Merde!

So apparently this Tour is going up the creek too. Vino positif! scream the headlines. Probably no surprise really. With the amount of big names getting busted recently, the question is who’s next?

I’m not sure what to say or exactly where this post is heading, instead I will rattle off some random shit and see what ends up on the screen in front of me. I might start by saying how disappointed I am. How tough it is to sit back and watch my our sport get ruined so regularly, with such devastating force.

The thing is, it affects so many people across so many spectrums. For example,  Dylan (in Belgum) flicked me an email just recently telling how frustated he was with it all. I chose not to publish it becuase I don’t want to have any possibility in ruining the dreams and hopes of some young junior cyclist who happens to stumble across my blog; but an excerp of his message was:

It is frustrating that so many guys, even in local racing, are using this stuff

And I couldn’t agree more. I’ve seen what guys that are whacked up on crack are like when they’re racing, or when they’ve  jacked their haemotocrit up to 60%. And I can tell you, it ain’t pretty (especially when you’re hanging like a dog in the gutter trying to follow them!). In Belgium the amateur scene, at the very least, is very difficult to get your head around…

My story about the “Old Dude” that cracked me 

In fact the one very disturbing image I have in my head is basically what caused me to leave Belgium mid-season in 2005. It was a guy in his forties, complete with moustache and slight pot gut who was racing a kermess this particular day. I remember seeing him before the start of the race and thinking to myself “surely this dude isn’t racing is he? He looks like a freaking hubbard!”. But sure enough there he was at the start line, ready to rock. And rock he did. About 80km into the racen this guy - whose image remains vivdly in my head still to this day - went past me clearly whacked off his nut on pot belge. We had averaged a fast 46km/h so far and the gaps were starting to form on the technical twisty Belgian circuit. I, amongst others, was hanging for dear life. Looking at the wheel in front and hoping like hell that I could merely do enough to hold on. Then suddenly this old dude flies past, breathing fire, still looking like a hubbard only riding like a pro. He jumped across the gap and made the break, leaving us to fend for ourselves. And there I was, completely demoralised and destroyed. And so, with a heart rate well above threshold for nearly 30 minutes now, I got dropped. And as I watched the final few laps it was clear this old dude was really smashing things up with a few of the kermesse kings, and I was left disgusted with what I had just seen, what I had just witnessed.It is a story I rarely really tell. It’s not something I would normally go screaming to the whole world, but it’s an image that I remember like the back of my hand when something like the Vino story comes up.

Having seen this, and let me tell you I have seen much more (and worse) than the “old dude”, it’s hard to fathom that cycling will ever be clean. While we can live and hope, the unfortunate reality is that it has been around basically since the start of cycling and - unfortunate as it is - I can’t see things changing. And that’s what totally sucks.

In the meantime it’s probably best just to keep riding because you enjoy it. And that’s what rocks.