LIVESTRONG

 

It appears that this doping scandal in competitive cycling is much more wide spread than previously thought and has been going on for many years with the cheaters being one step ahead of the tests starting with the Los Angeles Olympics and radiating out from there to all sports both pro and amateur.

The most successful cheaters and most of the time their sporting organizations responsible for testing did so on a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” basis and it was only later in the game when testing became more sophisticated that the cheats were caught out.

The suspicion now is that everyone in the game was cheating on some level and only the foolish and unlucky were caught.

The testing organizations took it upon themselves to be the prosecutor, judge and jury, in all these cases and using the bully pulpit could successfully ruin an athlete’s reputation with hearsay evidence unsupported by any scientific evidence to the contrary.

The athletes under suspicion were then required to become mired in endless civil suites to repair their damaged reputations in the courts which could do nothing but empty their pocket books and enrich the lawyer class. After years and years of this nonsense is it any wonder that Lance Armstrong gave it up.

I believe in the man and his foundation and the fight to conquer cancer. I’m a cancer survivor and although my meeting with Lance was very short and to the point I was impressed with his integrity and I am inclined to take the man at his word.

JWL