Duke of Kent

Duane "Dewey" Dickey?

rkwaki

I know Todd and have raced against him. He is a really good guy who made a poor decision and will take his 4 years in the penalty box. I think the article could have been written differently as I don't believe he took anything to beat 9 guys, totally misrepresented and the way guys have jumped all over him is disgusting (some of which I know are not clean).

As much as I hate to say it Lance is right on:
Lance Armstrong: If there was an equivalent to EPO, everyone would be on it | Cyclingnews.com

cruiserhead

Yeah, you take anabolic steroids, get banned for 4 years. People are going to say bad stuff about you because you took anabolic steroids and beat 9 people for a win.

rkwaki

True but the hypocrisy in this sport is ridiculous. Like G said in another thread it wasn't like he woke up and took an anabolic cocktail due to the fact that there were 9 people registered. Probably a little deeper than that.

cruiserhead

what difference does it make if he was cheating before he knew how many people were lining up?
The sad thing is, he's cheating at a level that is basically getting on a bike and riding around with a few of your neighbors.
He's just another age grouper taking anabolic steroids. Long list of dopers, long list of excuses.
Don't want shade thrown your way? DONT CHEAT other people out of athletic competition.

Doge

Does anyone know if the actual rules of Natural Bodybuilding! - Official ABA, PNBA & INBA website www.naturalbodybuilding.com prohibit substances that are allowed in the "regular" BB? Or is it just that they agree to being tested.

Maybe cycling needs to go that way.

rkwaki

Natural Bodybuilding follows a protocol similar to USADA.

mattm

How much of a "good guy" can you be if you're doping?

cruiserhead

exactly

rkwaki

Coming from where I came from regardless of how much stuff I took I was/am still a good guy. There are different motivations in each of us. I could say that cycling was a hobby of his and weight training was as well (don't really know, just hypothesizing as he is very well built) and was trying to lean out etc. (that makes sense based on the stack).
I guess my entire point was that there are guys who have made statements on FB about him that are/have doped and continue on as if they are so holy. THat's where i have a hard time.

Duke of Kent

Maybe the dude gives money to charity, volunteers regularly, is devoted to his wife and family?

Maybe he's the owner of a small business and does right by his workers?

Maybe he's Jesus H. Christ reincarnate, with that one flaw?

In the grand scheme of things, and I'm not saying it's "OK" here, doping isn't the equivalent of kicking puppies or selling automatic weapons to sub-Saharan African warlords. He isn't robbing people at gunpoint. He isn't committing white collar financial crimes that destroy the retirements of tens of thousands of people.

cruiserhead

THis is the kind of non-ownership of actions that cheats often use. Lance still thinks of himself as a good guy too. He slanders people that tell the truth, actively tries to destroy careers for being honest and forthright, CHEATS to the gills, boldface lies to everyone, exploits it.
But he's a good guy.

You're not doing any favors for your "friend" by putting words in his mouth.
Honestly, who cares. He's another age grouper that got popped for cheating- a growing, list of pathetic egos that will be footnote on how sad cheating has become.

rkwaki

rkwaki

Oh yeah now I remember why I stopped coming here...
Carry on...

TheKillerPenguin

mattm

I'm not saying doping is as bad as murder - but I'm wondering where the "good guy" line is drawn.

Can one be a cheater and still be a good person? Their intentions (to cheat) are bad by definition, so that's a tough sell for me.

But of course in life people are not the way they are in movies; people are a mix of bad and good.. so things get murky for sure.

At any rate I'm just glad none of us racer types are kicking puppies!

Duke of Kent

I kicked a pitbull square in the face just the other day while riding.

Came tearing out of a double wide on a rural VA road. Didn't respond to verbal commands. Owner wasn't doing anything about it. I was going 25 and it lunged at me. I made an assessment, made a decision.

Does that make me a bad person? Maybe, maybe not. Not even close to the worst thing I've done in my life, though.

gsteinb

Good guy / bad guy is a pretty stupid litmus test. It's all a matter of perspective. There's a bunch of fundamentalist christians who think the dalai lama is a tool.

With my cycling hat on this guy is an ass. If I heard he spent the rest of his spare time doing charity for the poor with my ministerial hat I'd probably think him doing good work, albeit conflicted. That he's getting panned on a cycling forum isn't very shocking. If you feel the need to defend him you might try turning water into wine.

cmh

This does put things in perspective. However, this is a bicycle racing forum. And in regards to bicycle racing, knowingly cheating with PEDs makes him a bad guy. I'll say he is bad for bicycle racing and should get out. I'm not going to judge him in all around life, and thus I wouldn't write generalizations about the guy on a social site like facebook that isn't focused in bicycle racing.

Also, I don't think this discussion is a bad thing either. I appreciate the differing views.

gsteinb

I wouldn't.

I know a guy who justified doping because 'every one was on it.' Only they weren't. And aren't.

grolby

Agreed. Lance is just like the rest of the cohort who won't own their choices. They want to pass it off on the people around them, like it was their colleagues who made the decision for them. They don't even acknowledge that they did have a choice, that they could have raced clean at a lower level or quit altogether like a lot of people did. I think hyperbolic anger at dopers from scrub amateurs who never lost wages or opportunities to those clowns is kind of tacky and weird. But there's plenty of reason to judge those dudes, and find them lacking. Maybe Lance is right in that the culture of the peloton is so corrupted that an undetectable drug would become ubiquitous at the top of the sport again. But he's wrong in that "everyone" was not using EPO. Some guys were good enough to race clean. A lot of guys just quit. And Lance just doesn't get that they have stories, too.

TMonk

$10 bucks says I could quit my job, start a sophisticated doping program and become a middling domestic pro within 24 months.

gsteinb

You could also write a best selling book about the experience and get rich. I'll take your bet.

gsteinb

I think you're a bit off the point I made, which was more that the thought 'why would a guy cheat to beat ten guys,' or 'why would a guy cheat for a gran fondo' misses the point that someone doesn't usually cheat for one race, but it's a systematic and lifestyle thing. They might get caught some place embarrassing like winning what's essentially a charity ride (without the charity), but it more than likely points to a fairly skewed perspective on how important their hobby is. So I wouldn't call it 'deeper' since it seems pretty base to me.

Doge

The UCI issuing Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) in cycling - where someone judges that a rule can be changed for an individual is also unfair. Rather than accept bad luck, average genes, or results of risk, other people judge how things can be made even again. Cheating - no, unfair yes.