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Vitaliy M.
Mountain climber
San Francisco
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Oct 24, 2012 - 02:35am PT
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the bigger question is why people idealize sports heros at all
+1
There are some random people I met along the way that I am impressed with (still won't call them a hero). For example a few month ago I met a woman, at work. Cancer survivor, but nobody outside her family/friends circle knows, or cares. As a big kayaker in the past, she passed on a quote her dad taught her- 'Life flows like water in a wild river, don't swim against it (flow with it)." One does not have to be a pro athlete or a bad ass climber to be wise. There are many regular people out there that are wise, and worthy of attention.
PS: Chief is not a bad person. He does say some things that are worthy of attention too. I don't think he minds giving or getting sh#t back. Have to hand it to him though, getting a cyclist thread to over 750 posts on a climbing forum is a HUGE accomplishment in itself. All hail the Petty Chief!!
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Oct 24, 2012 - 04:14am PT
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http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/23/opinion/cashmore-time-to-allow-doping-in-sport/index.html?hpt=hp_c3
Editor's note: Ellis Cashmore is a professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University in the UK, and the author of Making Sense of Sports.
(CNN) -- The Lance Armstrong case forces us to consider a philosophical problem that has tormented sport since 1988 when Ben Johnson was disqualified from the Olympics after testing positive for drugs.
Not 'How we can improve detection and make punishment serve as both deterrent and restitution,' but 'Should we allow athletes to use drugs?' My answer is yes.
Were we to treat athletes as mature adults capable of making informed decisions based on scientific information, we could permit the use of performance enhancing substances, monitor the results and make the whole process transparent.
Instead we continue to demonize those found guilty of doping violations, willing ourselves into ignorance.
Ellis Cashmore says the fight against doping in sport is misguided, and that athletes should be allowed to use drugs.
Athletes take unknown substances, procured from unknown sources and with uncertain results. Permitting the use of doping would rescue sport from this clandestine state, creating an environment that would be not only safer, but more congruent with the reality of professional sport in the 21st century.
Twenty-four years after the Johnson scandal, performance-enhancing drugs are as abundant as ever and, as the Armstrong experience reminds us, the testers remain embarrassingly behind the curve. Despite the major advances since 1988, several athletes have evaded detection not just for the odd competition, but for entire careers.
Before Armstrong, American sprinter Marion Jones was convicted and imprisoned, though, like Armstrong, she never returned a positive drug test (she was found guilty of impeding a Federal investigation). Nor did baseball's Barry Bonds, who was convicted on one count of misleading a grand jury investigating drug use by athletes in 2011.
No sensible observer of sport today denies the prevalence of drugs in practically every major sport, yet none would argue they can ever be eliminated completely. Money alone guarantees that much. The days of the gentleman-amateur have long gone: Athletes today are competing for high stakes, not just millions, but dozens of millions (Armstrong is worth about $70 million, according to Forbes).
In a culture that encourages the constant search for the limits of human achievement, we, the fans, the consumers of popular sports entertainment, revel in record-breaking, gravity-defying, barely believable feats on the field of play. Promoters, leagues, sponsors, advertisers and a miscellany of other interested parties dangle incentives.
Armstrong got rich thanks to the beneficence of people who didn't just back him but lauded, even lionized him as the greatest cyclist ever, and perhaps pound-for-pound one of the world's finest sportsmen. Small wonder he was motivated to gamble: a quick cost-benefit calculation would have told him the chances of detection were slight compared with the bounties available.
The objections are predictable:
This is cheating. In a technical sense, perhaps; but that could be fixed by changing the rules. In a moral sense, it is unfair on those competitors who do not wish to use drugs. The evidence of the Armstrong investigation suggests that many other cyclists were habitual dopers, anyway. We can't say the same for other sports, though we can remind competitors that among the array of performance enhancing aids which are available to them, such as acupuncture, hypnotism, hypoxic tents (that simulate high altitude) and the countless other perfectly legal performance enhancements are some that are probably more dangerous than drugs.
Taking drugs is wrong. Maybe, but how many of us get through a day without taking a pharmaceutical product, such as statins, antidepressants, painkillers and so on? By an accident of language we use the same term for these products and performance enhancing materials as we do for illicit drugs like crack cocaine and heroin. This misleads us into imagining related objections.
Mercier: 'U.S. Postal doping predates Armstrong'
There are too many dangers. Of course there are -- as the situation is now. By inviting athletes to declare with impunity what they are using, we encourage and open discourse and promote research so we'd be in a position to advise on the relative values and risks of different substances. This openness isn't possible while we continue to force drug-taking underground. Opening up sport in the way I'm advocating would render it a safer, more secure environment.
Sports stars are role models. Possibly. But they are not paragons of virtue, and even if they were, young people who follow them and organize their own naive ambitions around theirs will eventually run into the rock hard reality that drugs are to sport what Twitter is to celebrities -- not exactly essential, but a valuable resource when used strategically.
Fans would turn off sport. Ask yourself this: Did you feel a thrill when you saw the imperious Armstrong cross the line at the 2002 Tour de France seven minutes ahead of his nearest rival? Or when you watched Marion Jones surge to victory at the Olympic 100m final in 2000? At the time, we didn't realize they or, for that matter, any of their rivals had doped. And it didn't affect our enjoyment of their performances any more than if we'd known they were wearing aerodynamically designed clothing.
The argument in favour of permitting drugs in sport is not popular at a time when the world is busy annihilating Lance Armstrong. But it is rational, sound and in harmony with sport, not as it was in the days of "Chariots of Fire," but as it is in the twenty first century: Unrelenting, mercilessly competitive and unsparingly achievement-oriented.
Armstrong's legacy may survive
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Oct 24, 2012 - 07:00am PT
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Hey Chief, I read about those two army blokes, now this is a very trivial matter, but sort of interesting they were both born in towns called Lincoln. Coincidence of course.
Vitaly M, I second that motion. My mother was my hero. My father died when I was five months old, I am the youngest, the others were 1-1/2, 5 and 12). My mom (who lost a daughter, a sister I never knew, to polio in 1953 aged 7) raised us all by her self (having a good profession as a dentist helped of course), and she gave us everything.
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Lloyd Campbell
Social climber
St. Cloud, MN
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Oct 24, 2012 - 09:48am PT
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Let them dope. It's not hurting anyone.
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/39997062/
The Forgotten Ones
The rightful destination of the seven yellow jerseys taken from Lance Armstrong on Monday will never be clear. In the absence of obviously dope-free Tour de France podium finishers from those years, they might as well go to the most shamefully forgotten people in this scandal. The jerseys can be draped, one apiece, over the graves of seven European cyclists who died young and mysteriously in 2003 and 2004.
The eldest was 35, the youngest 16. A couple of them were retired. Two died in their sleep, one in a race. One was a patient in a psychiatric hospital when he collapsed. Another had just left the dentist's office. All died within a 13-month span.
About 15 years earlier, around the time that the red cell-boosting drug EPO surfaced as a performance enhancer, there had been a similar wave of cyclists whose hearts stopped suddenly. Responsible doctors set off alarms, saying unsupervised use of the drug could thicken the blood to the point that it could no longer circulate through the body. A test to detect extraordinarily high red-blood-cell levels was developed. The deaths ebbed. In early 2004, alarms sounded again, set off this time by European journalists.
In the United States that year, as Armstrong prepped for the sixth of his seven Tour victories, nobody cared. He had beaten cancer and conquered the Alps. He was dating Sheryl Crow. The dead guys were nobodies.
The seventh cyclist, 21-year-old Johan Sermon of Belgium, died in his sleep just three days after U.S. prosecutors indicted four men, including Barry Bonds' personal trainer, on multiple counts of distributing performance-enhancing drugs. Two weeks later, I wrote a column in the San Francisco Chronicle questioning the federal government's relative apathy about the miraculous Armstrong, whose medical trainer had been indicted on doping charges in Italy, whose team was sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service and whose sport had a disturbing number of fatalities.
Armstrong's camp was livid. His agent, Bill Stapleton, called my sports editor, Glenn Schwarz, and demanded multiple corrections. One of them concerned the number of deaths. According to Glenn, Stapleton said that I should have counted only six mysterious fatalities because the body of Marco Pantani, the 1998 Tour de France champion found dead in an Italian hotel room, had revealed cocaine use.
Glenn told the agent that he and I had already discussed the number. The European papers had set the figure at eight. I had taken Pantani off the list. When Glenn and I talked later, I asked if Stapleton seemed to care about the deaths aside from the doubts they raised about the integrity of his star client's sport. No, Glenn said, he did not.
Messages left at Stapleton's office on Monday, seeking current comment from the agent, were not returned.
A few weeks later, Armstrong wrote a rebuttal essay that appeared in the Chronicle. He defended his sport’s drug tests. He praised, of all things, USADA – the organization that ultimately took him down. He never mentioned the seven dead guys.
He could have made a lot of points about them. When he wrote that his indicted trainer deserved the benefit of "innocent until proven guilty,'' Armstrong could have noted that I had, in effect, defiled the reputations of the dead cyclists by suggesting they had doped. He did not.
They were irrelevant to him. They were irrelevant to almost everyone.
The conventional wisdom among Armstrong's defenders holds that doping is a victimless crime and that only righteous prudes care about it. That wisdom is built on willful ignorance.
We have no idea how doping affects athletes, because we have no idea what they take, how much of it or for how long. They won't tell. Researchers won't run clinical trials because giving test subjects the amount of drugs believed to help performance would be unethical.
That “do no harm” credo is quite a nuisance.
So we rely on anecdotal evidence. Ben Johnson walks among us. Mark McGwire, now 49 and coaching with the Cardinals, looks hearty and very trim compared to his playing days. Barry Bonds, now 48, slimmed down even more after retirement. He took up cycling. And, of course, Armstrong – 16 years into his cancer recovery – is the very image of vigor.
But Armstrong's ex-teammate Tyler Hamilton has argued quite convincingly that different bodies cope differently with the drugs, and the wealthier an athlete, the more likely he is to get optimal treatment. Armstrong, according to the USADA report on cycling, paid more than $1 million to Michele Ferrari, the Italian doctor who oversaw his training, during their working relationship.
That kind of cash will buy not only premium performance, but probably better precautions. Poorer people trying to get ahead in a sport won't have that luxury.
The dilettante “Just Say Yes to Doping” crowd always seems to forget that health care is not distributed equitably. I once participated in a televised panel discussion with young athletes in the audience, posing questions. A slight football player from one of the most disadvantaged high schools in San Francisco implored the adults to remember athletes like him and protect his right to compete clean.
That kid knew what he was facing. If he took steroids or growth hormone and they hurt him, no one would help, or care, or even notice.
As Bonds awaited trial on perjury and obstruction charges, cyclist Tammy Thomas was convicted of similar offenses. Nobody paid attention. She was never a superstar. She had tested positive twice and been banned for life from cycling.
Pictures from Thomas's cycling career show a heavy-jawed, hirsute face – far more masculine than the one that appeared at the defendant's table for her trial. As the judge weighed whether to send Thomas to prison, her attorney argued for leniency partly on the grounds that she had medical conditions that required her to take as many as five psychotropic drugs.
If the apparent good health of McGwire and Bonds and Johnson is sufficient anecdotal evidence to support a libertarian approach to doping, do Thomas’ conditions act as counterweight? She isn't alone. The history of Tour de France champions is spotted with tales of self-destruction and de facto suicides.
About two years ago, three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond and his wife, Kathy, felt compelled to remind people why they opposed doping so adamantly. In an essay on Greg's blog titled “Doping and The Story of Those We Love,'” Kathy recalls a story she had told privately in the past, but has been reluctant to take public. In 1990, a call woke the couple in the middle of the night. The wife of Dutch cyclist Johannes Draaijer was sobbing. She had found him dead next to her in bed. An ambulance was on its way, but she knew it would be too late.
"He is cold,'' she kept saying to Kathy.
The LeMonds knew that Draaijer had been under pressure to use the latest pharmacology. His widow eventually told a magazine that he had used EPO and that she believed its blood-thickening properties caused his heart to stop.
Why don't we talk more, a lot more, about what happened to these people? We might learn that all the deaths were coincidental. We'd probably discover a lot of conflicting, confusing facts and half-truths. But at least we'd learn something of value. It beats obsessing over whether Armstrong should receive an asterisk or a DQ, and wondering who really won the Tour de France from 1999 to 2005.
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Lloyd Campbell
Social climber
St. Cloud, MN
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Oct 24, 2012 - 10:00am PT
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That was sarcasm, if you are referring to my post.
They should eradicate doping (maybe not possible), or get rid of pro cycling.
Too many kids pressured into taking drugs to compete.
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matisse
climber
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Oct 24, 2012 - 11:35am PT
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The post from Lloyd sums it up for me.
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Srbphoto
climber
Kennewick wa
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Oct 24, 2012 - 12:56pm PT
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So now that this is all out in the open and everyone hates performance inhancers, will Amgen continue to sponsor the ToC?
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dejavu75
Trad climber
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA
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Oct 24, 2012 - 03:05pm PT
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Here's what Levi Leipheimer had to say about legalizing doping:
That brings up a good point. I was just in Atlanta Sunday at a symposium with some of the top scientists in anti-doping from across the world. They wanted to hear my personal experiences and opinions on how to improve the testing. Create a clean sport. One of the questions was: We hear a lot from people who say we should legalize all kinds of doping and be a free-for-all. If that had been done that at any point from when I was 13 years old to now it would have been an easy decision to stop. Because that just scares the hell out of me. I don't want to be part of the sport that is a free-for-all. I would have left the sport. No question. That's not worth it. For sure there would be individuals out there for whatever reason, probably mostly because they didn't know better, they would go to the brink of death.
The full interview is here. Read the previous couple of pages, about him describing how he felt as a kid being pressured to dope. F*#k everything about that.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Oct 24, 2012 - 03:12pm PT
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Lets move on it really doesn't matter, paddle into big waves & see if drugs help you.
sometimes they do.
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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Oct 24, 2012 - 03:24pm PT
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The only part of this whole thing that really bugs me is the involvement of the US government. Not one single cent should be spent on investigating or prosecuting guys who ride bikes or throw balls for a living.
I remember back in the baseball nonsense when CONGRESS was interviewing the players... WTF???!!!
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mike m
Trad climber
black hills
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Oct 24, 2012 - 03:28pm PT
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So who won all of those tours. Oh yeah no body cares anymore. As far as I am concerned professional sports are all bullsh*t and the money leads all of them to cheat. If you like doing something then do it. Don't do something because you want to emulate someone else.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 24, 2012 - 05:30pm PT
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Sure, most people at the pinnacle of competitive sport ARE arrogant d-bags. And yeah, you can single out counter examples, but it's kind of an "exception that proves the rule" situation.
It's funny though, because as I recall it during his prime LA had a reputation as a pretty gracious fellow with respect to fans, kids, and the press. Which is pretty amazing considering how mobbed he was and that everyone wanted a piece of him. That he was a taskmaster, intimidator, a-hole, etc to those within the game...is that really surprising to people?
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division
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Oct 24, 2012 - 05:38pm PT
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My only true REAL heros tied into a rope...
Clyde
Cassin
Bonatti
Whillans
Kor
Batso
Each in their own ways were honest, fking nuts and focused to the hilt.
More importantly, they NEVER LIED nor CHEATED!
So you think that if we were all sitting around a campfire and a good friend passed out some free dope, not ONE of them would accept any?
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division
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Oct 24, 2012 - 07:04pm PT
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Sure, most people at the pinnacle of competitive sport ARE arrogant d-bags.
So why do people think they are heroes? Being an arrogant d-bag who walks all over other people to get ahead is just as bad as doping. Of course if you're going to walk over other people to get ahead, then you probably won't draw the line at doping either.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 24, 2012 - 07:20pm PT
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So why do people think they are heroes?
Because they can do things those people putting them on a pedestal can't do, things that the fans can vaugely relate to enough to realize how impressive the accomplishment is.
I'm sure plenty of the original astronauts were cocky d-bags too, but I don't really care about their personality aside from the brass balls bravery to strap a rocket to your ass and ride a tin can off the planet...they're all heroes to me, d-bag or not.
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bergbryce
Mountain climber
South Lake Tahoe, CA
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Oct 24, 2012 - 07:27pm PT
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This will be my only post in this very important thread
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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Oct 25, 2012 - 11:13am PT
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Six months seems like an adequate penalty - no?
George "William Zantzinger" Hincapie
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Srbphoto
climber
Kennewick wa
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Oct 25, 2012 - 11:50am PT
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Are there any Americans left standing?
Exclusive: Bobby Julich doping confession
By: Bobby Julich Published: October 25, 16:31,
American apologies, Sky releases him
On Thursday Team Sky released Bobby Julich from the team after he disclosed to them that he'd taken performance enhancing drugs during a period of his racing career. Below is Julich's confession that was exclusively sent to Cyclingnews.com
Dear Team Sky, family, friends, fans, and supporters of cycling,
I would like to preface this statement, by saying that whilst I don't expect all of you to believe some of the things that I am about to say, I don't want to insult anyone’s intelligence any longer and deny that I have never had anything to do with the shady past of professional cycling. This statement is about me and the decisions that I have made in the past.
I have recently made a full confession to Team Sky senior management about my doping history and understand that by doing so I will no longer be able to work for a dream team performing my dream job. I also understand that by doing this, I will have to face some more important consequences in the real world and with the people that matter the most to me.
I knew before I headed to our team meeting in London last week that we would all be asked about our past. I knew that this was going to be a pivotal point in my life and I decided to come clean not only to Team Sky but also to the sport and people that I love.
Lately, much has been said about purging the past before being able to rebuild and finally putting these dark days behind us. If we are going to purge, then we should do it for the right reasons. I hope we can learn from the past and look toward the present and future generations so that they will not have to confront the same issues.
I made the decision to use EPO several times from August 1996 until July of 1998. Those days were very different from today, but it was not a decision that I reached easily. I knew that it was wrong, but over those two years, the attitude surrounding the use of EPO in the peloton was so casual and accepted that I personally lost perspective of the gravity of the situation.
During the 1998 Tour, my fiancé (now wife) found out what was going on from another rider's wife. She confronted me on it and it was one of the most dreadful experiences of my life. She was never a part of this and I put her in a very difficult situation. She told me right then and there that if it ever happened again, our relationship would be over. That was motivation enough and I knew I had to stop.
The Festina Affair changed everything for me. It reaffirmed for me that this was not only wrong and bad for my health, but also illegal with heavy consequences. In a strange way, I was relieved that the Festina Affair happened and was personally convinced doping would stop and that this problem would be over. I quickly realised how wrong I was.
From that moment on, I tried to shield young riders from the temptations that were out there. The following years my own resolve with doping may have wavered but it did not break. There were times that I was tempted to return to the dark side, but after some difficult years, I stopped thinking about what others were doing and focused on my own performance and enjoyment in the sport. Most importantly, I proved to myself that it is possible to compete clean and I came back with solid, clean results that I am extremely proud of.
My return to the top level of the sport coincided with signing at Team CSC in 2004 and I want to briefly explain my side of the story. I know that much has been said about what allegedly happened there and about the man that is the figure head of that team. I am not going to defend him as a person but rather as an organisation and what it did for me personally.
This organisation gave me two things that no illegal substance could ever truly provide. It gave me back my self-respect and my self-confidence. That was all that I needed to perform at the highest level. This was my personal experience. At no time was I offered or did I receive any sort of blood manipulation nor did I witness any systematic doping within the team. I found that I could compete without it and my results during that period were achieved clean. That being said, what happened before the 2006 Tour de France changed my outlook into what we all thought we were buying into when we joined that team.
When I began working for Team Sky in 2011, the real selling point for me was their clear commitment to running a clean team and I wanted to be a part of it. I hope that everyone understands that this team is special. Dave Brailsford had never competed in the sport at the highest level, and he set out to do things differently. I am extremely honored to have been a member of this team and a small part of the success that they achieved during this period.
I apologise to everyone, especially those associated with Team Sky for my past indiscretions. I made some poor decisions and have paid and will pay a huge price. I am taking responsibility, at the expense of not being able to finish what I started, with some of the best people that I have ever been associated with.
To this new generation of young riders; I hope that you will learn from the past and avoid the mistakes many of us have made. It is up to your generation to insure that the issues of the past do not affect your future. I am truly sorry that you all are dealing with something that you had no part in creating.
I know I cannot change my past, however, I do wish to remain in the sport of cycling in some capacity. I love it with all my heart and I hope that even though I made some poor decisions a long time ago, that I can continue to help contribute to the positive changes in this sport. I believe that it is a sport worth saving.
Bobby Julich
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 25, 2012 - 12:09pm PT
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Just see.
This is why they go after the big one.
The one (Armstrong) who's "never ever doped" rolls eyes.
Now all the other fish are coming out of the wood works.
Without Armstrong this "doping" thing would still only be an inside knowledge.
Thus Armstrong is still "king" ....... :-)
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Binks
climber
Uranus
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Oct 25, 2012 - 12:15pm PT
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For cycling I've always thought Lemond's story was the best. Recovering from a shotgun blast and then winning by a few seconds for the closest margin in tour history in '89. I suppose it's possible he doped too.
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