Friday's Mailbag: Tafi's retired, too; Eddy beats 'em all; believing a rider's clean doesn't make it so

Published December 23, 2005 01:00AM

The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen in cycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to WebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name and home town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

What about Tafi?
Editor:
I noticed one rather glaring omission in John Wilcockson’s “Last Look Back” column. Wilcockson set out to review the “top riders who retired in 2005.” In doing so, however, he left out the great Andrea Tafi.

Tafi retired in 2005, with his last race being the Tour of Georgia. His palmares include the Giro di Lombardia (1996), the Rochester Classic (1997), the Italian national championship (1998), Parix-Roubaix (1999), Paris-Tours (2000), and the Tour of Flanders (2002).

Even when he wasn’t winning World Cup races, Tafi was one of the most entertaining and exciting riders in the peloton. He was the eternal protagonist, always seemingly in the middle of the action. It would be a shame not to recognize his career as this year ends, along with the rest of the great riders who retired in 2005.

Good eye, Todd. You’ll be happy to know that John has added Tafi’s name and accomplishments to his list. — Editor

Eddy is still the man
Editor:
Thought I would kick the hornets’ nest first thing this morning. Good article by John Wilcockson, but did anyone else noticed that all 15 riders combined had about the same number of career wins as some guy named Eddy?

Undoubtedly, Lance Armstrong has been the most successful Tour rider ever, but this talk of him being the best cyclist ever is kind of silly (even as ridiculous as it is to try to define something as “best ever”). I know we Americans have an insatiable need to be the best in the world at everything, but it seems that in this case, we may want to tip our hats to Belgian beer, chocolate and Eddy Merckx.

Letter writer’s claims are laughable
Editor:
Oy vey — Fred Boettcher’s claims (see Wednesday’s Mailbag: Jail time? For what?) that “Heras is innocent” and “cheats never win” is high ironic comedy. Do you think it dawns on Fred that if you deny guilt every time someone is caught, the cheaters would in fact win?

And oh, how I love the tried-and-true claim that if these things were being handled in a U.S. court, it would never stand up to our legal scrutiny. Ah, yes, the U.S. justice system, the ultimate standard bearer for justice, fairness, guilt and innocence, law and order; the same system that sentences innocent people to death with shocking regularity. Oh, yes, the U.S. legal system could get to the bottom of all this doping stuff in a jiffy. Quick, somebody call O.J. for his opinion!

Deny it all you want: Some riders dope
Editor:
First of all, thanks for providing a great website for our sport. You barely hear cycling mentioned in our “sporting press.”

I got a great laugh out of Fred Boettcher’s letter. I guess sophisticated bio/immunochemical techniques should just be ignored because someone spilled the beans to the press.

When a test is performed for a substance such as EPO it has been rigorously qualified in a variety of ways. The testing is controlled using appropriate quality control and assurance methods. If the initial test were falsely positive, it is highly unlikely the repeat test on a separate sample would repeat as falsely positive. So, if what Mr. Boettcher says is the case, then no one has been guilty of doping, ever.

I guess it is difficult to believe someone would dope to win, even great riders like Heras. But the drive and requirement to succeed at the professional level is immense and lots of pros succumb. Sports Illustrated, some years ago, surveyed elite athletes of various disciplines, asking them if they could take a drug that would put them at the top of their sport, but would limit their lifespan to 50 years, would they do it? Eighty percent said “yes.”

Simply saying, “Heras is innocent” because you want to believe so is delusional. If you don’t think so, I have some WMD’s to sell you in a Middle Eastern country.

We keep hearing different stories about this poll, so we did a little snooping around the Web. We unearthed a variety of references to it, but only one that actually named a name: Bob Goldman, president of the National Academy of Sports Medicine in Chicago, in a Time.com post dated July 27, 1998. The paragraph reads as follows: “Every two years since 1982, Bob Goldman has conducted an informal questionnaire among Olympic-level U.S. athletes, asking: If you were offered an illegal substance that guaranteed you would win and not be caught, would you take it? In 1995, the answer from 195 of 198 athletes was yes. Asked if they would take a banned substance that would enable them to win every competition for five years but then kill them, more than half the athletes said yes. ‘With the money athletes can make now, the kids don’t really care about taking drugs,’ says Goldman.” Not quite 80 percent, but plenty discouraging nonetheless. — Editor