"DC" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:Jet<[email hidden]> wrote in
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Quoted message said:Pretty good comments from the podium in what was the only time in TdF
history that a person was allowed to speak from the podium. Wonder if
he asked for it or if they offered him a chance to speak.
<comments about Basso and Ullrich omitted>
"For the people that don't believe in cycling, the cynics and the
skeptics: I'm sorry for you, I'm sorry you can't dream big and I'm
sorry you don't believe in miracles. But this is one helluva race. This
is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe. You
should believe in these athletes and you should believe in these
people. And I'm a fan of the TdF for as long as I live, and there are
no secrets. This is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it, so
Vive le Tour, forever. Than you."
Wonder what got him thinking about these 'skeptics and cynics'? I'd
think he'd have no trouble ignoring those that say things like 'cycling
is not a sport; cyclists are not athletes'. That's so dumb as to not be
worthy of justification.
jj
I don't think he was refering to people who say "cycling is not a sport".
He was refering to those who think that all cyclists use dope to compete
(like Laferty). I think he was saying that you have to believe that the
best athletes in cycling are as good as they are because of the hard work
they put into their sport.
Maybe. There is a presumption on the part of a lot of fans that cyclists use
drugs. That is one reason the Tour de France is a few hundred kilometres
shorter this year, to make the course seem a little more human. Still, in
nearly every race somebody gets caught, and that makes people feel as if the
practice is widespread.--Lance Armstrong 2002
"As sports fans, we prefer to dream about angels on wheels, Simon Pures
somehow immune to the uppers and downers of our own pill-popping society.
There is, all the same, a certain nobility in those who have gone down into
God knows what hell in search of the best of themselves. We might feel
tempted to tell them they should not have done it, but we can remain
secretly proud of what they have done. Their wan, haggard looks are for us
an offering." --Antoine Blondin
"People are following this old model-run 'em down, chase 'em, find 'em,
assume they are guilty, drag them into testing," he says. "And athletes
still get away with stuff, and I maintain you can get away with stuff with
everybody looking right at you."--Dr. Don Catlin
More recently, the scope of cycling's drug habit has ballooned to
cataclysmic levels. According to Jean-Francois Quinet, whose book on drugs
and cycling, "Les Secrets du Dossier Festina" ("The Secrets of the Festina
Affair"😉, debuted in France last week, close to 100 percent of the riders in
recent Tours de France were using illegal substances. Their drug of choice
was EPO (erythropoietin, which acts like the synthetically produced PFC but
is a naturally occurring substance). Quinet estimates that because of EPO,
as many as 80 riders died in the 1980s and '90s, their doped-up blood
coagulated to stone.--Salon 1999
So like Greg Lemond, I cannot just sit idly by watching our sport continue
to suffer from cheating. It's time to tell the truth..........Many aspiring
racers have confronted drug use as they rose through the ranks.
Unfortunately, their silent answer to this insanity is often to quit racing
at this level. Otherwise, they risk succumbing to the conventional wisdom
that "since everyone takes drugs to be competitive, you should too." This
must not continue to be the choice facing promising young racers.--Andy
Hampsten 2004
The Tour debacle has finally made it acceptable to say in public and without
provocation what many have known for a long time, namely, that long-distance
cycling has been the most consistently drug-soaked sport of the twentieth
century........."For as long as the Tour has existed, since 1903, its
participants have been doping themselves. No dope, no hope. The Tour, in
fact, is only possible because -- not despite the fact -- there is doping.
For 60 years this was allowed. For the past 30 years it has been officially
prohibited. Yet the fact remains: great cyclists have been doping
themselves, then as now." Hans Halter, "Alles verstehen, alles verzeihen,"
Der Spiegel, 3 August 1998, 97.
http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/hoberman/tour.htm
"They see television, 'Hey, Tour de France, whatya think about Lance
Armstrong; isn't that great?' and they have fantasies about the sport," the
coach says. "What we're seeing on television is not the same thing we're
doing. Yeah, they're on pretty much the exact same bicycles. The tires are
the same, the wheels, the pedals. And the way we race the bikes is pretty
similar. "But, you know, we're not going to be injecting anybody with
synthetic hormones. And it puts me in an awkward position because when
parents ask, 'Do you think those guys are taking drugs?' my answer is, 'Yes,
I do.' " What do the parents say then? "They think I'm crazy." --Tom Morris
http://www.sportingnews.com/experts/dave-kindred/20040712.html
Enjoy the ride. ;-)
