i'm unconvinced. EPO was undetectable, but not anymore. new undetectable substance would run the risk of being detectable in a few years. who would ignore whistleblowers today? and the USADA did bring the hammer down on LA at some point.
sure, they pay off is high, but the risk - at least in cycling - is even higher, exactly because they've been caught once and now all eyes are on them. if pog gets popped, nobody will trust cycling to be clean ever again; it's hard enough today, as this thread proves.
We can agree to disagree. People said cycling would be clean after the '98 Festina affair because all eyes were on them. All that happened was that teams (that could afford it) switched from EPO to blood doping. The next Tour after everyone said the Festina bust had cleaned up cycling was Lance Armstrong's first win (1999).
Looking at how Armstrong and Contador are revived, there is not much downside getting caught years after doping.
EPO was always detectable. The trouble was detecting synthetic EPO. In fact, the maker of synthetic EPO (Amgen) was the title sponsor of the Tour of California!
After they developed that test stage speeds dropped dramatically. Now speeds are back up to where they were right before the EPO test was developed. You really think that’s natural?
Cycling has a doping scandal once every decade or two. Why would another one kill the sport this time when it never did before?
yeah, i think i'm convinced.