"We have to go back from two years to four years. The move down to two did a lot of damage to my sport."

I just read this little tidbit from Sir Sebastian Coe and it got me thinking.

Track and field and cycling, two of my favorite sports, are also the sports where doping of some kind or another has been rampant since about the time they started.  At least now the cyclists aren't taking cocaine, barbituates and rat poison to help them climb the mountains (and sometimes die).  But you can bet they are still doing everything they can to win.  And sometimes that will include taking performance enhancing drugs.

The nature of the two sports with records that can easily be compared across eras, much more easily than in sports like baseball or football that have changed so much and have vastly different equipment, etc. (though baseball fans will often claim that they have the same sort of feelings about records, hard to believe since they too are so frequently the result of some of the most obvious abuse of PEDs) creates fans of two kinds.

The "European" type who understand the fact that doping has always been and will always be a part of it and will look the other way as long as it isn't rubbed in their faces and the "American" type who want to believe in some kind of ideal sportsman thing where they don't take drugs and they don't cheat and records are sacred.  Except in the midst of the excitement when the big sluggers are chasing the records and no one cares that their heads are several inches wider than they were and they are defying both age and physics.

That paragraph was originally much shorter but reading about Bonds and others and the physics of their changing bat speed while maintaining a highly efficient swing corresponding to drug use is fascinating stuff.

But when the largest cycling event in the country is sponsored by Amgen, one of the biggest pushers of artifical EPO, you really shouldn't get too carried away about purity.  But we still do.  There's rampant speculation about the most recent Tour de France winner crowned yesterday after the first evening finish on the Champs Elysee.  Chris Froome claims that he is 100% clean and lots of us hope he isn't doing anything too crazy that will come out 10 years from now.

And therein lies the rub, so to speak.  As Seb Coe noted, lots of damage has been done to "his" or "our" sport because of doping and any leniency about it only increases that damage.

I actually wasn't even interested in his rant about 4 year bans over 2 year ones, I was struck by his ownership of the sport.  Because when we as fans (and even Seb Coe is now a fan, just like every other former athlete) own a sport, we own the spectacle of it, the desire to cheer for our favorite teams or players, the desire to endlessly argue about who will do what in which season and make all kinds of stupid predictions that will almost always be wrong.  And along with that ownership comes a responsibility, at least in my mind.

If we want super-human performance, we'd better be willing to take a "European" attitude about it and perhaps even be willing to stop looking the other way when "our" former players are suffering from the effects of "our" sport.

I don't mean to suggest that it isn't actually our sport, it is our watching on TV and paying for merchandise and tickets and giving sponsors reason to be involved that supports these sports and gives these athletes very big stages to perform on.  And as (at least part) owners of the sport I think we ought to be willing to accept the reality of it and acknowledge that the athletes will do anything and everything they can to win or to make it onto the biggest stage.  This includes doping, cheating, and sometimes sending someone to go hit the other girl's knee with a metal baton.

I think I've just grown weary of the outrage on both sides.  The folks that defended Lance Armstrong right up until his admission and the ones that still do.  They are just as annoying as the ones who rage about how we must throw out all the cheaters and have zero tolerance and everything else.

You don't want guys in the NFL to get busted?  Then be perfectly happy with their very lax and easy to beat testing regime.

You don't want baseball players to get outed as steroid users but you still want to see lots of homeruns and get your favorite players back out on the field quickly from the injuries that are bound to come with playing 162 games a season?  Same as the NFL, just be glad no one is pushing for the same level of scrutiny that comes with being an Olympic athlete or a pro cyclist.

And for cycling fans, learn to overlook the fact that Lance was doping and maybe form your opinion based on how he treated his teammates, took advantage of his fans and his image as a cancer survivor, etc.  If you are ok with that, then be happy that he dominated those 7 Tours de France and still has the yellow jerseys hanging in his house.

If you aren't, then perhaps hope that the lawsuits claw back some of that money he picked up using all that fame and power.

And maybe just enjoy watching arguably the most entertaining Tour de France in recent history where guys cracked and the peleton as a whole looked far less superhuman than it did 5 years ago.  I don't believe that guys aren't micro-dosing or doing other things that can't get caught yet.  If you had to drop back to the team car 150 kilometers into a 250 kilometer stage and bring 12 water bottles back through the group, and your livelihood depended on being able to do that, maybe it is ok to put a little testosterone gel someplace on your body to try and recover to be able to do the same thing the next day.

If the sport were exclusively the property of the athletes, they might push for a totally clean sport, make everyone normal, they'd probably get hurt less, hit softer, ride slower, and be out for injuries longer, but at least they wouldn't have to have three alarm clocks set to wake them up in the middle of the night because their massive and super strong hearts can't pump their sludgy blood (thanks to the EPO or whatever else) around and they'd die otherwise.

At some point we have to come to grips with the fact that it is us and our money as fans that may very well be the driving force behind the doping the steroid abuse, etc.  And save your outrage for yourself.  If it really bothers you so much, stop watching, stop talking about it, stop reading about it online and you've done the most you can to change anything.

Don't conflate athletes trying to win with child abusers or others who are hurting people.  Can you make the argument that Lance stole from people and hurt them?  Sure you can, but you didn't turn off the TV during his interview on Oprah did you?

Of course you are just one person and the sponsors and the managers and the athletes don't care if one person stops watching.  But that is the only decision you can be responsible for and make, you don't make the decision to dope or not to.  You don't make the decision to change the testing regime or not to.  Your blanket acceptance by watching, cheering, paying (lets face it mostly paying) for the privilege to do those things is a blanket acceptance in real terms.