Jan 24--The Future Is Slipstream

I finished David Walsh's book From Lance To Landis a while ago, but just never really found time to comment on it. Then this week I listened to Jonathan Vaughters interviewed on Competitor Radio in December, and it brought the whole issue of doping in cycling back into my mind.

Anyway, the Vaughters interview is great because he truly has his head on right. To Vaughters, there is no one person or entity to blame for the doping crisis in cycling. It almost doesn't matter who's to blame, in fact. His view is, let's just try to fix the problem, as opposed to string somebody up for causing it.

As Vaughters says, doping is ingrained in the culture of the cycling. And it is that culture that he's trying to change through Slipstream. As he is quick to point out, all of the testing that Slipstream will do is the last piece of their program. First and foremost is that the team management is saying, "No matter what, we want you clean." In the past, directors would at best turn a blind eye to their riders' actions—the old don't ask, don't tell routine. (Of course, at worst, we had systematic team wide doping programs actually aided by the directors.)

Anyway, we'll see how Slipstream does this year in the races. They have to do well for all the talk to be worth anything. They can't be the funny little team whose riders are clean, but doesn't win. Vaughters is well aware of this too. Obviously, he thinks the team can and will win. I hope he's right.

As for From Lance To Landis, it essentially recaps much of what we've heard before about Armstrong (there's almost nothing about Landis in the book, despite the title--and a tiny bit about Tyler Hamilton, for good measure).