Stuart O’ Grady talks about the ‘good, bad and ugly’ of Cycling World
Stuart O Grady is one of the most experienced cyclists and he has been around the sport for long enough to witness several duping scandals that have tried to overshadow the game.
However, the Australian admits that the he found himself in a real “shock” after hearing about the USADA’s detailed report on Lance Armstrong and his Team US Postal associate’s systematic doping.
"I'm not stupid - there's always been rumours and talk. Like anything in sport, you have your questions and doubts," he told Adelaide Now.
"I've been around through the good, bad and ugly. From 1998 in the Tour when the Festina affair blew up and what's happened recently”.
“I'm in as much shock as anybody. But you want to believe that what you're seeing is real”.
"I believed that he (Armstrong) won those seven Tours clean. I wanted to believe that like everyone else”.
Grady has participated in as many as 14 Tour de France event since his debut in 1998, right when Festina scandal.
The 39-year-old marked his professional debut with Team GAN in 1995 and stayed with the team by the end of 2003.
He represented Team Cofidis through 2004-05, Team CSC (2006-10) and joined Team Leopard Trek in 2011.
Grady was approached by Shayne Bannan as he was interested to have him on Team Orica-GreenEdge squad for its World Tour debut season in 2012.
He noted that the USADA report against Lance Armstrong consists of 26 individuals including 11 of his former team mates and seems quite convincing.
"There's so much damning evidence against him that it's obviously looking like this happened and I'm as shocked as anybody,” he cited.
Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie all gave the written testimonies against Armstrong.
Stuart believes that the sport of cycling is much stronger and such incidents cannot really make an impact to its fans all across the world.
He is optimistic that the UCI will take the necessary measures and will learn a lesson or two from the incident to ensure the sport is clean from such incidents in the seasons to come.
Tags: