Confession, I used to be a cycling afficionado following the classics and the tours religiously up until the mess with first Festina and then Bjarne Riis obviously doped before confessing, me turning to Marco Pantani because he looked too tiny to be doped, just to have my newfound hero first caught doping and then dying from a bleeding cocaine overdose. My heart for cycling in shatters, watching Le Tour by habit only to realize that so many of those guys just won’t quit theirs.
Well, now the story goes that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has struck a deal with still active riders George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, David Zabriskie, Christian Vande Velde and team director Jonathan Vaughters, to start a 6-months doping ban after their participation in the Tour De France and Vuelta a Espana, in return for turning on their former teammate and 7-team Tour de France champion, Lance Armstrong. Read for instance road.cc and NBC Sports
Vaughters makes his and his team’s official statement in the video above.
I guess we’ll know in September.
