Its interesting as I have a similar philosophy to the OC but the exact opposite takeaway. To declare my bias: I hate cyclists on the road AT ALL. Cars are fundamental and essential transportation in America and cyclists who want all the privileges of a pedestrian and follow none of the rules while operating at a fraction of the speed is a frustrating impediment to traffic.

Rant aside - The sport of cycling is quite cool. I feel bad for those athletes because they have to dope. It's simple game theory, if enough of a critical mass of people are doing it, you have to as well to be competitive. It really shouldn't have been as big of a scandal as it was. At least, making Lance Armstrong the face of the scandal wasn't really fair since, IIRC, almost all the front runners did that. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think the way they do it now is reasonable. They test and ban so that people likely severely limit cheating. If they simply made it allowed, or had very limited protocols, it would be a total arms race similar to the Armstrong era where riders would have to run tons of gear and chemicals to even attempt to compete and it would have tons of knock on health effects.