when i asked Betsy Andreu to contribute to the crankpunk website, she being something of a hero of mine and all, i never thought she’d actually say yes being as she is so busy with her own thing and is busy still, unfortunately, taking time out of her life to educate people about the dangers of doping, the dangers of letting Lance back in, and of forgetting the past – which ain’t really so past at all…

but she did, and her first piece from yesterday made it on to the front page of the British broadsheet, the Daily Telegraph, into which their writer inserted a nice little hyperlink to http://www.crankpunk.com.

i think that is what you might call hitting it right out of the park, though even that seems like a terrible understatement.

but this is what we are trying to do here, asides from writing about our love for this wonderful sport. circumstances demand that we keep pushing, keep plugging away and to make sure we do our very best to take advantage of this point we’ve come to in professional cycling, where the issue of doping is more out in the open than ever before.

now is not the time to say ‘ok we’re done, let’s move on.’ that would be a travesty, because we are not done, they are not done.

they are still very much alive and kicking.

it’s up to us to decide whether the wounded beast that is doping gets to continue to live in the shadows and regain its vitality, or to finally be chained in the light, where we can keep an eye on it and truly monitor its pulse.

then, perhaps, just maybe, the great writers here on crankpunk could then get back to writing about the sport they love and not the drugs and the men that are killing it.

over and out,

crankpunk