Shit was getting real. I mean really real by 2001 with Lance. This was an era in my life when it seemed everything was unstoppable. Everything was firing around me perfectly...recently married, job escalating into the stratosphere and no chain on my bike as I learned how to really race. Plus, all the decades of fear people had over cancer could virtually be put to rest because we were watching someone who'd fought the good fight, beat it and was now laying waste to the European peloton. 

Life was good. 

We all had lived through the Festina affair in 98 and witnessed a balling Richard Virenque crying like a baby when his team was jettisoned from the Tour for being a collective of dopers. 

But little did we know everyone was. 

Even as the testing got better over the years and more bone-heads got nabbed, we could not take Lance (and by extension his heroic American team and teammates) off their well dusted and prized mantel. They were shining objects. Americans. Impossible for many American minds to allow themselves to connect the 'character' of a cheating, lying, whining, nefarious doper (yes, how we saw these strange Europeans...there I said it) from the visions of super heroes we were creating here in the U.S. battling on the roads in Europe.

You could almost see the capes flapping in the breeze from within the peloton.

Little did we know that big business was helping steer and certify a legend in the making. The Thomas Weisels of the world injecting monies to feed virtually anything this legend needed. The right teammates. The right equipment. The right medical programs. 

We had to be able to compete right? Even Superman needs something to combat the Kryptonite flowing in the arteries of the Euros. So why not poison him with Kryptonite too and acclimatize him. 

I've read all the threads from every angle. The tweets and FB posts from teammates who were there training with him to those that know he had an extra special engine. Conversely, I've read all the same media on those attacking him and desperately want to expose Lance for some reason. I can't instinctively say if it;s to better the sport, or to effectively put their own guilt to rest. A guilt I am sure that has been weighing on them and their very Puritanical American up-bringings. Up-bringings that can't have any of that. Or if you do, you don't get caught. Just like Wall Street, right?

It's time for this facade made of paper machet to collapse. It can not support the weight of the guilt, nor the weight of the trophies and medals our clean young riders are generating these last few years. In fact, it's completely unfair for Lance's Affair to consume all the attention, kudos and focus from our newest and brightest we are raising like a Black Hole sucking the gravity out of the universe. That is the greatest shame. It's a tabloid sidebar column at best. Stealing any opportunity for great press to be concentrated on those that deseve it.

You cheating fucks need to go away. Walk silently out the side door and close it behind you. Softly. We are giving you this opportunity. We as the clean and as parents and coaches who are trying to guide and focus our youth to do the right thing are giving you this opportunity. Right now. An opportunity to leave and allow us who care to move forward and re-build this sport we love right. 

And make it beautiful again. Like we saw in Boulder this past weekend. 

The buds of our tree of cycling are beginning to blossom again. We've got past the nuclear winter of fraud and can start to bask in the sun to let these newbies grow, compete, do their best with what they were given.

Without Kryptonite.

TwinSix and Dubba have combined forces on this one. It means what it says. I think the next one should have a blood infusion machine with wings and of course a skull with the unmistakable shape of the cyclist formally known as Bernie.

I hate myself for liking Boonen. No, loving Boonen. I'm a tank like him (6'2" 180) and always empathize with the big men who have to suffer like pigs when the terra firma tilts up and the waif's float away. God help them when the land flattens out again...

Anyways, oops, he did it again. The boy's definitely got a problem. This is not recreational use (WTF does that mean anyways) in my opinion and the fact he's turning to blow again...after what all thought was a rad and remarkable step back up to the peloton's 'top step' after his Roubaix win this year and with it erasing all that bad in his past from his first cocaine bust...

So how's it going to end?

It's all going to end up on Belgian reality TV. Probably right after Wellens and Me re runs or that crappy show about the Planckaerts. I can see it now: It'll be about a struggling Boonen, all bloated, working in a factory being managed by Ludo Dierckxsens, as he tells tales about depression and pressure and....(insert the 'where are they now?' TV show play book from VH1 here).

Pressure? Try growing a family, Boonen. Get laid off and push hard to continue supporting your family. Try maintaining some self respect and salvage the respect little kids have for you in Belgium while they read your own comic book.

Hit the buy now button folks...

I've always been enamored with this cherub like son of Flanders, Wim Jacobs. Former Belgian Worlds selection, former Fidea rider and most recently with Morgan Blue, home boy got blasted with a positive and requisite suspension recently. The kid looks like a brick house and I'd specifically pick him out over the years to watch his style and technique. He's a mudder for sure.

I got to see Wim every weekend we raced in Belgium, warming up with him on the courses, saying hello. An absolutely nice guy. But aren't they all? Which leads me to that age old question: Why? I don't want this to turn into a messy rant but in the case of Wim, it must be desperation. Let's face it, Wim's face isn't seen on the pointy end of races at the GVA's or SP's. He's a mini celeb in the smaller local races, still dwarfed by Geert Wellens or Arnie Dahlmans if they were there, but at races of substance (read: coverd by sporza n the boob tube) that really have the cash purses, he's fodder.  So I guess to maintain the ability to stay out of the factories or paving streets, I suspect these kids have to keep the results flowing in to keep those minor contracts alive. And thus to the butt comes the needle.

But I digress. I'm just sick and tired of the joke the sport has become. I'd hope that 'cross was somehow going to side step the doping drama but I'm a fool for thinking that.

....in Germany. Part H20, part CERA, I guess.
Get yours here.

I can't get it out of my head. As I spun it out today after my ride with Dubba getting our cross juices flowing it came across my iPod....

Mother dear, the world's gone cold
No one cares about love anymore

Jeff Buckley WAILING away on this rarely heard song. All about hard core realizations about place on earth; place in and around your loved ones. Heavy duty stuff. But alas...

I'm thinking the Tour. My love for the sport....

Does anyone care about the Tour any more? I love it with everything I've got, but this year will have to be it for me. It was this mental line in the sand I've drawn.

I resisted....but got caught up at the end. Only when I heard Carlos may be close did I jump back in and listen. All due props and respect to Christian and the Slipstream...er, ah Garmin...boys mind you, but there's something about Carlos that I feel is transparent and at the core good.

Make it so. Don't let me hear of a Floyd-like post podium debacle, Carlos. Allow my lady and I to go and see it next year as I become SUPER FAN on the slopes of some God-forsaken hill in France or Italy or Spain (wherever the sickness is to go down). I did get a vibe that the peloton is now self regulating. Identifying the p.o.s.'s out there and throwing upon them the due cross hairs. That boy and girl of yours, Carlos, on the podium: never let them doubt you. Never let them tilt their heads sideways and say 'huh?' What is doping, daddy? I think that the last time trial was real. Absolutely exhausted athletes who have not been able to myst-raculously recover in a night's time to drop the hammer upon the skulls of your nemeses.

My heart can't take this anymore...
What will you say?

Carlos, my friend. Ensure it is real.

No, not the type that you do to get fit to drop your buds on your weekend rides. I'm talkin' about the type you need to do to keep WADA off your trail so you can dope in absolute privacy. Just witness Michael's program

Oh, Tommeke, you f-ing fool. Amature hour, for sure. Shame that all of that fame and fortune is getting to your head. You're awesome. Totally gifted. Blowing it, you retard. I wonder what the next comic strip will entail you doing in your adventures. What'r all the young Belgie kids gonna read?

"An den, I ripped six rails, and road za cobbles like Johan Museeuw, mijn hero."

What a joke.

So, therefore you need to update your wardrobe with this new Limited Edition beauty. Dubba, you made me spit my meatball out when I saw this..Buy one from DopersSuck and wear it with pride. All hail Ben Jacques-Mayne. We need something real to believe in.

Hmm. Since the bomb went off between Trek and Greg Lemond, there seems to be an immense level of activity with respect to Lance's 'training' activities during his seven year reign as king of Le Grand Boucle. As an example, this site, InvestigateLance.org has surfaced bringing to light some interesting topics on Lance's cleanliness during that time. So, It should be looked at and you as a cycling fan and a fan of clean sport should formulate your own opinions on the subject.

I love that expression. Especially when Phil Liggett blurts it out when a sprinter comes across the line first, arms outstretched with a bike length or more in front of 2nd place....thus the guy relgated to 2nd getting to see the winners clean set of wheels.

And so it was the case for our HOME BOY Pete P-Lo Lopinto in his first two races of the season! Chalk two 'W's up for the small teams! Pete, a former crit guru on the Kodak Sierra Nevada Team last season is now using all his experience to mentor and lead his new THF Realty Cycling team. After pulling in the W at the Scottsdale AZ Grand Prix, P Lo and the THF Realty crew lined up with the Toyota United's and Rock Racing's of the world at the DU crit here in D-town and threw down. Read all about it on their web site but the most CLASSIC result of P Lo's victory here in Denver this weekend is again his truly CLEAN set of wheels, a set fueled by bread and water. You GO P Lo!:

Photos by Serge Desrosiers