Having watched him for many many years and cycling in general. Cycling is probably no dirtier than any other sport on the tele. American sport sweeps most of its problems under the rug whereas cycling does actually punish cheaters. Although as people get caught, it's very easy to think a large number as cheating since we always only see the tip of the iceberg on this and have no idea ourselves how deep the problems go. As far as Lance. What's the guy supposed to do? While he won 7 Tours, he was the most tested athlete. Not just urine too...also blood and anything they could test they basically took. The only part that at all has strange connotations to cheating is that some of the people he was around and trained under are known dopers. But as far as I know, he never took infamous trips that other cyclists did to the tops of the Italian mountains to go dope + train with those doctors. The USADA and Floyd Landis have had it out for Lance for some time, particularly since Landis was incredibly sore for being caught as a cheat. That's really when all of this picked up and hasn't stopped since. Landis now is known for being essentially a lier and a crook and is now paying $500k back to people who donated money to him for his legal fees so he doesn't get sued himself. As far as Lance's performance in tours, he never did anything superhuman and he had the strongest team behind him basically every year. There's a team time trial event that his team dominated, netting him 2-3 minutes on the entire field most of those tours. If all you have to do as Lance is stay on someone's wheel, that saves you 30% of your energy while the guy trying to beat you on the mountain has to do that +30% AND somehow be able to ride away from you. There were even days Lance cracked and lost time, but he never cracked bad enough to think his form would be poor the next day. So as far as his performance, it does not suggest he cheated, either by recovering at an inhuman rate or being able to run away at an inhuman rate. As far as I'm concerned, the USADA is a joke agency. If they really had actual evidence and cared about integrity, they would have presented it by now instead of causing a media whirlwind about it.
