I hope, I hope he didn't dope

[Cruiserman]

I guess you can erase Matt White from the list now, oh well the clean hard done by Aussie tag is tarnishing by the announcement. May as well leave LA with his 7 wins and retitle the era the dirty era - which is more than likely still in place by the majority of the field.

[Xplora]

Article by Jens, for those that are still hoping...

http://bicycling.com/blogs/hardlyseriou ... ent-times/

[greyhoundtom]

Article by Jens, for those that are still hoping...

http://bicycling.com/blogs/hardlyseriou ... ent-times/

That is a really good read...........and for what it is worth I believe the guy.

[liamb]

That Blog by Jens was perfect. i know there will probably never be any proof either way but my gut feeling is he is clean and true to his word. Just as he states in hi Blog his wins and great performances were generally when the conditions and thesituation suited and you can always see the pain and effort on his face. Unlike a total shut down of a TDF with most of the team being there in the last 20km of each day to protect the leader to the line. I feel the same about Cadel despite the fact that he has had contact with some shady people. Once again I have a Gut feeling that Cadel is a clean rider and being on a team with George being on a team that was formed with and from shady teams and having visited a doctor who now is proven to be bad does not make him a doper. Once again Cadel's great ride in the TDF was when conditions suited or he had to dig deep. He never blew every other team out of the water day after day, he rode to a point near on on his limit to make it to the TT where he new he could bury himself. I dont like Team Sky and I dont like Weirdo Wiggo but I dont like the fact that their TDF is compared to US Postal. I dont want to hear of teams doping but it is also a terrible thing to see a team get compared to US Postal just because for 1 year they did the same as a cheating Team who did it for years.

Bill

[JustJames]

I'm with bikesnobnyc on this:

So, to summarize, over the years Jens Voigt:

--Came up in the East German sports program alongside men who ate Volgas and women with beards;
--Turned pro the year before the Festina affair;
--Rode for Bjarne Riis;
--Rode for Johan Bruyneel.

Yet during that time he "never saw anything firsthand," which means he's somehow missed out on the biggest moments in modern sports doping history despite being right in the middle of pretty much all of them. In other words, he's basically the anti-Forrest Gump.

I'm prepared to accept that Jens rode clean. Hell, I really want to believe that he rode clean.

But for the rest of it, we're right back to omerta.

[liamb]

Jens is a bit like Stuart O'Grady. I couldn't believe when O'Grady was shocked at the level of doping over the past 15 years when he rode with and against all of the contenders. Maybe some of the blokes were never offered or were never exposed to it for fear of speaking out about it. I am sure there were some like Jens who were offered it or told to did it but they refused, but wouldn't or couldn't speak out. The more that comes out the more I wonder why the clean riders didnt speak up at the time.(I know alot would have been threatened or they didnt talk for fear of loosing a great job)

Bill

[Xplora]

It IS possible to be unaware of these things. Allegedly there is a big teen drinking problem, a big teen smoking problem, a big teen drugs problem, a big teen sedentary problem... I was never exposed to those things despite being a teen from 13-19. Some people just don't get involved... however I do agree that it seems really weird that he wouldn't see anything at all over that time.

[AUbicycles]

"Wer bei CSC nicht mitbekommen hat, dass andere Fahrer - inklusive mir - gedopt haben, dem kann ich nicht glauben." Hamilton sagte zudem, er glaube definitiv, dass Voigt auch selbst gedopt habe."

Hamilton: I don't believe anyone from CSC who didn't realise that other riders, myself included, didn't dope. (Hamilton says) that Voigt definitely doped.

Tyler Hamilton is not actually known for being 100% truthful, which doesn't help.

Voigt nahm die Aussagen gelassen auf. Er gestand, zunächst in Rage gewesen zu sein, danach sei aber nur noch "ein mildes Lächeln geblieben. Die versuchen, das zu bagatellisieren. Das ist die normale Schutzreaktion. Es ist aber gewiss nicht so, wie sie es darstellen, dass jeder mit jedem über Doping spricht", sagte Voigt.

Voigt was relaxed about the accusations. He admitted that he went into a rage and after that all that was left was a smile. Voigt: 'they are trying to trivialise it. It is a normal defensive reaction. It is absolutely not as they have pictured it that everyone spoke to everyone about doping"

--

Here is a recent article (English) by Jens Voigt titled Turbulent Times which also references the recent Brad McGee letter.

Now, I know that I have been accused of being naïve, and some people want to say, “Jens, how could you not know?” It’s true that I sometimes suspected some riders of doping. However—and this is important—I never saw anything firsthand. So I couldn’t call anybody out, and I wasn’t about to focus my energy on something that was not clear. Like I said, it only poisons the soul.

[find_bruce]

Thanks for postng both the translations and the sublime understatement Chris.