Industrialized Cyclist Notepad

It really is true.

There is no denying it now. Short of throwing it all away and doing something else, riders at the top of the sport had no real choice but to use powerful drugs which boost the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. And no real choice but to lie about it. Caught in a trap. Some were more artful than others.

The demonization of riders is just the next step in the industrialization of the sport. Sure there are some clowns among them — Tyler Hamilton swore on the soul of his dead dog that he was clean, and Floyd de-floyded his loyal fans out of a lot of cash — but the real demon-weasels are higher up. The team directors, sponsors and owners, who depend entirely on doped riders for their livelihoods, all pretend to be pure as the driven snow when the truth sputters out, unceremoniously throwing rider after rider under the team bus (which was just moments ago parked on the side of the road for a blood transfusion session).

They are all doped. So now, the only ones we have to worry about are the ones who are swearing purity, setting up teams that are sworn to be special and clean and ‘turning over a new leaf,’ and other assorted nonsense. Yeah. Jonathon Vaughters. All your riders are doped. Stop talking. Just. Stop. Talking.

I’m sick of hard-working riders being used as human shields by these silver-tongued corporate warthogs in fashionable eyeglasses. Unfortunately, recent highly publicized crackdowns still pretend that the higher-ups are innocent, so they can’t possibly clean up the sport and make it safer for kids with talent. We will just get a new crop of dopers, and a new crop of dope.