cleanliness. Outing and making a pariah of LA has only served to justify continued and unending accusations within cycling….this will never go away now. “The most famous cyclist ever cheated, so it’s a sport of cheats” mentality.

I watch no football these days, which I played at a semi pro level. I watch little cycling either, an industry I work in and participate in every day. I visit here less and less…..the fan boys have taken over and I can’t get onboard with the deification.

I just ride my bike.

Nice article Frank.

 

And while we’re at it, where are all the heroes now in the peloton??? The only one I can get behind is Sagan these days. Yup, I’m officially old.

 

I think the heroes now aren’t the GC contenders, but the super domestiques and the guys who get in breaks day after day, going for stage wins (often the same guys who win Classics). That’s where the glory is. De Gendt, Gesink, GT, Stannard, Alaphillipe, Tony Martin…these are the guys I love watching.

And in some was I wouldn’t care if they are doping – even if they are you can see that they are deep, deep in the pain cave when they race.

And while we’re at it, where are all the heroes now in the peloton???  The only one I can get behind is Sagan these days.  Yup, I’m officially old.

I hear this song at least once a day commuting to work on German radio.  So bizarre after not hearing it for decades in the Sates.

At some point you just have to choose:  Are you going to still love it and embrace all the fucked up shit along with all the amazingness and history and sublime experience or just finally cut the tie and walk away for good.

When I was young, I absolutely adored the sport and LeMan, Kelly and Fignon.  They were the heroes of my youth.  They were always just up around the bend on all of my rides, beckoning me on, making me add the extra 5 k to the end of an exhausted ride.

Then I was “initiated” into the sport and heard rumors about the drugs, etc in the early-to-mid-90’s and it hurt a lot and I finally walked away from the sport in the late 90’s for a good 5-8 years.

But like that crazy, mad lover who you finally say “forget her, she is just not worth it” to, it was always in the back of my mind and I finally came back in the mid-2000’s.

Now I am here with eyes wide open and just love the sport.  Sure, I told my kiddos this summer that I truly believe that the top 10% are absolutely doping in some way, shape or form and that I hate that aspect but I also believe it is not to the level it once was and that if you know what you are getting into, then you can choose to watch it and enjoy it for the entertainment aspect or you can just walk away (kind of like an election going on right now somewhere in the world).

And then there is always our friend Cippo to keep it real:  http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/cipollini-nibali-should-have-offered-henao-cash-to-help-him-win-olympic-gold/

-freddy

All this time, despite having just spent a previous ten plus years on a bike virtually every day, I’m oblivious to everything going on in the pro cycling ranks. Just wasn’t on my radar. Baseball was however and turns out that baseball was not better. Maybe worse? Don’t believe that cycling was, or even today is, the singular sport influenced by all the BS.

Right, I’ve amended my post: Just gotta look past the douchebags. Brailsford is annoying for being just that. He fails the look test fo sho, truth telling or not.

Lucky for us, Cycling is still incredible on its own merits and we can still love turning the legs around with or without the Pro cycling scene.

@Cary

they could all cycle with a blood bag on their back like a camelbak, and i wouldn’t give a shit. i realized the world was lies and liars when i was 8. thus, i’ve never really had the burden of morality to carry around when it came to evaluating reality.

Kinda reminds me of Woody Allen speaking in a documentary about him. He says that he was a very happy boy, until the age of 6. He realized all of this would end at some point, that death was waiting out there. He said that’s when he wanted to cash in his chips, get out of this life, and I think essentially when he became a cynic for life. Pretty amazing that he was only happy for six years…

i never said i wasn’t happy.  it’s just that since well before adulthood, i’ve had a very realistic and clearheaded view of human nature.  i’m all in, every day, despite this, i promise you.  i get off my bike every day with my heart in my throat, and ya know, so do the guys that dope.  i did a few cycles of steroids when i was in the Marine Corps, and Rule #10 applies, for sure.  in fact, in the weight room, steroids only INCREASE your capacity to throroughly cripple yourself.

none of this really matters to me very much, now.  i’m going to ride my bike, watch races, do my job, enjoy my family, and sleep well, no matter the fools that dope, or the hypocrites that police them.

You’d have to be an imbecile or hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants.

Jacques Anquetil

Coppi:

Question: Do cyclists take la bomba (amphetamine)?

Answer: Yes, and those who claim otherwise, it’s not worth talking to them about cycling.

Question: And you, did you take la bomba?

Answer: Yes. Whenever it was necessary.

Question: And when was it necessary?

Answer: Almost all the time!

professional sports – all of them, not only cycling – are essentially a circus. in our current culture if you flood a system with huge amounts of money and a shot a celebrity the only possibile outcome is that human beings will do anything and everything in their power to grab it. you watch professional cycling like you go to a cinema to enjoy a good movie. you know it’s a show, a temporary escape, it isn’t about reality. if movie-going is your kind of thing, kick back and enjoy the show of pro cycling without fooling yourself about what it really is.

i much prefer investing the time in training for my next race. ours really isn’t a spectator sport. if you want to find the soul of cycling, i think it’s at amateur races. it’s the real deal. there are people who cheat here too, but it’s a very small minority and they always end up paying the the high cost that DIY doping exacts. the rest of us do glorious and epic battle every weekend (and when we’re lucky, during the week too), immersed in the total craziness of juggling impossibile schedules to get in some quality training, inventing the most outlandish excuses to duck social events and work appointments to get to the races and hang out with kindred spirits.

Very, very nicely put; I want to be clear that the doping has done nothing to dampen my love for Cycling; I just don’t imagine myself racing against these guys anymore because I don’t really care about them.

@Cary, @Teocalli, @RobSandy,

@Ccos

As long as there has been competition, there has been cheating. Just gotta look past the douchebags.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the cheating; it has never affected my love for watching the sport. I mean, Ullrich and Pantani are some of my favorites of all time and it doesn’t matter one iota what they did or didn’t take.

What bothers me is the same old bullshit around it. The worst is the incredulity by people like Brailsford, the attitude of them. We should just take the same old stories and accept that this time its different. I don’t really care if Sky abused TUEs in principle (so long as no one was injured). I am just disappointed that they can’t come up with a better explanation than to copy the style that USPS had.

And on that subject; I love that Armstrong asked Ger if he was crazy when he asked him if he’d ever used mechanical doping. Because I’m having a hard time imagining anyone with less credibility when it comes to telling the truth and/or stopping short at nothing in order to take an advantage.

they could all cycle with a blood bag on their back like a camelbak, and i wouldn’t give a shit. i realized the world was lies and liars when i was 8. thus, i’ve never really had the burden of morality to carry around when it came to evaluating reality.

Kinda reminds me of Woody Allen speaking in a documentary about him. He says that he was a very happy boy, until the age of 6. He realized all of this would end at some point, that death was waiting out there. He said that’s when he wanted to cash in his chips, get out of this life, and I think essentially when he became a cynic for life. Pretty amazing that he was only happy for six years…

 Jacques Anquetil

It’s a fucking bummer, innit?

Exactly my feelings! Nice piece, Frank.

Alright, maybe this will cheer us up…it’s from last year, but a DAMN important bit of science:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/the-close-ties-between-exercise-and-beer/

It’s not the cheating that gets me. There are cheaters everywhere.

I have no problems from the media coverage in itself.

But there is a reason more and more people are turning to XCO over road cycling. And as soon as enough people (and money) turn into that sport it will become corrupted too…and the next one after that…nothing to do with good old days of people being more trustworthy. It has always been like this and it will still be so until the end of times.

I just wish sports could always be as simple and beautiful as they are when they are in their infancy.

@pedro

It is fucking miserable to witness how the human spirit can create something so great and then corrupt the shit out of it until it is turned to…well, shit.

Sometimes I wish cycling never went from being enjoyed by a minority of geeks to a worldwide business case managed by an excel sheet. It never turns out well…Just look a Formula 1: thirty years ago you had a bunch of crazy petrol heads driving around bad tracks at ungodly speeds strapped to an engine and a fuel tank. Those were the days. Those were the heroes.These days you have an idiot driver throwing a tantrum because the media didn’t give him enough attention…

I swear to The Prophet, the day Sagan gets involved in this shit I am done with the pros.

Of course in the good old days of honour and trust without wall to wall media coverage, no one did anything like get on a train……..oh wait……..

It’s a fair and serious point – there have always been heroes in cycling and always villians. And the same people are different things to different people. And there has always been suspicion – just about every champion in cycling has been accused of cheating in various ways and different times.

The hope I have is the current champions are not generally under suspicion; Sagan, Quintana, Froome (I know Sky have some questions to answer but Froome seems to emerge from the TUE thing with more credit than most, i.e. he’s been open and hasn’t been caught lying), and the scrutiny they are under will hopefully means this continue.

I’ve got more concern about what will come out of others sports, to be honest…

It is fucking miserable to witness how the human spirit can create something so great and then corrupt the shit out of it until it is turned to…well, shit.

Sometimes I wish cycling never went from being enjoyed by a minority of geeks to a worldwide business case managed by an excel sheet. It never turns out well…Just look a Formula 1: thirty years ago you had a bunch of crazy petrol heads driving around bad tracks at ungodly speeds strapped to an engine and a fuel tank. Those were the days. Those were the heroes.These days you have an idiot driver throwing a tantrum because the media didn’t give him enough attention…

I swear to The Prophet, the day Sagan gets involved in this shit I am done with the pros.

Of course in the good old days of honour and trust without wall to wall media coverage, no one did anything like get on a train……..oh wait……..

Sometimes I wish cycling never went from being enjoyed by a minority of geeks to a worldwide business case managed by an excel sheet. It never turns out well…Just look a Formula 1: thirty years ago you had a bunch of crazy petrol heads driving around bad tracks at ungodly speeds strapped to an engine and a fuel tank. Those were the days. Those were the heroes.These days you have an idiot driver throwing a tantrum because the media didn’t give him enough attention…

I swear to The Prophet, the day Sagan gets involved in this shit I am done with the pros.

When I was young, I pored over the photos in Winning

Never read the articles, the photos say it all!

i much prefer investing the time in training for my next race. ours really isn’t a spectator sport. if you want to find the soul of cycling, i think it’s at amateur races. it’s the real deal. there are people who cheat here too, but it’s a very small minority and they always end up paying the the high cost that DIY doping exacts. the rest of us do glorious and epic battle every weekend (and when we’re lucky, during the week too), immersed in the total craziness of juggling impossibile schedules to get in some quality training, inventing the most outlandish excuses to duck social events and work appointments to get to the races and hang out with kindred spirits.