Lance Doped

I'm 99.5% certain Lance Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs throughout his cycling career, throughout those Tour de France titles. Since he retired, my mind has been changed. Initially, I bought into the idea that it was just the bitter, jealous French press stirring up rumors against the hated Texan. But over the last few years, as the sport has ramped up its fight against the cancer of performance enhancing drug use, the evidence has piled up against Lance. The Champ's reputation took a devastating blow this week in one massive, public eyewitness confession (Tyler Hamilton, airing on 60 Minutes tonight) and, according to rumors, the biggest defection Lance's side has ever had to deal with (George Hincapie to federal investigators).

Hamilton was Lance's teammate on the old US Postal Service team. He was busted for doping in 2004 and essentially tossed out of major professional cycling. His conscience and a federal subpoena have led him to testify to investigators and now to the press on his first-hand knowledge of Lance's cheating. He adds his admission to that of fellow pariah Floyd Landis.

Hincapie's testimony against Lance, if he gave it, would be worth more than Landis's and Hamilton's combined in the minds of both professional cyclers and cycling spectators. George might be the Jim Thome of cycling. The media love him. What's more, he is well-respected within the peloton, and that means a lot.

Cycling is a tight-knit sport. To give an (impossible) analogy, imagine if every NBA player competed against every other NBA player every day they played a game. Better, imagine if every pro golfer played every hole of every tournament simultaneously, walking from shot to shot as a 120-man pack. That's the reality of the pro cycling experience.

Hincapie is, as far as I've seen, a favorite among his fellow pros. We will see what their reaction is whenever his testimony is confirmed, but even if he faces a ban from the sport (at his age, any such punishment would be career-ending) it is hard to see him becoming a persona-non-grata to the extent Landis reached. It is easier to believe (and hope) his slide may be the beginnings of an avalanche of doping confessions and accusations for the sport.

But lets return to Lance Armstrong. What do I make of the greatest Tour champion of all time? As I've said before, we either know or strongly suspect that a solid majority of his competitors in the Tour fields were doping, particularly those around him at the top of the overall standings. I don't think he cheated better than, say, Jan Ullrich (second to Lance in the Tour four times). So even though the memories of Lance's triumphs and spectacular mountainside attacks are diminished and poisoned, they remain remarkable in my mind.

Chorus: Few athletes are the pure, innocent, idealized heroes we want them to be.

There were probably some great pro cyclists out there who, even at the height of doping , raced clean. I had hoped that Hincapie was one of them, but it looks like that hope was misplaced. I'm also convinced that there is less doping in the Tour now than there was for the 25 years or so before Floyd Landis had his title stripped in 2006. Even if the policing can never be fool proof, personal reputation does matter to most people. That's why these confessions - in cycling or any other sport - are a good thing. Unlike in the 1990s when Lance began his string of dominance, the voice of the fan in the athletes' ears is booming. (I can follow Andy Schleck on twitter!)

Another good thing - the truckloads of cash Lance has raised for cancer research. And that's REALLY what makes this story so uncomfortable. I used the cancer metaphor in the opening paragraph to describe cycling's PED problem. Did you catch it? Did you think of Lance's heroic struggle with death? Did you recall all those times the media explained his ability to suffer in the Alps and Pyrenees by referring to his impossible triumph over cancer? Did you hope, for the sake of Livestrong, that the .5% chance I give that Lance is telling the truth...is the truth?

Lance cheated. Lance lied. Lance inspired millions. Lance raised millions. From Lance, to Manny, to Tiger...it is possible for a person to do both good and bad in this life. I think, too, it is possible for us to both celebrate the good and condemn the bad. And rather than fall into the old trap of holding athletes to a higher standard, I think we should hold ourselves to a higher standard even as we find pleasure, disappointment, and inspiration from watching other humans play games.

A Different Approach to Fighting PEDs in Sports

Having merely skimmed this Bonnie Ford story from ESPN.com, I feel like I should strongly recommend it to anyone interested in PEDs in sports. It's about a very interesting - and I must say surprising - development in cycling. Teams, in particular a new American team, are taking the initiative to fight doping by operating with 100% transparency and submitting to testing above and beyond that required by the laws of the game.

Imagine if, say, the Toronto Blue Jays came out and said they were going to self-impose strict anti-steroid and anti-PED rules and testing with an aim at being a 100% clean franchise. What if they vowed to cut anyone on their team who tested positive to a test. What if they intentionally signed only players who had never had a sniff of suspicion. Wouldn't you root for that team? That's what this American cycling team, Slipstream, is going for.

I think their paradigm works better in cycling, because of the way a team can be built from scratch. It's not out of the question that a brand new team will be invited to participate in the Tour de France.

I'm excited to root for Slipstream, and intrigued at the direction cycling is headed as it cleans itself up.

P.S.

[Was going to make this a comment but felt it was too important to hide down there].

Just finished the article. Fascinating stuff. One major thing I came away with is a change in my attitude towards the US Postal/Discovery cycling team. Zabriske said he wants Slipstream to be "Not Discovery". Former Discovery members have an "ax they have to grind" with Discovery. And though it's not specified in the article, I would bet that the anonymous cyclist who called his old team "dirtbags" was a former Discovery rider.

Which leads me to believe, for the first time, that Discovery was not the most talented team, just the best team at cheating. (No positive tests.) In turn, for the first time, I think Lance might have doped.

Tour de France v. American Pro Sports

Great column from Jemele Hill today. She says exactly the point I'm trying make, exactly what Tour de France veteran commentator Phil Liggett believes: that the Tour de France is at the forefront and very possibly the downslope of the anti-doping curve.

The key point:
"There is no way American sports are any cleaner than cycling. In fact, if our sports were held to world anti-doping standards, the cycling's scandals would seem mild by comparison."

Accepting that, though, brings us back to an older topic of discussion in the Sauna: do Americans care? A lot of people care that the most hallowed record in baseball is going to go to a player who, by the Tour's standards, would have been banned from his sport a couple years ago. Far, far less people seem to care about PEDs in football.

To the flip-side then: why do Europeans care so much about cycling being clean? To understand that you have to understand the sport. I've said it many times before; the physical suffering these cyclists go through - in the Tour de France, in the lesser Tours of the cycling year, and in their off-season workouts - is incomparable to any other major pro sport. The effort IS the sport. That's why millions line up on the roads of France to cheer them on. That's why the camaraderie of the peloton is such a beautiful thing. These guys are a couple hundred Forrest Gumps 6 out of 7 days for three weeks. If they dope, they are cheating on the very thing that they are admired for. They are cheating the suffering. It doesn't hurt Barry Bonds to hit a home run, HGH or no HGH. Football hurts, but that's not the main reason why Americans love football.

Look at it this way: the best games in most major sports almost always involve exciting finishes, but the best Tour de France stages are also the least exciting at the end. The most exciting stage finishes are the flat ones, when half a dozen sprinters are battling in the final seconds. But the most famous stages are in the mountains, and the most famous rides are made by individuals who suffer for four hours but manage just a little bit more pace than everyone else.

Vinokourov and Rasmussen and the others suffered, but they did something illegal to manage their suffering. So the very specific thing they are admired for is diminished.

cycling Stuff

Ivan Basso "widely acknowledged his responsibilities" in the Spanish cycling doping case and is cooperating with investigators, according to an AP report today. This is big. To put this in perspective, if Lance Armstrong is Barry Bonds, and Jan Ullrich is Mark McGwire, than Ivan Basso is Sammy Sosa.

Unlike Sosa, however, I've always liked Basso. Ullrich, on the other hand, was never that likable as his career wound down. He was icy with the press, and in his last few years on the Tour de France there were always one or two other guys on the T-Mobile team that seemed like they might challenge for the lead if Ullrich hadn't been standing in the way.

Basso was different. He was the one guy who went head to head with Lance and won a stage or two, which was nice, because Lance had everything under control anyway. I was pretty excited when Basso joined Team Discovery, even with all the doping allegations swirling. After all, everyone's doping in cycling.

And that's just it. If Basso was doping, that leaves three possibilities for Lance: A) He was doping better than Basso, B) He was doping the same as Basso, but he was a better cyclist. C) He wasn't doping. He was just that good. For the record, I'll begrudgingly admit that B is most likely, but I still think there is a chance that C is true, too. People really ARE out to get Lance, and nothing has really stuck on him for the long haul. The point is, chances are Lance really WAS that good.

Of course, that's no consolation to the (I'm totally, recklessly guessing) 10 or 20% of the riders who don't dope.

In the end, I like Basso for coming forward. He's the first big named cyclist to do it. Come to think of it, he might be the biggest name in sports to come clean. He's at least as big worldwide as Jose Canseco. I'm ready to forgive! Come on people! Admit it! You're on stuff! Go get 'em Ivan.