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Vivaci he let down so many people that he deserves to be labeled the biggest fraud in the history of competitive sports. I’m sad that he doesn’t have the judgement to see it to this day and he is really only upset about getting caught when worse offenders have existed in the history of the European competitive cycling championships. Yes there are plenty of bad decisions that athletes have made in the peloton and recreational drugs and hard drugs used in the hopes of performance enhancing capabilities have been founds in other cyclists systems and plenty of other teams and athletes had doping programs that allowed them to get better sponsors and that in turn gives them more revenue that is given to both athletes and managers and part is turned back into performance enhancing drugs and so on the cycle (no pun intended but hey 🤓) it’s often why teams get caught up in it until they reach desperate measures like the Festina affair.
On July 8, 1998, Festina soigneur Willy Voet was stopped by customs officers at the Belgian-French border close to Neuville-en-Ferrain, near Lille, France. Officers discovered several hundred grams and capsules of anabolic steroids, erythropoietin (EPO), syringes, and other doping products. Voet was taken into police custody. Festina offices were searched in Lyon and seized other suspect products, including perfluorocarbon.[9]
It was actually 3 years later that a test was devised by the antidoping agency and the race organizers although many people have had theories about how closely they looked at lance and how predictable they may have become to allow him to bring more attention to the sport through his record 7 wins and the argument that EPO has been shown to have almost no affect on the “amateur cyclist” and was shown to not boost performance more than placebo as far as what they considered an average amateur cyclist is not stated and plenty of other performance enhancing drugs taken by the top level athlete are said to boost performance by less than 10% however in a race that takes 3 weeks+ that’s a measurable difference in between who’s doping and who’s doping most correctly for the biggest gain at the same time trying to not even get inconclusive results from the doping tests and the doping doctors are ultimately the ones profiting most with least amount of risk as EPO and the other drugs used from anesthetics to amphetamines and the rest are only going to increase the risk of medical problems for the athletes and the risks are already increased by the way that growing the heart muscle doesn’t always make it healthier and other complications from drugs not to mention the recreational drugs of choice for current and retired men and women who have been involved in the higher levels of cycling and may be on their way out of the soort and cocaine and ecstasy as well as meth are the most common drugs found in the systems of some of the most famous and talented men and women on two wheels and I do think that “adrenaline addiction disorder” is a common denominator with these people as well. And when it’s gone in the form of retirement and or injury time it’s not hard for them to find a rush from illicit drugs be they prescribed at one time for injuries etc. I know of a few sad stories in that category as well.
