Will USADA's Pursuit of Armstrong result in cleaner cycling?

An interesting analysis of the impact USADA's pursuit of Armstrong will have upon doping in competitive cycling is here.

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on August 28, 2012 at 11:55am

Good question.

I wonder what the impact will be on competitive cycling on a whole -not just doping.

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Permalink Reply by S on August 28, 2012 at 2:13pm

It's hard to say that this will have much effect. Between the cyclists that died because of doping and the scandals where entire teams were revealed to have organized doping programs, not much has changed except for people aren't doping as egregiously. If cyclists are willing to dope to the point where they need to sleep with heart rate alarms so that they can get up and spin a bit on an indoor trainer to get their heart rates up and avoid blood clots when their heart rate drops too low, it's clear that health concerns aren't really much of a factor. Having sponsors drop teams doesn't have much of an effect because new sponsors are jumping in and bringing as much or more money (e.g. Sky). So no, I doubt much change is going to happen in the near term.