Ugh....Doping

This stuff just makes me sad:

"Chodroff admits to EPO purchase and use"


So it appears this guy took EPO as a cat 3! How depressing is that? Apparently there's a lot more bad news where that came from -- there are at least another 15-25 cyclists, pros, amateurs, and masters alike, lined up to get busted. 


John basically landed a pro career because he could time trial like an animal. Almost all of his results are from time trials or from stage races where the GC was determined by the TT. It's hard for me not to feel wronged in this situation: I beat that guy in the 2008 Valley of the Sun Stage Race TT, and later that year, he went on to win TT nationals and get a spot on OUCH Maxxis. I'm not saying that contract was mine; I'm just saying it probably shouldn't have been his. 


I'm mad, but I don't know who I'm mad at. Am I mad at Chodroff? Am I mad at Joe Papp (the former pro cyclist and convicted doper who sold him the drugs)? Am I mad at the racers who are secretly doping right now? Am I mad at the whole sport? At humanity in general? 


It hurts to realize that there is indeed a very effective shortcut to the top (or near the top), and that there are plenty of people willing to take that shortcut. Sure, a few of those people get caught, and on the whole, I feel the culture in the sport is improving, but that doesn't take away the indignity of losing to those guys -- people remember who won a race far better than who retroactively inherited a result. 


Maybe, and this possibility scares me the most, I'm mad at myself for not stooping to that low. I badly want to be a pro cyclist. I would love to race in the tours of Korea, Thailand and Qinghai Lakes (in China) like John Chodroff did this year. But I'm not willing to cheat to get there! I'm sure John regrets his actions right now, but years from now, after the storm of outrage he's probably weathering has passed, how will he feel? Will his decision to cheat sour all those amazing memories he gathered trotting the globe as a professional athlete? Will it sour them so bad he'd trade them all in for a clean conscience? 


I fucking hope so -- otherwise those of us who race clean look like fools, don't we?