Quote:
Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary
alright. Peace brother.
I probably reacted a bit harshly to what seemed to be a tone a little too patronizing...
now, while i agree that Lance was doggedly pursued because of his name, by the same stretch, drug enforcement agency want to catch big names, not only in cycling.
Because it is the big names that make others want to cheat. People see them flaunting the system, not getting caught and getting millions of dollars as a result...The one guy i wish they had caught was Carl Lewis...
but with cycling, they could catch a hundred domestiques and it wouldn't do a thing if guys like Lance or Pantani or Contador continued to win and win big.
I don't think Lance was pursued unfairly - he became a global celebrity, made tens of millions of dollars...all from the doping...
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I guess were we see things differently is in what constitutes cheating, I do not really think of doping as cheating in cycling.
In this I see cycling as different from any other sport purely because doping was normal in the sport from the begining, in other sports PED's have been a recent phenomana as opposed to cycling were they have always been an accepted part of the sport.
Drug use was expected by the teams, the sports governing body did its best to colude with the teams to keep its use under wraps in order to schedule inhuman courses and put up faster times.
Within this culture I dont blame individual riders at all and, as such, see the amount of time and effort that the USADA has put into building a circumstantial case against Armstrong when everyone that follows the sport knew full well he was using, as was all of his compatition, as completely pointless, I actually see all of the other disqualifications as pointless as well but at least they failed a blood test, in Armstrongs case he hasn't even failed a test, therefore why bother?
Catching or not catching Armstrong, especially by a US body that has no say as to how the sport or tour is run, will do nothing to clean up cycling, that will only be acheived by the sport itself and the use of stringent testing.