The Dogs Are Loose: 2

A little more than a year ago we wrote about allegations of blood doping against Lance Armstrong. Just about two weeks ago two more riders on his team -- one currently still employed by Discovery and wishing to remain anonymous, the other the retired Frankie Andreu -- claimed that they used EPO in 1999 prior to Armstrong's first Tour de France victory. Both are and were domestiques who felt they needed this to do their job which is to help the boss win the race. Armstrong denies the allegations -- as he always does -- but now we can add two more of his former teammates to a very besmirched list that includes this year's disgraced TdF winner, Floyd Landis and Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton. We mentioned in '05 that we want to believe Armstrong, but it gets harder with each revelation and it gets harder to take cycling seriously as a sport given that it appears that many of the pros dope. It's quite disappointing really -- but unsurprising.