Where Do We Go From Here?

Going forward, there is a simple solution to the problem of doping in cycling - for the riders to 1) refuse to dope and 2) to denounce those who continue to do so. You'd think that in short order Greg LeMond's clean-winner-of-the-Tour-de-France would emerge (Greg quite correctly points out to those who say you can't win the Tour "clean" that if everyone on the start line of the race is competing cleanly, without doping, then whoever crosses the finish line in Paris with the lowest accumulated time will become the Clean Winner of the Tour de France.)

Wishful thinking, I know, since there is potentially such an up-side to doping for the elite rider who gets away with it and earns millions as a result. It's tough to argue against that economic logic, though it's in no way a morally or ethically-justifiable approach. (Stay tuned to this site for a link to an upcoming interview where we discuss the economic incentive to dope in greater detail.)

Given that doping has been with the sport since its earliest days, and in light of how severely skewed the incentives:disincentives ratio to doping is, what's the answer?

I don't think that legalizing doping is the way forward (sorry Torri). Tacit acceptance of doping isn't going to work anymore, either - that cat's out of the bag and no one is going to be able to put it back in, no matter what we'd like. We just can't go back to pretending that doping isn't a problem. Likewise, the intimidation of still-active athletes who speak-out against doping (ex. Armstrong vs. Simeoni [2] or Armstrong vs. Bassons) has to stop, along with the vilification of those who, either voluntarily, or when confronted with evidence of their guilt, admit their transgressions and indict others, even after the fact. Is increasing the involvement of the State's criminal policing apparatus a potential solution? Aggressively arresting and putting dopers and people who really effed-up like me, people who both doped and helped others to dope, in jail as a deterrent? Then you get the response that government shouldn't be wasting money policing a bunch of careless athletes who want to risk their health to pedal a bike faster. Throw-out the UCI? But then what?

There isn't an easy answer to this. In fact, there isn't even consensus as to what a fiendishly-complicated answer might look like.

Ruminating on what Torri said, just for a second - if you legalize doping, you take away every last bit of hope that youngsters might otherwise have when considering whether or not to start cycling. If you know from the beginning that you have to risk your health in order to reach the highest level in your sport, or perhaps just to be an amateur you'd need to dope, what kind of incentive is that to begin cycling?

Unfortunately, the doping products work. EPO really, really works. I can't deny that, like Allen Lim so disingenuously did, implying that a clean athlete could achieve the same performance level as an equal-but-doped competitor. It's even true that, as a result of taking EPO, by the standard of measure I relied upon at the time, my life was great in 2005-6. But the fall-out has been equally spectacular and my life has been destroyed thanks to my involvement in doping. Perhaps the long-term non-health risks are less for someone who earns millions thanks to doping while racing, and can then fund the rest of their life - and their legal defense - when the inevitable catches up with them. But only a select few reap the massive financial benefits accessible as a result of doping, which wouldn't be so concentrated, perhaps, if the playing field were truly more level.

I would implore any athlete considering whether or not to dope to realize that, no matter how effectively they think they'll manage the risk, there are catastrophic possibilities that they can't account for, which will destroy the value of their ill-gotten gains swiftly, and totally.

Advice for Allen Lim

As The NY Daily News' Nate Vinton writes today, Allen Lim of rice cake fame is likely to be the next person made uncomfortable in the name of rooting-out corruption/doping in cycling. My advice to him is to tell the truth, whatever that might be.

It's always weird to read the transcripts of others discussing your contribution - or lack thereof - to cycling...

UPDATED (Sept. 15): Great DISCUSSION of Allen Lim's "Pop-Psychology" approach to Exercise Physiology Here.

Just recently read this exchange was between Allen Lim (AL) and VelocityNation (AS):

"...AS: It makes me wonder, because I assume there are riders on your team who have first hand knowledge of riders who have cheated and benefited from it.

AL: Or vice versa. They maybe have known riders who have tried to cheat and totally failed. How much did ___ (Lim mentions a 2nd tier pro busted for doping [Ed. note: apparently me]) actually accomplish in the sport?

AS: Yeah, but that might actually be a case of starting out as a donkey, right? He wasn't that good to begin with... BUT, you have to say, doping has ruined his life.

AL: Yeah, right? It's a sad sad situation. You don't want that to play out for anybody. We're driven driven people, it goes without saying that we work very hard and sacrifice a lot, often to the detriment of our own selves and our relationships, that's the other side that people don't often understand. So our drive to win is definitely there. But what distinguishes our riders is that they really are well balanced people, they have the big picture in mind and they're intelligent people. Jonathan always envisioned this team as a group of guys that have those common traits, so as much as you want to pick a team based on palmares, we also want to assemble a team based on character. I think that's where Jonathan has done a great job..."

It's definitely surreal when the guy who was Floyd's physiologist in 2006 at the Tour de France, who mad-dogged me as intensely as anyone in Malibu, is goaded into manifesting something approaching empathy for me now. I'm not sure how Garmin is able to perpetuate this mythology that it is somehow a uniquely-"clean" team, representative of a new-era in cycling, while at the same time its principal implied having doped while on Postal, its physiologist worked intimately with convicted-doper Floyd Landis during the Tour he won using synthetic testosterone, and its team captain served a two-year ban for EPO abuse. Nothing against Millar, who has leveraged his confession into status as *The Voice* of the new, "clean" cycling, but Jesus Cristo. How much did I accomplish in the sport compared to whom? LeMond? Not much, obviously. But Landis and I both have our own two-year bans compliments of USADA.

Here's the thing - I never said that I wasn't a "donkey" (or whatever) in comparison to Armstrong or Landis. In fact, I never said anything about my talent, lack thereof or contributions to cycling relative to anyone else. Rather, certain elements have attempted to belittle or discredit me to further their own agendas by claiming that because I didn't race the Tour de France I could not know that testosterone was and is used in endurance road cycling to facilitate recovery during multi-day stage races...