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Kudos to letter writers ...

Published: Oct. 22, 2008

Do you want to contribute to Mailbag, a regular feature of VeloNews.com? Here's how:
● Keep it short. And remember that we reserve the right to edit for grammar, length and clarity.
● Include your full name, hometown and state or nation.
● Send it to webletters@insideinc.com.

Kudos to the Mailbag writers
re:

Editor,

The letters in the Oct. 17 Mailbag were great! The intelligence, humor, and imagination of the authors should be applauded. I wish I had written at least one of them.
Pat O'Brien,
Sierra Vista, Arizona

Amateur cycling is clean
Editor,

In response to Elaine Kaufmann's suggestion (in the Oct. 17 Mailbag) that we have two different competition tracks (as in bodybuilding), I've believe that we already do.

One is professional cycling and one is amateur cycling.

I love the sport of cycling and I've raced as an amateur for over 15 years. I am a huge fan of professional cycling but have finally realized many of the men and women that I once admired were doping or suspected of it. (Tyler, Genevieve, Ivan, Frank, etc.) I still watch professional cycling every chance I get and I read the racing news every day. But I now just figure doping is part of professional cycling, just as it has been for a very long time. Don't get me wrong, I applaud what some teams are doing to "clean it up" but obviously the cheaters are still out there.

I don't follow bodybuilding very closely but I know when I've seen a "regular" competition, I think, "good grief, that body is amazing ... but somehow not quite right." That's pretty much how I watch professional bike racing now. It's amazing but you have this nagging suspicion that there's something wrong. You marvel at a superhuman climb up the Alpe but wonder how it was really achieved.

Watching amateur bike racing is more like watching a natural bodybuilding contest. The reaction is more, "oh look, normal people who have achieved something through hard work ..." You know, people who have real jobs and families. People who compete for the fitness and the health, for the fun, the competition and the camaraderie. You watch amateur cyclists and it's just amazing, and you aren't left wondering if they are clean.

I believe professional bike racing is already cleaner and that trend will continue. But there will always be cheats. It's the nature of sport. If you want to admire cyclists, admire the amateurs.
Sue B. Rawley
Tucson, Arizona

Kudos to the Germans
Editor,

I'd like to give some kudos to the Germans for canceling some of their big races next season. I think the entire ProTour should be canceled for 2009. Maybe that will teach all these loser cyclists to stop doping. It is obvious that these guys will never stop, so either let them all dope or don't let them ride. I know as a fan I am tired of it all ...
Rick Gorton,
Saratoga Springs, New York

More from that Oct. 17 Mailbag ...
Editor,

I've heretofore always been surprised at the naivete of people who suggest reducing penalties for positive drug tests, yet Jim Johnson's suggestion (in the Oct. 17 Mailbag) is brilliantly elegant.

My big beef with the current system has always been the unreliability of the testing — in part the imperfection of the procedures themselves, but more importantly the lack of oversight and the practice of B samples being tested by the same people on the same equipment. With the
inevitable false positives and false negatives, however small a fraction of the results they may be, it is impossible to know who is truly guilty.

Add to this the ever-shifting field in the medical arms race between testers and new drugs or new applications of existing drugs for which there are no tests, and the fuzzy line between what is (or should be) illegal and what is not (such as hypobaric chambers), and you've got the mess we've got now.

Mr. Johnson's idea makes an end run around the issue of "true" guilt or innocence by making the penalty be against a positive test. We cannot show guilt or innocence, so let's deal with what we can show. Further, by reducing what's at stake in a single positive test result you also reduce the pressure on the labs to do perfectly what cannot be done perfectly.

Keep the rigorous testing practices — the biological passport, the testing after every win and randomly, etc. — reduce the short-term consequences and keep or increase those for repeated positive tests. Riders' reputations — and thus teams' willingness to hire them and sponsors' willingness to support their teams — are more in their control; if a rider over the course of a career received only one or two positives, it seems likely that that rider actually rode cleanly and fairly because, well, shit happens.

On the other hand, someone who has multiple positive results close together and over time would
self-destruct as a rider, as teams and sponsors shied away not only because of the drug test results but also due to the loss of performance from time out of competition.

Mr. Johnson's suggestion takes a long-term view in a charged atmosphere focused on short-term results. This fact would not be a liability but for the one fly in the ointment that I see: the likelihood seems remote that the media would take a leadership role in this matter, restraining
themselves against hyperbole and sensationalism and instead working to change the public conversation from one of "who is guilty" to "what are the facts." Without this contribution, this good idea would probably end up as merely another diversion and only generate more divisiveness.

Unfortunately it could also be said that nearly any system, including the current one, would have a much better chance of being functional if the media in general were more responsible, but most sports media outlets have little or no self-interest in such restraint. Nonetheless, thank you Mr. Johnson, for one of the most sober and creative ideas I have heard.
David Neale-Lorello
Rockville, Maryland

Armstrong is the man
Editor,

Let’s face it. Until someone else wins the Tour de France seven times, Lance is, and will always be the man.

His desire to comeback is simply to bring awareness to cancer. What a better way than to use professional cycling as a platform. Yes, he could bring his own team. Yes, he could sit back and watch his sport being flushed down the toilet.

But for me, he has and will give the sport a shot in the arm, good or bad. Let’s take it for what it is, and that is, a cancer survivor can come out of retirement and rip the legs off the competition.
Kent Pepper,
Pfafftown, North Carolina