Part 1- Does historical context matter?

There’s an active conversation regarding the doping issues surrounding Lance Armstrong in a Frequent Flyer discussion group (of all places!); below is someone’s comment regarding today’s disclosures, and my reply underneath.

More broadly, I’ve read through a few of the affidavits, and even I’m a little surprised by how widespread the doping was. I figured all or nearly all of the GC contenders were doping, as well as some of the top domestiques, but now I get the impression that it was practically the whole peloton.

I think a broader argument can be made; an argument that it’s not just about who gets the win during the Lance years, but how differently we are handling the dopers of the recent past to the longer past. Nobody’s asking for Merckx, Anquetil and Indurain to vacate their wins (tough to ask Anquetil, since he’s dead, and he’s the most-obvious since he made statements about his own ethics regarding doping that were rather damning). Nobody seems to even be asking them questions about their own racing rituals.

How can we say how they would have acted under the glare of the media light that is upon Lance? Not that Lance hasn’t done far more than the others to attract attention in the first place, but still, what happens if you, point blank, ask Eddy Merckx if he doped during the TdF? And if he says no, where does that leave you?
Continue reading The many facets of the Lance doping revelations (part 1 & 2) →