Lance Armstrong and Pro Cycling

[Adak]

Pro cycling has always had a problem with cheating - including getting rides from cars, and trains, in the early days. Likewise, it's always had a problem with racers using drugs.

Let's face it, you can pedal longer and harder when you have a boost from better chemistry, including EPO (blood doping), etc.

When Armstrong started racing, that was the norm for all the top racers, and he adopted it, as well. As one racer stated for the Tour Broadcast some years back:

There are two races here in the Tour. There are the men, and there are the supermen. The supermen are in the first peloton, up ahead.

Once Armstrong began the lie, he couldn't very well go back and say "oops! I lied!". The team director himself was a former racer, and he also was discovered to be a doper, when he raced (and he admitted it).

So Lance's banned for life (big deal, his racing career is over at his age), and they have stripped him of his Tour wins.

The irony is that everyone who finished second and third, were also using banned substances. Yes, every one of them. Lance and a few others, were just able to do it more discreetly than the others, who have largely been caught by now.

The doping science will continue to try and evade detection, but finally -- after more than 20 years of knowing about the problem and winking slyly at it - the Tour de France and all the major cycling races, have gotten serious about enforcing it. That's not easy to do in a Tour race, but it's necessary.