So over on Twitter today, JV decided to ask his followers a question:

@Vaughters: I wonder if anyone is curious as to why I quit racing at 29, and walked away from the last 2 yrs of a pretty phat contract? Must be crazy..

People were, of course, very curious. And a tour through JV's timeline following that tweet for the next several hours will show him conducting a wide ranging, very frank discussion of the dilemma he felt himself to face, his response, and how that response shaped what he's done with Slipstream.

I'm not going to try to reproduce that discussion, because doing so would inevitably lead to a lot of things being taken out of context in ways that could be unfortunate. I have too much respect for JV's honesty about some very sensitive matters to do that -- especially since, with the starting point above, people can follow on their own. The point of this post is to create a space for discussion what JV has said, which I think has tremendously important bearing on a lot of conversations we've had and continue to have here.

However, I do think it's important to note that JV went out of his way to make clear that the problem was not that he was being asked to dope at Credit Agricole. Indeed, precisely the opposite.

@Vaughters: My team from 2000-retirement was credt agricole. Management was absolutely anti-doping. I hated letting them down when I couldn't win.

And with that, I invite people to see what else he said and to discuss.