My name is Elin - A pro cycling lover's reflections

Georgia Gould (Luna Chix) won the NMBS Series at the women's short track in May 2007.

I started reading about this cycling year, which has soon passed. It has really been a year full of ups and downs. Doping problems, death cases, liars, injuries, broken collar bones but also full of winners, anti-doping talk, people who fights for a cleaner sport and some better headlines next year and a lot more. But when people will remember this year they will probably think of all the doping cases. Of course they will, because we can all see how much the cycling sport fights against doping. There is a reason why dopers are caught - the doping tests work.

People will also remember Michael Rasmussen's lies about his whereabouts and his admittance that he had lied to us all. The same with Ivan Basso, Jörg Jaksche, Bjarne Riis, Michele Scarponi, Team Telekom 1996 and all the others. People who during long time has claimed they have had nothing to do with doping, but then later confessed doping use. Praise to all cyclists and athletes who have admit doping use though. It doesn't matter that we have been waiting for over ten years, but I think we are all happy to know what has happened. At least I am very happy to know that Bjarne Riis was doped during his career 'cause now we can finally understand why he was so unbeatable during the Tour de France 1996. And we shall be glad that we know now who Birillo was, and that we don't have blame Ivan Basso for being a doper anymore, as we now know that he (maybe even more than that) was on the list of Fuentes' clients and that he was going to dope during the Tour de France 2006. I am very happy that he never had the chance to race.

Last year's winner of the Tour de France, Floyd Landis, has also been suspended this year. And many other riders. The biggest story about Floyd Landis' hearings must be when his business manager Will Geoghegan tried to frighten former Tour winner Greg Lemond from testifying by pretending to be the man who abused Lemond as a child over the phone. How sick can a man be?

But all those doping cases also make me sure that some of the other riders are fully clean and don't want to be part of the former doping industry inside the cycling sport. It makes me very happy to know that cyclists, UCI and different teams are fighting against the worst thing that exist in sport - cheating.