Professional cycling - is there a future?

ededwards":1ycs4t10 said:

I lost interest in professional cycling after the Landis/Vinokourov Tour.

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Not before then, during the Festina bust?...or even during any of the periods that our interest in Retrobikes lists?...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling

So David Walsh gets a decade+ of scorn by Armstrong & yet all along there was plenty of the build up to this in 'La Confidentiale'...I don't see how going over what happened is going to change anything in the present.

I did the RAS about 6/7 years ago as a team mechanic & went into a toilet prior to the start of the last stage. Looked down & saw a syringe amongst all the s**t...

ededwards wrote:

Now Vinokourov is the Olympic Road Race

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.....to say nothing about Contador and Valverde in the Vuelta

i understand Ed's point, it's wearing, the did they? did they not drug? etc, not just Lance but the others aswel. it does turn you off the sport but what gets me more is the press, the bandwagon of haters who know nothing and who voice their opinions based on the little they know or have heard.

comments like "they're all at it" etc

when Ben Johnson was caught doping no one really said "i bet every athlete is a doper" but that's what they seem to say about cycling.

every sport has had and will have cheats to some extent, it's frustrating as you get behind someone and become a fan and then they let you down.

i was a lance fan, he stood for so much, my attitude was "i hope he didn't" as opposed to "i bet he did/didn't" but sadly i believe he did now.

wiggo etc, the team was created on a no dope standpoint, if they doped it would be a disaster on so many levels, but they all signed contracts to say they would never do it and i for one don't believe they would.

cheating though works in other ways aswel, it's not just doping, it's helping another team so that they don't ride against you on another stage etc. sprints can be bought, a friend who raced pro/am in belgium for years told me once that you could make more money being better than somebody else from being paid not to sprint than you could by winning the sprint, and how much was paid depended on how close/not obvious the winner would want it to be.

but i'll still watch the big stuff, it's not always about the race for me, it's about the spectacle itself, the fanfare, and phil liggett going mental for 2 minutes towards the end of every stage.

& for those who want to read it...http://inrng.com/2012/10/usada-armstrong-report/

As long as the peeps want champions, heros and fanfair, doping will be there. I've passed caring or getting upset about this in competitive sports decades ago.

Today, I have more respect for the lone tourer going across Africa on whatever food, water and equipment they can gather, rather than the laboratory specimans in the $$$$$$$ TdF circus.

Well done Scott Mercier. Though it shows how seep the problem lies that he couldn't manage the training never mind the races despite being an Olympic cyclist.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/19930514

this year is the first year in ages that i have watched pro cycling, i still love it,and i hope this is a fresh start for the sport.races like flanders, roubaix and lombardy still excite me. but i do miss dave duffield

I think the term 'professional' needs to be removed from sport.

I say this as I am fed up with the 'look at me' prima donnas all ego and no substance sporting products, because that is what they are with all their sponsorship is a product, x company paid for their success.

Amateur sports I will follow, but nothing professional as I like to see what normal people can do in the world of athletic prowess, you know people who work for a living doing whatever but devote personal time off work to train for what they enjoy doing, they to me are the real winners, people who have extended their working lives to excel in their interest.

But it is a fact, many of these professional products that win so much for their sponsorship are cretins in real life as what was that a pro rider from Armstrong's home town said?

"Half of the folks in Austin think he's an #$%$; the other half haven't met him yet."

I may have misunderstood the general flow here but it seems along the lines "it's nothing new, it's always been going on and the true fan will continue to follow professional cycling, perhaps after a brief dip in interest". Very depressing. And probably very true.