I believe I’m not alone on these thoughts; cycling is moving on, why oh why bring back those times when to finish in the top 20 it was common knowledge they must have been ‘doping’ so they take all the wins off Armstrong, what then, move all the other cheats up a notch?
A few years ago when cash started flowing into British Cycling, Dave Brailsford was asked to look into putting a top British road squad together, the decision was to concentrate on the track as it was that common knowledge they knew. Only when the road scene really started getting cleaned up did the Sky Pro cycling team get put together.
I think it is today’s common knowledge that riders do want to ride clean and the majority of them do, I also believe they would wish the agencies to stop hanging around in those red old days and move on, they would be better off leaving Armstrong alone and putting all that cash into sustaining today’s testing, have three types of ban; 1) Life ban for obvious knowingly doping like blood doping, EPO etc. 2) Five years for masking agents etc. 3) Two years for any other lesser types.
I’m far from an expert so those three types of ban are abit vague, but they would be more of a deterrent than those now, for example, Riccardo Riccò, even after all he had done teams were still willing to take him on, the medics knew by what happened to him that he had tried to give himself a blood transfusion, thing is, it seem apparent the blood had not been stored correctly, a little like trying to put a sausage or black pudding in his arm.
Move on agencies, the era of cycling is changing.
