On this sore subject, as some people try to be
funny about it...I bumped into James from Imperial College Hospital Cardiology and we
got talking about Vet racing. He said I won't believe the numbers of patients he
is looking at daily, age group 40+ , myocardial infarction and other heart
problems, who are admitting to having taken epo, amphetamines, growth hormones etc.
Many of them cyclist! I asked him if he is pulling my leg. He remained serious, saying this was also one of his main reasons to stop racing. Its totally bonkers what he continued then, saying of course everyone would do it, why wouldn't you!?
Would you think this was totally exaggerated and he is just a tosser trying to sound knowledgeable and
important?
Am I totally naive in thinking there may be the one or other cheat
out there amongst mostly clean competitors, or is amateur racing really infested with self medicating idiots
because of a lack of testing?
The recently published UCI reports on doping in
amateur sport and a number of articles, even in FT, where similarly dark
sounding. There have been shocking articles in German cycling magazin Tour in
recent times and that let to a pull-out of sponsors and TV channels from the
sport. I suppose in the UK cycling has become a multi-billion industry now and nobody wants that to end too soon.
The question for myself, who has never taken anything and never felt tempted to do so, never went to see Dr Ferrari or Fuentes, as some people I know did back in Germany in the 1990s, is it worth the 20quitt spent on starting fee to race against a field of dopers, if it was?
Nothing is proven and so far speculation alone cannot deter me from racing, even if some people try to paint everything in black. I know that my clubmates don't dope and that is already 5-15% of the peloton clean and being able to win races clean, thats what it is all about.