Why is the world hyperventilating over the fact that an athlete used performance enhancing drugs at a time when everyone in his sport was doing the same? For de Volkskrant of the Netherlands, columnist Bert Wagendorp writes that every so often, the sports world needs someone to embody the evil that almost everyone in it is tainted by – and right now, that’s Lance Armstrong.
For de Volkskrant, Bert Wagendorp writes in part:
Lance Armstrong was an incredibly talented top athlete, both physically and psychologically. You can reproach him for having a pathological need to win, but that character trait is a common one in the world of sport.
Then in 1992 he made his debut in the professional cycling world just as the use of EPO began in earnest – and not just in that sport by the way. EPO drastically increases the capacity of blood to take up oxygen – and it was undetectable. The first was an enormous advantage in any endurance sport; the second was a welcome bonus.
The nineties of the last century and the first half of the first decade of this one were the EPO-years of sport. EPO came in handy for cycling, athletics, skating, swimming, skiing and football.
Anyone in a bicycle seat during those years with the aim of winning big races had little choice. Talent and training zeal weren’t enough, hematocrit levels had to be at least 50 percent and preferably somewhat higher. Knowing that, Armstrong and many along with him drew their own conclusions.
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