Originally Posted by
Leinster
I didn't suspect right from the start. His first Tour win was a pleasant surprise, but I agree with Lemond's 2001 quote about it;
"When Lance won the prologue to the 1999 Tour I was close to tears, but when I heard he was working with Michele Ferrari I was devastated. In the light of Lance's relationship with Ferrari, I just don't want to comment on this year's Tour. This is not sour grapes. I'm disappointed in Lance, that's all it is."
I had more of a drip-feed of revelation moments, but as smoke gathered around Lance, it became more and more clear that there was a fire somewhere.
The thing I will never understand and perhaps yourself or somebody can explain it a bit and what made me believe in the early days that Lance raced clean relates to his cancer. He was basically on death's door. I could not fathom how anybody that close to death would ever dope because of the grave consequences. In fact, some speculate he contracted cancer to begin with because of the foreign substances he put in his body. Hard to know. But...to dope after beating back cancer...not knowing if this deadly disease would re-emerge if best health practices were not employed and even then, seems to be the pure definition of insanity. Maybe somebody can help me separate cancer and his doping after he came back from it. That is one of the biggest reasons I didn't think it was feasible he doped because I didn't think anybody in his right mind would do it.