Just a note here...while there is plenty of reason to suspect use of PED by Armstrong, use of testosterone in castrated males (remember...Armstrong has one cancerous testicle removed) is standard of care and thus not considered performance enhancement. I would suspect he had a medical clearance for its use.

As mentioned, I want people to formulate their own opinions and non-biased 'facts' to help people come to those clear decisions like what you are suggesting Dr. Pete are what is going to be needed. Thanks for the comment.

As an example, the web counter text on the home page bums me out a bit and weakens their plight to be factual and non-emotionally invested in finding the truth.

"Website visitors since the day Trek Bicycles sued and made the worst decision in the history of their company to go against the greatest anti-doping champion the sport of cycling has ever seen Greg Lemond for his comments made about Lance Armstrong.

-04/08/2008-
The Day Trek Bikes Died."

yeah...

well when you are tapped into a cash cow like Trek is to L.A.

whadda ya gonna do?

Thanks for the link - as always, determine bias, sift out the facts and make your own informed opinion. And never limit your reading to stuff you agree with!

I just wonder how much we need to drag our sport through the mud. Should we discount every hero we've looked up to in the past 15 years of cycling based on speculation, or should we move forward. Let bygones be bygones.

For example, now that B Riis is out of the Tour books, do we give the win to Ullrich? Oh wait...

Lance, Ullrich, Riis, Indurain, Pantani; they all trained and suffered and sacrificed more than any of us can imagine and are simply products of their environment. They're still massive heroes in my mind.

Lets not take away from the glorious history that makes bike racing so compelling. Instead, we should focus on making it clean from now on, so we don't have to keep looking back.

MatB, you are a passionate son, my friend. I enjoy that spirit. This said, I can not watch those old VCR tapes (yes, dating back to the mid 90's) of the Tour of Flanders or Lombardia because to me, it isn't real. The performances are just not real. The body has been coaxed into more than what God/Allah/Buddah gave it and on that premise, I just can't watch that stuff any more. It's WWF wrestling. So to me, "glorious history" is something I just can't get passed....especially when money is involved and cheating to get said money is the path. It boils down to this: I hate cheaters. I hated f-holes who plagiarized in High School on reports, and now that I am older, can not stand it when I see IP being ripped off to build other products. I have two sons, and I will ensure they are never psychotic enough to cheat to get by. So, that is my stance on this. Again, your opinion is beautiful, optimistic, forward looking and encouraging and everyone need to digest this situation the way they need to. Maybe I need to let the bygones be gone as you say. My instinct tells me otherwise though...

One more comment...I am as infuriated about cheating as Greg. HOWEVER, with the number of riders from this era that have either been implicated or admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs, are we just discussing an elevated, drug-induced LEVEL playing field with the strongest riders still winning? Just a thought to ponder in our rage...

It's a level playing field for those willing to cheat ... and plenty of cyclists died of heart attacks due to clotting and blood that is simply too thick to be pumped.

Like Greg I've got Tour videos back to the mid-80s, and the races have unmistakably changed for the worse. Watch the '86 Tour and see the time gaps swinging wildly day to day -- Hinault was up by 5+ minutes and lost it on a single day! Even by '89 you can see things are changing with Delgado off the front nearly every day.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-doping-dilemma&page=1
http://www.roble.net/marquis/coaching/lemond98.html

Lemond's delivery has certainly lost him some support, but if I were a clean rider who got pushed out by dopers, I would certainly have the same grizzly and unkempt rage.

I think I was like a few of the posters with regard to everyone did it, so what's the big deal? I imagine though that not everyone was doing it and therefore it was far from a level playing field. After listening to an interview of David Walsh recently I went and got his recent book "From Lance to Landis." Interesting read in my opinion.

Keller I am right there with ya, Dopers(Cheaters) Suck! I also have a difficult time watching the older races. But I also believe innocent until PROVEN guilty. The last thing I want to see is the people with the least amount of integrity, umm yeah that's right politicians would be in charge here, heading up an investigation on doping...oh, wait aren't they doing that right now with baseball. How's that going? You know there was this thing called the Red Scare back in the 50's...yeah that worked too.
It is what it is, but you can't correct the path of the cyclings future by going after those in the past, you need to work with the present and future hopefuls and hold them accountable for their actions now. Vaughters is doing a great job with transperency at Slipstream, regardless of what you think about Riis he has made huge strides at CSC in regards to this topic. The problems lies in the fact that the governing body of the sport, the teams and riders do not even sit down at the same table to put together a plan that works for everyone. So you have guys like Dick Pound (thankfully gone)running around accusing every winner of doping. What I find ironic about the entire Landis affair is the guy they gave the Yellow Jersey to has a medical clearance for Asthma inhaler...now that's not questionable, is it? There needs to be more transperency in the testing as well - just look at the whole Landis case it is riddled with incompetence. Are you telling me a guy was clean for every race and every test then suddenly he takes something the night before or day of his greatest ride and other teams failure to pay attention - look at his power reading from his power-tap, he wasn't blowing anything off the charts. But yet at the same time the "independent" lab isn't under the same amount of scrutiny from the governing body for their actions - who is being held accountable there? and why can't other labs or technicians testify against the labs? Pot calling kettle black there.

The thing is that there will never be verifiable facts about this. LA can't prove a negative, and I'm sure that there are no documents in existence that would show that LA was getting PED from a Postal/Disco doctor. So, we have no direct evidence/documentation for a PED regimen for LA, and therefore all we have to go by is secondary evidence, circumstance and statements from people with perhaps conflicting interest. I think that throughout the history of sport in general, there have always been and will always be cheaters Some of those cheaters will win and become heroes of the sport. Do you really think that Merckx, Hinault, etc. were all 100% clean during their careers?

Find the cheaters that are active in the sport now, educate young athletes about how doping is harmful and what the consequences will be when they are caught and change the culture of the sport to one where doping is not tolerated (i.e. make it a mistake that you cannot make even once). BUT, digging in the past for info that isn't there; slandering athletes for things you cannot prove; punishing all athletes by infringing their civil liberties due to dopers; and using sloppy methodology in the attempts to identify doping are all counter-productive and only increase the cynicism and ire of the fans. The anti-doping agencies must do _everything_ right in order to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a person is doping, otherwise we're just hunting for witches.