Lightmancer
Legend
- Location
- Sunny Frimley
- Name
- Bill Palmer
Poor old Wiggo. This year has not been kind to him, and now this...
Wiggo par Lightmancer, on ipernity
Wiggo par Lightmancer, on ipernity
I hate to say this, but I miss the days of heavy doping. Morals and ethics aside, those guys made for some exciting racing. Watching Pantani in his prime, Lance in his, and Contador in his was just plain a thrill. Seeing those guys riding up a grade at race pace that I could barely crawl up in my best days (which these days certainly are not) and then just stand up and accelerate and drop everyone else and ride away from the race was an amazing thing to watch. Watching a clean rider like Cadel grunt his way through it a couple of years ago was a tremendous thrill and inspirational as hell, but really short on thrills and excitement. Watching Contador get up and just EXPLODE was something else altogether. And they need dope to ride like that. Its unpopular to say and wrong on so many levels, but as a fan, I have to be honest - that was the stuff. And its not like the sport has ever really been clean - its just too hard to complete those three week stage races clean. Froome, on his best days last year, didn't look clean to me. Bradley did, but he won the race, so I have my doubts...
-Ray
Doping or no doping, I think the most exciting decade was the 80s. So many different winners, and drama almost every year.
I was kind of partial to Eddy in the '70s, but he was so dominant (in every type of race, not just the grand tours) that I guess I'd have to go along with the '80s. But I wasn't following that closely and there wasn't any TV coverage in the States (a highlight show when Lemond was doing well) so it wasn't as alive to me as later, when we started getting some coverage, and then the Lance era, when we got a TON...
-Ray
I hate to say this, but I miss the days of heavy doping. Morals and ethics aside, those guys made for some exciting racing. Watching Pantani in his prime, Lance in his, and Contador in his was just plain a thrill. Seeing those guys riding up a grade at race pace that I could barely crawl up in my best days (which these days certainly are not) and then just stand up and accelerate and drop everyone else and ride away from the race was an amazing thing to watch. Watching a clean rider like Cadel grunt his way through it a couple of years ago was a tremendous thrill and inspirational as hell, but really short on thrills and excitement. Watching Contador get up and just EXPLODE was something else altogether. And they need dope to ride like that. Its unpopular to say and wrong on so many levels, but as a fan, I have to be honest - that was the stuff. And its not like the sport has ever really been clean - its just too hard to complete those three week stage races clean. Froome, on his best days last year, didn't look clean to me. Bradley did, but he won the race, so I have my doubts...
-Ray
I hate to say this, but I miss the days of heavy doping. Morals and ethics aside, those guys made for some exciting racing. Watching Pantani in his prime, Lance in his, and Contador in his was just plain a thrill. Seeing those guys riding up a grade at race pace that I could barely crawl up in my best days (which these days certainly are not) and then just stand up and accelerate and drop everyone else and ride away from the race was an amazing thing to watch. Watching a clean rider like Cadel grunt his way through it a couple of years ago was a tremendous thrill and inspirational as hell, but really short on thrills and excitement. Watching Contador get up and just EXPLODE was something else altogether. And they need dope to ride like that. Its unpopular to say and wrong on so many levels, but as a fan, I have to be honest - that was the stuff. And its not like the sport has ever really been clean - its just too hard to complete those three week stage races clean. Froome, on his best days last year, didn't look clean to me. Bradley did, but he won the race, so I have my doubts...
-Ray
I think we can rest easy that SBW rode clean.
He is, after all, an Englishman, and it seems to me it's just Johnny Foreigner who plays a dirty game.
Sad and cynical perhaps, but until the whole sport is clean and riders aren't getting busted for EPO use, I won't believe a grand tour winner was clean. Those blood boosting drugs (and, you know, blood itself) are too effective for a clean rider to beat a rider with all of that hematocrit over a three week torture test. I don't know how Cadel could have done it but I've known a few people who are pretty connected with the upper end of the sport and he's the only winning rider in the past 20+ years that they all seem to actually believe rode clean. May be the greatest feat in modern sport....I am uncomfortable at the implied accusation that Wiggo must have been on something just because he won. What a sad and cynical state of affairs for a sport to find itself in.
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