USADA Report: Now That You Know, Which Knee Warmers Will You Wear?

It was called “Clarity.”  As they adjusted the plastic mask over my face, I recall it having a hint of lemon lime.  It was what I ordered from the bar at the “O2 Lounge,” 9600 feet above sea level on Main Street in Breckenridge.  For lack of a better term, the barista at the oxygen bar turned on the flow and my wife and I sat back in hopes of relieving our pounding headaches on day two of our cycling vacation.  It worked.  If only for a few hours the headache subsided and my labored breathing eased climbing the trail.

While widely accepted, and being no hard and fast rules or sanctions against it, mountaineers are divided on the subject of using supplemental oxygen in their summit bids.  It’s also widely accepted that I’m no mountaineer.  Still I wonder, had I cheated in a way?  Absolutely not.  I was not trying to set a speed record on the local 14’er Quandary Peak, but simply trying to ease a day on the bike path to Frisco and a hike up to the Colorado Trail.  There are no rules in recreational cycling and hiking.  In more or less terms, nobody gives a hoot.  However in pro cycling we do, give hoots that is. 

Now with temps in the low 50’s and falling, I pulled on my knee warmers.  Blue, warm and sag-free, I love them.  Days earlier, I read Hincapie’s admission on his website, as well those of the others who cheated.  Like watching the slow helmet motion footage of a Red Bull Rampage rider casing an 80-footer, I followed the live blog of the USADA release at the WSJ website.  Even though we could all see this coming like semi-truck headlights in the fog, my stomach sank.  I began to feel played for a fool.  While there are a dozen companies that make blue, non-saggy, toasty knee warmers, I chose to buy Hincapie.  A few days ago, like many personal decisions we’ll make down the road based on our scruples, I chose to take them off.

Errmahgerd George!

The Hincapie I knew made those knee warmers as cool as the consummate right hand man I cheered for on TV and sought out for a photo when I vacationed at the Tour of California, the perfect teammate, always up there toughing it out in mud, in rain, and on the steeps.  I identified with that.  While I can count my personal solo wins of my 14 years of amateur racing on the fingers of one hand, I’ve always tried to encourage my teammates, give them the perfect lead-out, help with a draft, and lend equipment or advice.  I’m not going to say Hincapie knee warmers were like putting on Superman’s cape, but they did make me feel more like the bike racer I wanted to be.  Now instead of being a symbol of cycling’s team and hard-men nature, the knee warmers are a reminder to keep role models at a distance while trying my hardest to hold the sport dear. 

“Don’t be naïve Joe,” I can hear you say.  Everyone was doping.  Get over it.  “People suck and they cheat,” a reader posted on our Facebook page.  I know.  I know.  I know.  With taxes, the stock market and their spouses it happens everyday.  We all get screwed sometime or another.  However, I do feel cheated and I’m entitled to feel that way.  For (insert name of hero you can believe in here)’s sake, the accomplishments of the greatest American cycling team, the results of every race I saw them compete, the fame gained by the coaches and management, every dollar earned directly or indirectly because of that success is all ill-gotten. 

Adam Myerson ‏@AdamMyerson

You motherfuckers have a LOT of work to do to pay your debt back to all of us.

The root of my feeling lies in the fact that doping is not a one race thing.  To me, it’s preposterous to think, and as far as I can tell, physically impossible for a rider to stop doping and continue to masquerade as a clean athlete.  Doping is a tattoo, permanent.  Even if for a short period of time, the muscles built, the cardiovascular system developed, the knowledge gained at the top of the sport will always be with these riders till the day they die.  The phrase “former doper” is a joke.  Once a doper, always a doper. 

Nooo!  Him too?

By using EPO they were able to train harder and recover faster, win, get their name in the headlines, generate fans, and be in touch with industry people.  Now, years later these riders, team managers, coaches and doctors are going to ask me to participate in their Grand Fondo, read their book, go see their new team race, watch the movie, believe in the new crop of athletes under their wing, sign up for that triathlon, purchase their training program, to toe the line with me at a non-sanctioned mountain bike race, buy their brand of bikes or feel comfortable in their knee warmers.  I’m sorry.  They may be able to race a UCI event in 6 months, but I think I’m done with them and their knee warmers.    

However, I do somewhat sympathize with the riders…somewhat.  I’m sure you noticed a hint of victimization in the USADA report.  Many riders allege management more or less said it was dope or go home.  It reeks of coercion.  Yet a Barry, Hincapie and the others made the decision.  They were 10-12 years younger than now, hungry to go big time, pressured and perhaps a bit narrow minded to realize that there were more options than doping or going home. 

In mountaineering you’re judged by your peers, be it bottled oxygen or team support, on what type of assistance you used to get to the top and back down.  Maybe that’s what divides us from the those that doped.  From the USADA document, most riders seem to hint that they felt there was no other way to the top of the mountain.  We the fans feel otherwise, until now having to assume we were witnessing a monumental accomplishment.

I Booked a Plane Ticket and Got Up Early for This?

The real victims in all of this are the people that didn’t make the cut, the riders who lost to the dopers, talented prospective staff members that didn’t buy into the program and ended up trying to make the most of other avenues and/or cycling’s minor leagues.  I also feel sorry for the fans that booked a plane ticket, drove up the mountain in a rent a car at 5am to be a tiny part of something they thought was great.  It turns my stomach to think of all the people in the last decade that bought into the Trek marketing machine.  I feel bad that I once poked fun of Floyd Landis showing up for the Mohican 100 NUE Mountain Bike Race and thought LeMond was a loud mouth buffoon.  Looking back, at least they had the courage to speak out against a momentous opponent. 

Doping is against the rules in cycling.  Cycling is not anything goes like fighting cancer.  It’s not kill or be killed.  You practice, you eat right, you persevere, you find a mentor, you play by the rules, you lose, until one day…you win, and it’s glorious.  As a fan, I cheer for the guy dangling off the back in danger of getting dropped as much as the one goosing the pace at the front.

Floyd Landis and I (I'm the Fat One)

People jump up and down.  They scream.  Some have followed you since you were an amateur.  Some heard about you and came out to see if you could pull it off.  Now, they surround you cheering.  You get a trophy, sponsorships, book deals, and cameo roles in movies.  They want the same brand bike you have.  They want the same clothes, now with your name on them.  They want to get the advice of your coach.  They want to ride alongside you on a Grand Fondo.  Your success creates a worldwide movement.

However, doping makes all of that lying, stealing and cheating.  So don’t tell me that it’s okay for any of these cyclists, managers, coaches, doctors to continue in the sport, to continue their endorsements, to put on rides, to start or consult other teams, to show up at local mountain bike races and triathlons, endorse products, and create foundations based on the very color of the ill gotten glory.  It’s not.  All their perceived success in cycling is tainted by doping.  They gave up that chance the moment they went down the wrong path.

I’m not a strong enough voice to sway cycling one way or the other.  I’m not qualified to come up with a fool proof way to insure pro cycling is clean nor have the authority to change its direction.  I am however qualified to not attend events tainted by the presence of a doper.  I can impress on our local racers about what it really means to cheat and that there are other options.  Like Adam Myerson, I am qualified to question those at the highest level of the sport, raise an eyebrow when things don’t look right and be vocal about it.  For now, I can choose to remain a fan of the sport, but not the individual.  I can choose which bike to buy and which knee warmers I wear.

Doping: The New Meaning of the Yellow Jersey

Does it really matter?  Considering what Tyler Hamilton said on 60 minutes last night, if Lance doped and every other team in the pro peloton distributes their version of the white lunch bag in the team bus, does it really matter to me, as a fan?  Not really.  It’s still a fair race.  The playing field is still even, just lower than it used to be.

I keep going back to "Dear Doper" an article I wrote about doping a few years ago.  In more or less words, I said when I watch a bike race I show my true self.  I shout at the TV, spill my soda and hide my eyes when riders knock elbows in sprints.  My true emotions come pouring out.  All I expect from the pros is that they are showing their true selves. 

My Yellow Jersey signed by Johan Bruyneel

When I wrote that, I never considered if doping is an all-encompassing aspect of pro cycling as Tyler insinuates, maybe I was wrong.  Maybe, even with PED's, I am still seeing the real pro athlete.  Only now I have to accept that they use drugs to go faster and last longer.  Perception is reality.  The playing field isn’t really all that level to begin with anyway.

Cycling is a team sport.  There are domestiques and team leaders.  It’s not expected that every rider in a 180 strong field has a chance to win.  Of the twenty teams, 20 team leader type guys are expected to go for the win.  The implication that there should be a level playing field for all riders is silly.  It’s really domestique versus domestique, leader versus leader, team versus team which is the reality.

It's sort of feeling that way isn't it?

If the leaders up the mountain stage are all doping up to the legally accepted limit, I accept that.   I can expect a shot of cortisone may be necessary to ride between the team car and your team leader for three weeks with a jersey full of water bottles over enough elevation to make an astronaut reach for the puke bag.  The playing field is even.  The catcher gets the big mitt.  The receiver doesn’t wear knee pads.  The team leader gets the earpiece and Edgar Allen Poe.  It’s not too much to accept that the level-road of cycling includes performance enhancing drugs.

Mr. "T"

It’s already accepted.  The UCI sets limits for testosterone, hemocrit and a thousand other things that I can’t spell or pronounce.  Does that not imply that there is doping in the sport and we’re just setting acceptable levels?  If the limit for blood hemocrit is 50, who wouldn’t want theirs at 49.5?  Like the commercial on the nightly news says, if you’re a man with “Low T” wouldn’t you want your T to be at normally accepted levels and take some T?  It's not so much that doping is against the rules, it's going over the limits that's the big no no.  

From what Tyler is saying the trick is to dope up to the acceptable limits and scrutiny of the testers.  You give your top dawgs the good expensive stuff and the domestiques what they need to fetch cookies and cola day-in and day-out and make the time cut.  You give them a schedule and have your team “doctor” do your own in-house testing to know how fast they can metabolize each product and still eek in under the limit if a test would come around.  Some win.  Some lose.  Some lose and get a do-over.  Some have a prescription.  Some are the most tested athletes in the sport, peed in a million cups and cleaned them all.  The playing field is still even, only winning the yellow jersey takes on a new meaning.  

WIKI LEEKI: 2011 Tour De France Route Map Leaked

(Nose Hit News Service/Paris, France)  Just hours before Tour De France organizers planned release of de 2011 race route, Le Wiki Leeki (a French organization that is not on strike) allegedly unveiled portions of the route and uncorked the champagne themselves.  French authorities are redundantly calling it a faux hoax.  Included in the leak were details of new starting cities, a time trial in the Basque town of Testostero'ne, and a full map pictured below.

Stages 1 & 2

Stage 1, according to Le Wiki Leeki, takes place after the traditional prologue in Paris and follows the traditional flat start to the tour taking riders 135 miles from Clenbuterol, originally settled by Russian immigrants and finishes in Cera, known for its potent blood red wine.  Stage 2, the group contends, continues through the northern part of the country with an undulating 120 mile circumnavigation of the wine producing country between Vino and Landis'eille. 

Stages 6 & 7 

The first week of the tour ends with a bumpy ride, according to the Leeki, as the road tilts up for the first time.  Of particular interest is stage 7, which Wiki says will depart in Aach-Gee-Aach and finish 145 miles and three Category 2 climbs later in the Belgian town of Balco.

Stages 9-11 

These three stages take riders from through the heart of the Pyrenees Mountains in the middle of the 2^nd week says Leeki.  While stage 9 from E'peeo to Cortisone features 3 HORS rated climbs, stage 10 ending in the ski resort town of Puerto is certain to be a pivotal stage Le Wiki reports,  since it will be followed by a stage 11 time trial from Homologous to Mayo, where mayonnaise was invented.

Full 2011 Tour Route Map