Professional Road Cycling

The state of professional road cycling is about as bad as it could possibly get.  What a messed up culture that sport has.  It's sad because racing bikes over beautiful mountain passes throughout the world is a very cool thing.  It's even more sad because a lot of people are messing their lives up chasing things that don't last anyway. 

I don't know if cycling will be better or worse because of the anti-Lance movement.  I don't know if the right thing to do would be to leave him alone because he does so much for cancer.  I don't know if lesser bans for riders that volunteer information about doping is better or worse than giving them lifetime bans and possibly keeping them from coming forward at all.

What I do know is most of the top American road racers of the last decade have hugely disappointed the American bike racing community.  They chose results, popularity, and money over being true athletes, real role models, and simply doing what's right.  They also chose to lie all along the way.  Sure some people don't care that they doped because everyone else was doing it and it made for some good racing.  But that path they chose really does matter, because it was wrong.  Just because everyone else is taking things home from the office supply cabinet doesn't make it right for you to do it too. 

 It's too bad the guys at the top of the sport have tarnished it so badly.  Cycling is such an amazing sport - testing the limits of the body while getting to check out some really cool terrain.  I have met so many good people through riding and am frustrated for all of us that enjoy cycling for the love of the sport.  In the end I feel sorry for the guys in the news right now because the things that motivated them are short lived anyway.  Popularity will fade and money will get spent.  In the end all of us are left with our character and our relationships.  We have to look up to people for who they are and not just what they do.