Road Cycling - Doping still in cycling?

I haven't been into road riding too long, but I remember some years back a lot of attention being brought to the issue of doping in pro cycling. If I remember right, some guy came out and said that a majority of pro riders take performance drugs. Was this an exageration? If not, what is the current situation with doping in pro cycling? With the amount of class and respectability that the top riders I've seen in the TDF have exibited, it seems fairly hard to believe that they would take such a cheap and dishonest route to the podium.

If it was true that doping was as big as was made to believe back then, but isn't happening on a great level now, I'm curious if the dopers of yesterday were faster or stronger riders than those that choose not to now. Seems to me that the strength needed for this level of competing is just as much desire and mental strength as muscle strength...

Well Raimondas Rumsas, last year's TdF third place finisher was just given a year long ban because he tested positive in the Giro. He was suspected of doping in last years TdF since his wife was caught with a trunk load of drugs as she was trying to leave France after the tour. However, they could never prove anything and all his drug tests during the tour came back negative.

Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano, last year's TdF fifth place finisher was official banned from competing in this years tour due to a high level of salbutrol (sp?). He had a prescription for it, but the levels they found in his blood showed that it wasn't being used for allergies (which is what the prescription was for).

So... yeah I guess it still happens.

I think its a problem but not as much of a problem as it was years ago.

I think things calmed down after 98, and recently there seems to be an improvement in the quality of testing.

I do think that, in some time periods of the past, in the TDF, for example, probably atleast %90 of the riders were doping.
I doubt what that rider said was an exaggeration. I think I know who you are talking about but I forget his name. He wrote a book about it I think.
I would take a wild guess that its like %40 or so now.
I would think that doping is much more prevelant on the lesser riders than on the ones who are consistantly top level riders.

I think Lance was good for helping to give cycling a better image, after '98.

Well, when you say "doping", I think of "blood doping" which is taking out some of your own blood, getting the red blood cells and then sticking them in right before an event. Used to be very popular in endurance events.

Of course, then epogen came out that does pretty much the same thing. So many endurance atheletes did that. It does have a draw back. Once you get a really high RBC count, a little dehydration will turn your blood to jello and the heart can not pump it and then you are deader then a mackeral. I understand that a number of atheletes died from this.

As for the tour, participants had always claimed it was the toughest atheletic event. From what I heard, a prevailing attitude was that taking some sort of drugs: pain killers, amphetamines, and so on was taken as essential. Of course, people would go to far and hurt themselves. The history on this goes way back too at least 50 years.

Thing is that no one really knows how many people in the TDF take drugs and if so how much and whether those drugs really enhance performance or not. Some people figure that Lance Armstrong HAS to be taking drugs because he won! So it depends on who you listen to.