Tour de France: Snapshot

 just because they bring up doping, isn’t a correct use of the term.

Doping is an ever-present possibility for all of the riders. Any person could reasonably expect to be able to throw out that option on a cycling forum—including a real devotee of the sport, with a great store of knowledge.

We have a ban on talking about doping in live threads (which this isn’t) and a much more nuanced attitude towards how we talk about it in other threads. I find it a little distasteful in what’s clearly intended as an “admiration” post. But not troll-like.

You / we can’t expect everyone to know what the local habits are—this isn’t a private space, no matter how much the longtimers value it. No fair jumping down someone’s throat without explaining why (and yes, you do have to do it a second time in a non-live thread, even if you’ve warned them off doing it in a live thread). Especially if it chases away someone with a cycling memory that encompasses Virenque (and who knows who-all else).

Look, I love it when there’s a love fest. What Voeckler did was epic. What worries me more was that his entire team was so damned good. It actually is hard to explain how so many riders were missed by the big teams, picked up by the wild-card team, and then they, en masse, outrode people like, say, Jens. Largely on the uphills.

This was the best tour I can remember, and the boys in green were a big, big part of that. I want them all to be clean, I want them all to be powered by a potent mix of only chances, second chances, youthful ambition, fraternite, egalite, fresh legs, and all that is Gallic and beautiful. But I would not be desperately shocked to find that some or all of them had prepared in other ways, as well.

Doping does not create “heart” and courage and the will to suffer. I’d bet there are plenty of doped teams who have sucked. When I say that this is one of the many performances that is tinged with worry for me, I’m emphatically not saying they didn’t do absolute heroics on the road. They sweated blood and tears. They all rode well beyond their limits (Voeckler and also the rest of the team). They, and we, will always have that.

But we can’t, and shouldn’t, insist that people with heart and courage can’t possibly be doping. Even if it’s rude to just yell “doper” and then run.

A lot of essentially kind / courageous / loving / dependable people have cheated in one way or another at some point in their lives—on spouses, on tests, in sports. We’re grown ups. We’ve seen the history. We should be able to hear, say, debate and juggle the word “dopage” without melting into hatred soup, nor shutting out people who rain on our unalloyed happiness. (I guess I’m testing this right now…with apologies to any who never even had that thought for a minute).

Been burned enough, y’know? But I like your argument, I (mostly) buy it, and I hope you are right.

Too bad it’s to me, not to the guy who posited “doper.” And, well, he did actually pose an argument of sorts—not “the guy is too good” (in the abstract) but “the guy is suddenly world class when he didn’t used to be.”

OK, it’s not the world’s strongest argument (unexpected jump in cycling level compared to past performance), but it’s as solid as many other arguments made here. And by being framed as an insinuation, he or she did what we have asked of posters in the past, i.e. NOT made slanderous / libelous assertions.