I'm baffled by the certainty of some of the opinions here. You shouldn't tout an opinion as unchallegeable, or attack people who don't share it. That's because it's an opinion, not a fact. And in this case, where there are about a bazillion unknowns, why make so many assumptioms? It's not wise. We don't get the facts until there's an adverse test result, which might not happen until testing improves in ten or twenty tears and samples can be defrosted.
Doping is a medical matter, so about half of the bazillion unknowns come under the heading of an individual's physiology. We've all got different genes.
Nearly all the drugs we talk about have been repeatedly double blind tested for their intended purpose, but not as performance enhancers. The effects and side-effects as performance enhancers are not well understood. Particularly for the newer drugs, riders and their doctors are experimenting wildly. We don't hear much about the drugs which don't work for certain riders, perhaps because they don't get enough of a boost to put them under suspicion. And we should remember the high number of dopers who've died young. This must be a strong disincentive to take up doping. We never talk about it though. There's an assumption that an ambitious rider will probably dope if he thinks he won't get caught. It's not like that. Put yourself in the shoes of a young, talented, fit, law-abiding person before you judge them. If a domestique isn't coming up to scratch and he fears he might have to go and work in a bike shop, you can understand the huge motivation to dope. But for someone naturally good enough to be a potential team leader or even a monument winner, why risk everything when you already have a fairly safe career doing the one thing you love?
And FWIW, I was an 'undecided' about Lance until the Simeoni incident and the other happenings of 2004. Some will say proudly that they 'knew' Lance was dirty before that. That's just pub talk. Nobody knew, except a few insiders like the Andreus. What we did know, from 2001 onwards, was that Lance had worked with Ferrari. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt - I reckon an arrogant Texan so-called champion would probably work with a dirty doctor if said doctor had some unique insights into clean cycling.
If you're still reading, my chin-stroking on matters of pharmaceuticals is not borne of scientific qualifications. I could never be any sort of doping expert. But I did a stint as a medical writer for a newspaper. I expressed a lot of strong opinions which were highly controversial in some quarters. You have to do that as a journalist, if you want to work. But I was never busted for making a mistake. Not even a little one!
