Dear Editor:
The Lance Armstrong interview and disclosure has shown that doping was the prevalent culture of the sport. Not for every participant; just the front runners. Armstrong didn't invent it, he just used it to beat the others. He is high profile because he won races.
Doping is in every sport. Look at soccer and football. Some drugs now banned were not even identified years ago. EPO was not identified until 2005. Armstrong's urine and blood tests were frozen in 1999 and then tested six years later. He was clean in 1999 because nobody knew about it. The organization suspected he was using something and froze his test results so he could be ambushed years later.
Scientists are still inventing these designer drugs. Look at the Olympics. A 15-year-old Chinese girl posted a swimming time faster than the male world record. We never heard from her again.
The point is that there are new drugs being invented every year. Drugging in all competitive sports is big business. Every country or team looks for an advantage. It's the members not the organization that does the research and uses them.
Armstrong won a lot of races against other drug-enhanced competitors. He bared his soul and not all of the others have come forward. There were hundreds of people involved in the doping of all the athletes all those years. Now, he is the person to be publicly stoned. I'd love a scanner that could identify every state of the competing athletes' bodies. He's taking the bullet for the entire culture.
Armstrong did one thing better than all the other enhanced performers. He won!
Leo Vanderbyl North Vancouver
