I take your point BigDummy, if one were not on drugs it would most definitely be galling to be beaten by someone on drugs. But are there any top cyclists who are not on drugs? Come to that are there any top sportspeople who are not on drugs?

Please don't think I'm promoting or excusing drugs, just discussing.

Come to that are there any top sportspeople who are not on drugs?

I think that these days, yes there are even though there are still plenty of cheats – there have certainly been bad times where the answers may have been predominantly 'no' though.

This sort of thing needs to be universal. But the fact that Wiggins did it gives quite a bit of confidence in his performance in last year's TdF. If we accept Wiggins to have been clean, there were enough people in the same league as him for us to imagine that it might have been a reasonably clean race…

Well in cycling, while there's still doping going on, all the controls, blood profiling and so on have made it much harder to do without getting caught and in many ways, more importantly made it much less effective – eg having to microdose EPO, etc rather than just full on EPO use – which will undoubtedly have helped level the field.

Nothing to do with naivety at all – my job is actually very closely connected with UK Anti-Doping, I think out of everyone on here I'm probably better placed than most to at least have an idea of what's going on…

Fair enough, apologies! whats your take on the tour series in the UK? I get the impression that theres not much doping going on at that standard, but to get to the next level would you say riders are under the impression they 'need' to dope to make the step up to UCI pro tour standard? I've always thought that thats the case, and I've spoken to one UK pro tour rider (friend of a friend) and he pretty much said that thats the case. would you agree?