What Is There To Say?

It’s the news that cycling has been waiting for. The next step in the Armstrong case that has kept not just cycling but the whole world on the edge of their seats, waiting to see how the chips will fall. Every day seems to bring another admission, another revelation, something else to make you stop and weep at just where all this is going. It’s like riding the rollercoaster of Bad News that you can’t step off, your heart in your throat every time you hit another loop-the-loop.

And it feels like something ought to be said, but, really, what is there to say? The evidence is out there. USADA’s decision has been made. It’s hard to argue with the proof. Hard to dispute the verdict. Hard to believe the truth. Hard to know what to think. It’s a black day in the history of cycling. What is there to say?

Yet the circus still goes on, name after name crumbling like a wall of bricks without mortar. Vande Velde, Zabriskie, Danielson. Leipheimer, Vaughters. Hincapie. Bruyneel. Will no one escape the purges?

And now there’s news of one of our own. Matt White has now been touched, now been tainted. Our Australian ‘purity’ on the doping front has crumbled into dust, our belief and faith in our cyclists shaken, the trust gone.

It’s disheartening to see another great of the sport laid low, like the pillars of Stonehenge falling to the earth. Those who are well-acquainted with cycling are well-acquainted with its chequered past, too, and it says a lot that so many can still love it knowing full well the scandals in its history. But we can still be saddened that this is the situation in cycling. Disappointed that cycling has been reduced to salacious headlines in the tabloids. Angry that cycling has changed from how well you ride to how well you dope.

But it can’t go on like this. If we look hard enough we will always find another doping scandal, another ‘drug cheat’ to be vilified and torn down from his pedestal. Such is the history of cycling. At some point we need to draw a line and declare an amnesty. Someone has to suggest that from now on we let the dead past bury its dead and focus on the future of cycling. It’s been suggested before. Someone has to say that we need to forgive, though not forget, the old culture of cycling that allowed, nay, condoned, such widespread doping as the Armstrong case, and instead construct a new future in which doping is rejected from the level of the fans right up to the UCI, and that embraces those spectacular feats of plain old guts and endurance that make this sport great.

Let’s make this cycling’s turning point. Let’s make this the time when things could go back to the way they were or they could change for the better, and we gave them a push in the right direction. At risk of sounding like a motivational speaker on a sugar high, fans are an important part of cycling, and they do play a part in the pro cycling scene. All the sponsorship, advertising, marketing and money that gets thrown around at races like the Tour de France is aimed at the fans – fans who are sick of the riders they worshipped in July being kicked to the kerb by December. Fans who can use that advertising and marketing to push for a cleaner, safer sport, more entertaining in its purity and its natural ability to surprise.

So, what is there to say? Well, let’s start by echoing the words of Lance Armstrong and saying, “Enough is enough.”