Lance Armstrong, PEDs, and Naivety

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On Friday, 24 August 2012, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency erased Lance Armstrong’s 14 year career — including his 7 Tour de France titles — and banned him for life from the sport of cycling. They did this without a shred of physical evidence because Lance allegedly did something that every Tour de France cyclist — every elite athlete — does. That something is use performance enhancement drugs (PEDs).

Lance Armstrong is an American hero. In his early career he was an up-and-coming cyclist who showed flashes by winning the UCI Road World Championship in the pouring rain in Norway in 1993. He also had won the first stage of the Tour de France but had not yet won “The Tour”, the pinnacle of cycling racing.

Then he was diagnosed with testicular cancer at the age of 25 (October 1996). The cancer had metastasized into his lungs, abdomen, and brain. After emergency surgery to remove his tumor-ridden testicle, he was told he had less than a 40% likelihood of surviving. His final chemotherapy treatment was in December of 1996.

Did Armstrong feel sorry for himself, only to wallow in self-pity? No, he made a decision to get back on the bike and train. He would later win his first Tour de France in 1999, less than three years since he went to the doctor coughing up blood with a swollen testicle. He would go on to miraculously win the next six Tour de France races (for a total of seven), beating every top rival in the world.

And then there were the PEDs allegations. For an exhaustive list and timeline of the allegations, you can read the Wikipedia article. What it amounts to is Armstrong vehemently opposing the idea of using PEDs, various sources claiming he used, and him passing over 20 drug tests in his return to cycling from 2008 to 2009. Yet the frozen urine samples from 1999 allegedly contain erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells.

Meanwhile Armstrong started The Lance Armstrong Foundation that has sold the Livestrong bracelet since 2004. This non-profit has raised over 325 million dollars and is one of the top ten groups funding cancer research along with supporting people afflicted with cancer.

Lance Armstrong is a respectable, successful, amazing man. And he used performance enhancement drugs. 

There is no hard physical evidence saying that Armstrong has used PEDs and he has never tested positive for them. USADA is a pain-in-the-ass organization that is crucifying him for something that is not only not proven, but something that everybody does. Wake up boys and girls, elite athletes are all “dopers”. That’s the way it has been, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way the future will always be. This doesn’t take anything away from Armstrong’s success because all of his opponents were doing the same thing. However it does take away from his “American Hero” persona because the world is full of naive people who want to believe that everyone is clean and the rules make sense.

Just because something is a rule or a law doesn’t mean it’s right.

Let’s prevent this from turning into a philosophical discussion on how we should derive our rules, laws, and regulations, and focus on this single fact: everyone dopes.

Angel Heredia provided PEDs to elite and Olympic athletes. He supplied them to our friend Maurice Greene, Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, and Tim Montgomery. He admits to it because the FBI caught him and now he has to tell the truth or he goes to jail for a very long time. He did this interview with a German magazine in 2008 that was quite revealing. For example:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Heredia, will you watch the 100 meter final in Beijing?

Heredia: Of course. But the winner will not be clean. Not even any of the contestants will be clean.

SPIEGEL: Of eight runners …

Heredia: … eight will be doped.

SPIEGEL: There is no way to prove that.

Heredia: There is no doubt about it. The difference between 10.0 and 9.7 seconds is the drugs.

The best athletes in the world use drugs. They do it for several reasons, and I bet it’s up to the individual as to which is most important. The first is that it improves their performance, helps them recovery (including from injury), or subsequently helps prevent injury. PEDs do not make a person elite; an elite person becomes cream of the crop by using drugs.

SPIEGEL: Can drugs make anyone into a world record holder?

Heredia: No, that is a misapprehension: “You take a couple of tablets today and tomorrow you can really fly.” In reality you have to train inconceivably hard, be very talented and have a perfect team of trainers and support staff. And then it is the best drugs that make the difference. It is all a great composition, a symphony. Everything is linked together, do you understand? And drugs have a long-term effect: they ensure that you can recover, that you avoid the catabolic phases. Volleyball on the beach might be healthy, but peak athletics is not healthy. You destroy your body. Marion Jones, for example …

SPIEGEL: … five-time Olympic medallist at Sydney 2000 …

Heredia: … trained with an unparalleled intensity. Drugs protect you from injury. And she triumphed and picked up all the medals.

 

Another reason that PEDs are used is money. Elite athletes have sponsorships. Their success is directly correlated with the flow of money and therefore dictates whether or not they get paid to train. In order to keep their dream alive — the dream of competing and winning at the world level — they will do whatever they can to retain that money. Sometimes their family depends on it. They are full of incentive to train, recover, and perform to the best of their ability. Put yourself in their position: if your wife, kids, and grandparents relied on your money to live comfortably, or you could make enough money to support them for the rest of their lives, would you use PEDs for several years?

The last reason that PEDs are taken is because everyone is using them. Why would you subject yourself to a performance deficit when everyone around you is using PEDs? Glenn Pendlay has been told by junior international weightlifters that they cannot make it to the next level because they aren’t able to take enough “medicine”. Professional baseball and football players are routinely caught and disciplined for using banned substances. And you bet your ass that Olympic athletes are using whatever edge they can get.

And here’s the thing — most of it is untraceable!

SPIEGEL: Do you have any other secrets?

Heredia: Oh yes, of course. There are tablets for the kidneys that block the metabolites of steroids, so when athletes give a urine sample, they don’t excrete the metabolites and thus test negative. Or there is an enzyme that slowly consumes proteins – epo has protein structures, and the enzyme thus ensures that the B sample of the doping test has a completely different value than the A sample. Then there are chemicals that you take a couple of hours before the race that prevent acidification in the muscles. Together with epo they are an absolute miracle. I’ve created 20 different drugs that are still undetectable for the doping testers.

Angel Heredia doesn’t have a chemistry degree and he’s making undetectable PEDs. There’s a saying that says, “The drugs are always ten years ahead of the testing.” PEDs will not go away. The only way that they can is:

SPIEGEL: Can the testers win this race?

Heredia: Theoretically yes. If all federations and sponsors and managers and athletes and trainers were all in agreement, if they were to invest all the money that the sport generates and if every athlete were to be tested twice a week – but only then. What’s happening now is laughable. It’s a token. They should save their money – or give it to me. I’ll give it to the orphans of Mexico! There will be doping for as long as there is commercial sports, performance-related shoe contracts and television contracts.

 

Organizations like USADA or WADA lack the ability to do their jobs. They are making some headway by prosecuting people, but they are eliminating athletes — athletes like Lance Armstrong who are literally inspirational heroes — from sports that aggressively use PEDs. They are trying to prove the worth of their organization by publicizing the execution of the big names. It’s all in the name of “fairness” when in reality intelligently using PEDs is something that equalizes fairness across competitors. But it isn’t enough because athletes will always use PEDs.

SPIEGEL: Are there still any clean disciplines?

Heredia: Track and field, swimming, cross-country skiing and cycling can no longer be saved. Golf? Not clean either. Soccer? Soccer players come to me and say they have to be able to run up and down the touchline without becoming tired, and they have to play every three days. Basketball players take fat burners – amphetamines, ephedrin. Baseball? Haha. Steroids in pre-season, amphetamines during the games. Even archers take downers so that their arm remains steady. Everyone dopes.

 

If you’re still of the anti-doping mindset, you’re naive. There are even collegiate and high school athletes who use PEDs. There is no safe sport for you to watch other than 5-year-old T-ball.

For everyone one athlete that is caught, there are probably a hundred, maybe a thousand that get away with using PEDs. We waste congressional time and money trying to track PEDs users down and careers or lives are ruined as a result. “Sport” is a big industry, and it would be much more simple to legalize the use of PEDs and openly allow coaches and athletes to improve the already safe and effective methods of using them (the people who misuse them are idiots working out in your local Gold’s Gym). It would keep the athletes healthier, eliminate an archaic and useless system, and not change the outcome of the world’s sporting events.

But modern society is still stuck in mindset that the world is black and white, good and evil, with these silly regulations and witch hunts. The fact that everyone is using and the drug tests can’t identify any of them would be funny if it weren’t so devastatingly sad when it tarnishes the professional career of someone respectable like Lance Armstrong.

Note: This is coming from someone who has never used PEDs. 

Edit: I’ve talked with some people and I have sort of changed my stance on the issue. Do I think Lance is a hero because of his drug use? No. But two things in particular make him admirable: a) the fact that he came back from full body cancer, trained hard as hell, and won the pinnacle of his sport SEVEN TIMES and b) how he has used this experience and fame to raise money to support people with cancer and research. Those are the admirable qualities. 

The un-admirable qualities are how he has consistently lied to his fans (and donators) about using PEDs. He undoubtedly did, and lying about it only makes it worse. Lying isn’t good, but it may have been necessary to a) keep himself out of jail, b) keep the donations coming, or c) any other self-preserving quality, which could include preserving the seven wins. In the context that at least 75% of his opponents, if not all of them, are or were using the same drugs, I don’t know if I have a problem with this. It’s a fuzzy topic for me. The moral might be that, “The world isn’t black and white.”

63 thoughts on “Lance Armstrong, PEDs, and Naivety”

  1. this post is going to ignite a shit storm.

    here’s what i will say though. bottom line. if EVERYBODY doped and he doped too…then he was still the best and won. if everybody doped and he didn’t dope, then he’s even better than we thought he was.

    bottom line: Lance Armstrong is a fucking gifted athlete, doping or not.

    I know a lot of people are going to start talking about where the Livestrong money goes.

    But fuck the money for a second. The amount of people fighting cancer that he has inspired and helped with his stories and awareness is unmeasurable. it aint all about the money.

    and finally read “It’s not about the bike”. Its dope. (pun intended).

  2. Seems like a good opportunity to mention that the shit cyclists doped with in the pre-WWII era was loco:

    They said that they used strychnine, cocaine, chloroform, aspirin, “horse ointment” and others drugs to keep going. Francis is reported as saying “In short, we run on dynamite.” Henri is reported as saying “Do you know how we keep going? Look, this is cocaine, chloroform, too. And pills? You want to see pills? Here are three boxes – We run on dynamite.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_cycling

  3. def agree with the statement that just taking PEDs are not going to make a mediocre athlete and elite athlete. To get to this level it takes an unfathomable amount of desire, hardwork, training and mental capacity.

    One follow up question, so if you allow drugs do you allow all drugs or where do you draw the line in the sand on what is acceptable and what is not? Seems like a slippery slope if it’s only some and not all.

  4. This is kinda like the president of Major League Baseball telling the Packers that he is stripping them of all of their past NFL titles.

    No one gives a fuck what you have to say, USADA. You have no authority at the TDF and they aren’t taking his titles away. So shut the fuck up.

  6. I think most people aren’t that naive to think people at the top aren’t using something. I think that PEDs should be allowed but regulated to prevent abuse. PEDs shouldn’t be demonized since people train harder on them. There is a misconception from the media that PEDs cause instant improvement since PEDs are “cheating.” I also think that if someone is on PEDs then they shouldn’t compete in certain federations that are for non-PED using people like the AAPF vs APF in powerlifting for example.

    I also don’t like Lance Armstrong but isn’t from the PED thing.

  7. First off, I do not and never will support the use of PEDs, if athletes want to use them, fine. But just don’t get caught because all I see for them in the future is an E:60 documentary about how their life went to shit after testing positive.

    This is just a political witch hunt. Why not stop at Lance? Go after Carl Lewis, he tested positive but the USOC swept those records under the rug.

    • Yeah, this is a good point (about life going to shit after being caught). I have never thought about using them because of the negative ramifications. However, we aren’t elite athletes with millions of dollars to be earned based on our performance. We might think differently when that’s the case.

      • Justin, I unfortunately train at a bodybuilding-first gym in Toronto (we need more affordable S&C gyms) and you can tell who’s on the sauce and who isn’t…but enough about those flaming homos, it’s bad enough trying to squat 285x3x5 while some jackass is flexing his abs and thighs near the power rack.

        Your last point makes a lot of sense to me. Life and the choices we would have to make would be a hell of a lot different if we were in that position. I’ve learned to accept them but guys like Georges St. Pierre and Usain Bolt, I still have a hard time believing they have taken PEDs.

        What are your thoughts on TRT? I would be very interested to read your two cents on the matter.

  8. Good post, Justin. The public should recognise and accept that PEDs are a vital part of an elite athlete’s repertoire so that we can stop having fucking witch hunts and just see amazing athletes breaking world records.

    Would the public really have as much interest in sports if PEDs weren’t taken and thus performances lower?

  9. I’ve sure Lance used PEDs, and I really don’t care. The dude by some accounts is an asshole personally, but again, I don’t care. He’s done some incredible stuff and helped a huge number of people with his nonprofit work. I agree that PEDs should be allowed and regulated, since it will lead to increased safety in sport (in my opinion). That being said, I’m no professional athlete, so don’t see any reason that I would ever use them. I just do strength training because I enjoy it.

  10. If sports doping is as widespread as claimed, I would like to know how and where the drugs are being produced and distributed. It’s a seriously huge criminal conspiracy to make that kinda shit happen.

    • Really? Do you know people who smoke weed? Use coke, X, heroin, meth? Anything? How is it a bigger conspiracy for athletes to use PEDs than for the average American to get their hands on just about any illegal drug they want?

      • I didn’t say it was a bigger conspiracy than those sorts of drugs. Besides, the majority of those drugs are produced by organised criminals (criminal conspiracy).

        Here we are talking about drugs that consistently beat testers. I’m not doubting their existence and use, I want to know who is doing the research, production and distribution for a large number of athletes to obtain it.

        I can answer those questions generally for most illicit drugs. I want to know who is doing it for PEDs.

        • Unlike recreational drugs, steroids and other performance enhancing substances are not illegal to produce or sell in a great number of countries. Even in the UK, home of the last Olympics, it is perfectly legal to import steroids in the country for personal use. Most of the black market stuff comes from powders manufactured in China. There are gigantic multi-million dollar factories there that crank out steroid powders 24/7/365 and sell them in bulk to anyone willing to buy (whether it is legal or not where they are going).

      • Good point by Tamara. Also, read the linked interview with Angel Heredia. He talked about how he got his sources. They ranged from Mexico to Australia. If you got da money, you can get yo’ dro.

  11. So do you thank shankle, north, and all the cal strength an mdusa guys use peds? I’m just interested, cause if so then what really is the reason for our lack of Olympic lifting prowess?

    • They don’t. At least Shankle and North don’t.

      Listen to their weightlifting podcasts. Shankle was telling the story of how some tester “accidentally” dropped a sample of whoever took home first, there was no test, and the athlete and his coaches literally walked out hand-in-hand hopping and skipping

      Apparently they put on atleast 10-15% on your lifts.

    • I’ve talked to Pendlay about this a long time ago. They do not use banned substances because if they got popped, that would be a bad thing. I’m speaking for Glenn, but I would guess this is not something he’s interested in dealing with.

      • Ya I just watched their podcast on steroids and Jon was saying how he gets tested multiple times a week. But, if I is so risky to get caught using peds, then why do so many of our top athletes use them? And I they are using the undetectable peds then why are the weightlifters so behind the ball on this? Money? Idk I’m just confused, there are lifters using peds, avg broz

  12. I don’t really care if athletes use PEDs as long as it doesn’t become ridiculous like baseball was in the “Steroid Era” when hitters resembled bodybuilders. The NFL is turning me off, too, because the gratuitous mass and speed of their players is unnatural. I can’t relate to Vernon Davis, James Harrison, or Sammy Sosa, but I can relate to Ryan Braun, Adam Dunn, and Donald Driver. They may or may not be using, but their body type and composition resembles the athletic ideal. I don’t want to see athletes dragging ass and all beat up so if they take a little something to enhance recovery and get themselves going then fine, keep it at a little something. When I watch sports I don’t want to see Marvel characters doing extraordinary things, I want to see athletes doing extraordinary things.

  14. I mostly agree with this but with one major exception; not every person reacts to doping in the same way. This is particularly true of EPO. Essentially, EPO increases red blood cell production, thickening blood and enabling the user a higher rate of aerobic respiration. Athletes who naturally have higher RBC counts receive far less benefit than athletes who have naturally low counts. Essentially, this means the athletes best adapted to doping and not to the sport end up winning. In addition, the EPO doping game is pretty dangerous, it has to be very precisely measured or your blood gets too thick and you die. Death is a pretty bad side effect. Beyond that, yeah, I agree with everything written. Doping is here and it isn’t going anywhere. The whole fight against it is a f***ing joke and Lance is a Badass.

    • Well, the EPO argument you make can be applied to anything. Too much testosterone can make you impotent. That’s why a guy like Angel Heredia is in high demand, because he is the expert on what to take and how to take it based on the individual.

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  17. The world IS black or white, good or evil. However, just because someone deems something as “unallowed” or “against the rules” doesn’t make it evil. The naïveté of folks who believe pro athletes don’t use PEDs is appalling. However, these athletes take them understanding the risk if they are caught. If they do get caught, there is no excuse. Personally I think it’s an epic waste of resources to regulate and rest for PEDs. We watch sports for entertainment. Let the athletes protect their careers.

    This from someone who has never used PEDs.

  18. Realistically, what the sporting arena needs is an agency that focuses on making PEDs more ADVANCED.

    Do you really wanna watch someone run the 100m in 9 seconds for the rest of your life? I sure as hell don’t. lThe athletes compete to win and we watch them to be entertained. This is the key here.

    Personally, what I would like to see would be some sort of animal/human genetic splicing. i.e lets see if we can transfer some cheetah genetics into track athletes and some gorilla genetics into strength athletes. That’s got to be the ultimate goal, surely.

  19. all my sympathy to Lance.

    That said, I think you guys are missing the point. It’s not about whether PEDs are “right” or “wrong”.

    It’s about the fact that you write your name and sign a piece of paper saying you won’t take PEDs and then being a man and doing just that instead of finding excuses (“everybody else is doing it”).

    And nobody with a serious sports background thinks you give a couch potato a couple of tablets and he rides like Lance. You need to train. Hard. They do give you an edge on the (not-using) others, you can train more – and the athletes would gladly train more if they could – and you get increased performance.

    • This is a good point, about the lying portion. I talked to someone who was a world class athlete and this was the argument they gave. I respect their opinion and it changed my opinion of Lance.

      But people DO think that PEDs make someone amazing. It’s not any of us, because we actually train and know what goes into training. But the public, the people who are grotesquely against PEDs and only hear the horror stories of them — those are the people who don’t understand how they work.

    • “It’s about the fact that you write your name and sign a piece of paper saying you won’t take PEDs and then being a man and doing just that instead of finding excuses (“everybody else is doing it”).

      Lots of people who are gay served in the Armed Forces before DADT was repealed. They felt a higher duty to serve their country than they did the need not to lie.

      There are some Republican politicians who signed a pledge to never vote to raise taxes, and they regret that pledge – in fact, they have or will violate that pledge because, in their minds, they see a greater good flowing from breaking their pledge.

      When we purchase software, and that box pops up on our computer with the “license” to use that software, you know generally the rules for usage; do you actually read that lengthy document? I think not.

      Lance isn’t a soldier, he’s not an elected official, he isn’t accused of misusing a spreadsheet program. I don’t think, though, that this is a black and white issue.

    • I think that steroids should be legalized along with what is considered illegal recreational drugs. It would save a lot of money and resources that could be used to stop people who are actually harming other people and their property.

      • While i see your point, i just don’t think its safe for people who have no business using gear to have easy access to it. With society’s instant gratification mentality, it will only be a matter of time until some innocent person, with good intentions, gets their hands on some potent fat loss steroids, and end up dead because they had no idea what they were doing.

  22. Well said, Justin. It does seem a bit of a witch hunt against Lance, heavily influenced by the naivete you mentioned of everyone believing that the best are entirely clean.

  23. PED’s are used everyday in schools and the workplace- children, college students and adults use adderall, ritalin, vyvanse, focalin, etc.. All of these drugs “enhance” performance. Many of them have an amphetamine salt as the active compound (not good for you). Granted, some children have attention deficit issues (many times secondary to the material being taught or their diet) but when taking that medication they could be seen as having an “edge” over other children or students in a classroom setting. Adults take it to function at work more effieciently. If their production increases due to this medication and they get a raise or promotion as a result is this fair to employees who do not? This is different but a notably similar context to sports and competition.

    • This is a common argument, and it has some validity. I guess it states, “Where do you draw the line with what is considered a PED?”

      And I think some people should not only be allowed to use PEDs, but prescribed them if necessary. This would include any military member involved in combat operations. Pilots use stims, elite infantry guys will take Deca and GH to heal from surgery — I don’t have a problem with that.

  24. Update to this post:
    Edit: I’ve talked with some people and I have sort of changed my stance on the issue. Do I think Lance is a hero because of his drug use? No. But two things in particular make him admirable: a) the fact that he came back from full body cancer, trained hard as hell, and won the pinnacle of his sport SEVEN TIMES and b) how he has used this experience and fame to raise money to support people with cancer and research. Those are the admirable qualities.

    The un-admirable qualities are how he has consistently lied to his fans (and donators) about using PEDs. He undoubtedly did, and lying about it only makes it worse. Lying isn’t good, but it may have been necessary to a) keep himself out of jail, b) keep the donations coming, or c) any other self-preserving quality, which could include preserving the seven wins. In the context that at least 75% of his opponents, if not all of them, are or were using the same drugs, I don’t know if I have a problem with this. It’s a fuzzy topic for me. The moral might be that, “The world isn’t black and white.”

    • I think this is a fair and even-handed assessment. His accomplishments speak for themselves, but if he doped…. that is year after year of pervasive lying at every turn. We all understand the incentives, but damn, what does that do to you, as a man? Keeping a secret, lying, conspiring…. that’s what bothers me, not people whining about “fairness.”

      Funny thing, he recently said that he had no “unfair advantage,” which is perhaps the most accurate thing you could say about the whole situation. http://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2012/08/24/did-lance-armstrong-quit-the-fight-to-hide-more-dirt/

      • I linked to an interview with Floyd Landis below that touches on both those questions: what it’s like to live with all that lying, and (from his point of view) whether Lance Armstrong had unfair advantages (not necessarily with racing, but with the agencies controlling the races).

        You can see from the comments in that article how polarizing this is for people really involved in cycling.

    • It’s generally advisable to give sufficient thought to an opinion before so boldly expressing it (via rant or otherwise) to enable withstanding at least a day of “talking with some people” before changing the opinion. Reminds me of someone posting a lengthy anti-vegetarian rant and then responding to a number of critiques with “the topic bores me”. Oh right, that was you too.

  25. Putting “alleged” evidence and the question of doubt aside, Armstrong passed each drug that he took. That is all that I need to judge whether or not anyone should vacate him of his medals. Does lying about the means to which one arrived to one’s most decorated ends make him unheroic? Perhaps it does, or it doesn’t. That judgment may rely on context. In this context it is not simply the victories that make him heroic but his diligent work for the community of cancer patients. However, beyond all of that, either the USADA will continue to pester American athletes, who may also happen to compete internationally against athletes that are faster, stronger, and physically better capable; or some consensus is reached, and PEDs are permitted, since absolute abjugation and annihilation of said PEDs is highly unlikely. I understand that PEDs are illegal, but I wonder why there seems to be such a great deal of anger toward their use. Elite, professional athletes are performers, and as such, once large amounts of money and external pressure sets in, they will do something similar to each and every one of us. If my job–the sole source of my livelihood, the welfare of my family and children, and, by proxy, the pleasantness of life–required me to keep up, in whatever capacity, with those who are unworldly fast, strong, and such; then, I would make one of two choices: pick a new career or do that which is necessary to succeed in my current station; and if my career so happens to be that habit I have attempted to perfect–my art–I very well might choose the latter.

  26. So this is my first post, but this is an issue I’m pretty interested in. I used to be a huge supporter of Lance, but I’ve found that has waned recently. I believe that he is probably not the image we have come to know, but somebody different in real life (unsurprisingly). I doubt he’s a very nice guy and I question his altruism. That said, I admire him as an athlete, and think what USADA has done is a terrible abuse of power they probably shouldn’t have anyway.

    Here are a couple of links for your consumption. The first is a long interview with Floyd Landis that gives some insight into the pressures and complications of everything that went on with him. The second is a critique of the LiveStrong foundation that I thought was interesting and kind of troubling.

    http://velocitynation.com/content/interviews/2011/landiskimmage

    http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/athletes/lance-armstrong/Its-Not-About-the-Lab-Rats.html?page=all

    • Great reads – that Landis interview is intense. My favorite exchange: “Q: Do you feel regret at having doped?’ A: I do feel regret and I’ll define exactly why I do…These decisions that I made, that I don’t necessarily feel guilty about, ended up causing people that I care about – my family and people around me – tremendous amounts of stress, and that part I regret. But I don’t want to take that too far because if I had never made those decisions, in all likelihood, I wouldn’t have raced the Tour de France ever. Because of my career and the team I ended-up on, if I wasn’t willing to do that (dope), I wasn’t going to be there. I wouldn’t have experienced any of the good things that I got out of it or any of the bad things, so for me, it’s okay, I can handle it. But they affected other people and for that reason I regret it.”

  28. The real problem as i see it is that since PEDs are so prevelent in sports (and i believe they are) it makes those who don’t want to use make a tough moral decision. The “everyone else is doing it ” excuse is tough because if a top athlete wants to be the absolute best the he/she is almost forced to do it, when they might have a moral objection to PEDs. So allowing PEDs to be legal will push out otherwise elite athletes because they aren’t willing to deal with potential harmful side effects. But this doesn’t make them less elite? ( nor does it make them a “better” person) it simply isn’t fair. if people take PEDs, fine, but others are put in harms way when they don’t. If i am a running back and a “juiced” linebacker is bearing down on me, of course i want to be a strong as possible to avoid being crushed. But should i have to compromise my beliefs, and either not play, or take? I don’t have ananswer as to how, but i do hope we can regulate PEDs somehow. Naive or not, I think we can do better. It is laughable now, but like Angel said lets all come to some agreement. I realize this is a very idealistic way of looking at the situation but hey I am an optimist. Lifting bans and making safer drugs and methods of use, might be a viable solution rendering PEDs on the same level as any supplements us average folk use. but either way we are currently spinning our wheels.

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