Applying a synthetic testosterone patch after each stage of a grand tour used to be SOP, according to a coach who knew a coach who knew a coach. It helps recovery, and recovery is what differentiates a Grand Tour winner from the winner of a shorter stage race. Folks always suspected that Floyd just forgot to take off his patch after his debacle on stage 16 of the 2006 Tour, so I never doubted that he'd cheated with testosterone.
However, it seems that most everyone else cheated, too, and Floyd just can't seem to handle the fact that only he--and Tyler, Millar, Vino, Ricardo, Rasmussen, Basso, Valverde, Zabel, Riis, Ulrich, Virenque, Pantani, Andreu, Museeuw--got caught. Seriously, almost every major name from the late 90's era has been busted, implicated, or confessed, yet NOTHING was going on at Postal, the team that dominated the sport when all this sh*t was going on? Please.
Yet Floyd's allegations of systematic blood transfusions and EPO use at Postal smack of sour grapes. His comeback attempt with Ouch / Maxis last year was a debacle, so maybe he thinks that his only option is to bring down the American gods of cycling.
I heard somewhere that Indurain only raced one TT in a Grand Tour without amphetamines. He still won, but it hurt so badly that he swore he'd never do it again. LeMond was right: it doesn't get any easier as you go faster. Even if all the riders are doped to the gills, riding 120 miles over 12,000 feet still hurts like a motherf*cker, especially when you have to do it again the very next day. If the great ones can win without dope, great. If they were all on dope, okay--as long as the sport keeps trying to catch them. But if the richest of the teams can buy wins because they can afford better doctors, then the sport is ruined.
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