How can you ever know your true capabilities as an athlete if you use drugs to perform? How can the voyage of self discovery, so dramatically real to a racing cyclist, ever be fulfilled if you use drugs to compete? The riders who succumb to the temptation of performance-enhancing, illegal drugs will never know.

I have always been proud that I never used any banned drugs, blood, stimulants or procedures of any kind to race or train in my 20 years as a racer. It used to be a shock when someone would be found guilty of doping or admitting to doping. Now it may be more rare for anybody from the highest level of any sport to admit to having used no illegal substances and procedures. I was not surprised when Frankie Andreu, Peter Winnen, Jesper Skibby, Filip Meirhaeghe, Jerome Chiotti, Rolf Aldag, Udo Bolts, Paul Kimmage, Johan Museeuw, Erik Zabel, Eddy Planckaert, Jesus Manzano, and a long list of others confessed to doping. I raced against all of these men and with each confession I felt a bit better about my ability to compete against them as a clean athlete. “Pone/Aqua” is the Italian expression for racing without drugs, mixing blood and water as if it is a whole different category of athlete. The problem for athletes that use drugs to compete is that they will never know their true capacity.

It was, however, the confession of another person that upset me more than all of the other athletes who have come forward. That was from the winner of the 1996 Tour de France, Mr. Bjarne Riis. Bjarne is now the Team Manager of Team CSC, one of the most successful bike teams in the world. In fact, the number one-ranked team. On May 25th he confessed publicly about his career as a doped rider. Typically, he added that while he believed EPO helped him, it was not the difference between making a champion out of someone without any natural talent. Too bad for Bjarne; he will never know.

The Tour de France organizers are now faced with a similar dilemma to what they are facing with Riis, because of Floyd Landis’ alleged positive test for exogenous testosterone. To whom do they award the final yellow jersey? In this case, the 1996 Tour, the second place rider was Jan Ullrich. That is not at all a savory prospect in light of the allegations brought to public attention by Operation Puerto. Third that year was none other than Richard Virenque who would be kicked out of the Tour a couple of years later as part of the Festina doping scandal that rocked the Tour to its core. Fourth that year was Laurent Disfaux, also a member of the Festina Team scandal… and so on down the list into the gutter. Does Oscar Pereiro deserve the yellow jersey, should Floyd be eventually found guilty of doping? Does it surprise me that Pereiro himself was positive three times during the ’06 Tour for steroids? It might have if we hadn’t been recently exposed to so many stories about bike racers using drugs.

Riis’ confession begs the question: Why is Riis free to run the world’s number one team while others who have confessed are banned from the sport? And why is Pereiro’s drug use allowed while Floyd’s alleged use is not? I promise that the double, triple and quadruple standards of justice in Europe will never be understood in America. Perhaps Mr. Riis can explain how his ambition undermined his morals and allowed him to reach for illegal drugs rather than rely solely on his legs and lungs.

Where there should be a name in the results for the 1996 Tour de France champion, a long list of names that includes some of sports greatest heroes, there will be an X. The list goes all the way back to 1903 and includes such luminaries as Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartoli, Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault, Greg LeMond, Miguel Indurian, and Lance Armstrong. Now, there will be a gaping hole, thanks to Bjarne Riis.

Could I have won the Tour if I doped like Riis? In the same way Riis will never know about his true abilities, I will also never know if I could have won the Tour. The difference between each of our ignorance is that mine becomes more joyous every day.