Originally Posted by
Giacomo 1
Well, those guys rode the races. They put in the hard work and endured the pain. I didn't. So who really knows what kind of pressure the cycling world put on these guys to be the best? Would I have succumbed had I seen some potential to win a race? Maybe.
This won't change my mind about these guys, especially what LA was able to achieve. It was superhuman anyway you look at it. These guys are human, and as humans, we all make mistakes, but our lapses weren't so public. They weren't laid out to the whole world. Our lapses didn't cause so much wide-spread pain to so many. This is the price we pay for holding mere humans up to such a high standard, a standard that we could never really attain. So I won't knock Lance when he is down. I'll look back and remember what he gave us. He was motivation for us all...
Truth is most of the heavy competition during that time likely doped as well. In a sense it negates itself, it is no longer an advantage when everyone else does it. I would assume that most riders do dope just to make sure they are not disadvantaged compared to the rest of the field.