He was someone that you’d look upto and think ‘wow, it really is possible to comeback and do well in this world’. All bollocks.
Thing is, that still rings true. He came back from being riddled with Cancer and still did something mere mortals couldn’t do, juiced out of their heads or not.
Given everyone he beat was juiced up (or at least all his close competitors) I find it hard to beleive that anyone thought he was beating them clean. Isn’t this the entire reason people were suspisious with no evidence? Recovering from Cancer and winning the tour is one thing, doing it by beating people who were found cheating is a step to far for me.
Congratulations on being so cynical that you never thought that despite a complete lack of evidence to suggest he was juiced (that or you’ve managed to convince yourself that you had foresight at the time
indeed foresight is a wonderful thing, but I don’t think it takes a genius (for the aforementioned reasons) to work out well before he got caught or indeed retired that he was also cheating. I think that his results were all the evidence most folks needed. I can honestly say that without the benefit of hindsight.
That said, knowing he was also juiced didn’t bother me in the slightest, I kind of took it as a given when watching road cycling that they were all up to their eyeballs. Its not something I ever gave much thought to. You had to cheer for someone and it didn’t spoil my enjoyment in the slightest. For me his only ‘crime’ is being a total asshat, which I admit I didn’t know when he was winning all those tours.
As for Hora, wasn’t having a go at him…given his rabid hatred of the man nowadays I’m struggling to see how I was to know he use to be his number one fan.