I have just watched the two part documentary on Lance Armstrong called "Lance" which was done for ESPN Sports by 30 for 30. If you haven't already seen it I highly recommend you do as it gives a different insight into the sport of cycling.
Cycling as a professional sport has been hit over the last decades by many drug scandals and is up their with the Olympics as a total joke. The 3 cyclists who were part of Lance's team back when he was cycling for US Postal gave their view points.
We as outsiders and fans looking in thought that it was not a level playing field feeling sorry for the non doping athletes yet that is untrue. The doping that was taking place was so widespread and common they unanimously agree that the entire race was doing it and possibly being kind maybe less than 5% weren't.
The times is what made me think they were most likely right as the doping increases your performance level by about 10 percent. The race over the 21 days has a race time of around 100 hours so they should be at least 10 hours ahead of their non cheating competitors, but if you look at the time sheets back then it is a lot closer than 10 hours. Bloody scary to think they were all at it and no wonder the sport was tainted.
source
Amazing to think the team was earning very little and changed things up to move onto a bonus incentive. Not long after the owner couldn't afford the payments to pay Lance anymore as they were winning so much.
The 3 riders were not doping when they first turned professional and soon realised that doing the Tour de France if you are not doping you will struggle to keep up with the main peloton. They were highly trained and at the peak of their abilities and couldn't keep up and said they had no choice. If you wanted to be at the front end of the race you had to be on a proper doping program. Doping was so bad that it was the only topic of conversation with other competitors whilst cycling on the road during the race.
This documentary gives you an insight into Lance as a person and where he thinks he did things wrong. It answers certain questions why he got caught as he would have got away with it if he had never come out of retirement. This explains where his reasoning was when he came back to win his seventh Tour de France title.
I have seen other documentaries on him and they are more about attacking him and the drug use where this one seems to be more open and candid. I think it is good for the sport to be this open and frank if they are somehow going to ever fix it. After watching this I believe cycling has moved forward but so has the art of doping and do believe nothing has changed. I am not naive enough to believe they aren't doing it as they have been doing it since the 1970's.
I won't say much more as then that would spoil it for anyone wanting to see this as I believe what they are saying. They have nothing to lose now as many have already been stripped of their titles and they talk freely knowing what everyone else knew, but wasn't a hundred percent sure.
