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

This terrible story about Floyd Landis makes me sick, I always tries to trust everyone, and I normally I don’t accuse people. Except for what I told you about Nicolas Jalabert (Phonak Hearing Systems) yesterday. But testosterone, are you crazy? I read the paper today (Sörmlands Nyheter) which normally doesn’t write a word about cycling, and today it was a notice and a column. They blamed all cyclists for being dopers and I think it is shit, because cycling is so much more than doping.

The columnist, Tomas Larsson, said that “even a faithful cycling enthusiast like him started to get tired by all the doping”. I will become a sport journalist in a couple of years, and I can already say that I will never write things like that. Because first of, I love the sport and I will never get tired of it. Second, they found dope in his urine / blood so he might be suspended. Think about it, a lot of people can do their sports without anyone finds out that they’re dopers.

I know some (many?) cyclists are dopers, and I get sick of it, but I’ll try to be happy that some of them get caught, and can’t continue to dope themselves. Hopefully, other cyclists will be a bit frightened, and stop to do drugs, or maybe understand that it’s not worth being a cheater. The ones who checked out the World Championships in Hamilton, Canada, in 2003, and saw when David Millar won the Time Trials, was he happy? Not at all. Couldn’t everybody understands that he was sad? He had won the World Championships but he wasn't happy, because he had doped himself. He couldn’t smile, and I understood that something was wrong (again!), and as we now know; he was doped!

But what’s hurts the most? Probably that everybody speaks about the dope problems in cycling, but I’m sure it is a whole lot of doping in ice hockey too, and they don’t do a lot of tests, so the players can be doped during all their careers and nobody will ever notice, does that feel better? Is that the kind of sport’s world you want to live inside, a life where everybody can dope themselves to death without it being notice? Would all the fans be happier by then? I don’t think so!

Of course you want them all clean, but it will always be cheaters and it’s sure a pity. I just hope everybody could become clean, or at least cleaner, but you never know. Hopefully there will be less doping cases next year. 

Landis said on the press conference that he had naturally high testosterone level. Okay? I remember that Max Sciandri had a naturally high testosterone level, and UCI knew it. In John Deering’s book “Team on the Run”, Max Sciandri had ones being tested positive but because people knew about his problems, he had a certificate who said it was naturally, they could prove he wasn't doped. So maybe Floyd Landis can show us one of those certificates so nobody have to wonder? 

Oscar Pereiro Sio is not happy about Landis’ positive drug test, as Pereiro never had the change to celebrate the victory in Paris. He rather stays second and waits for celebrating his real victory next year. I understand what he means, it must have felt the same for Denis Menchov when Roberto Heras had tested positive.