thinking more on back in the days... the french had a nice program called sport net that was a big anti-doping education program... it was EVERYWHERE in sports...like serious business... and in the USA we have NOTHING... no member of the federation or USADA has ever come to my teams or sent me anything about doping or made any effort to have any presence as an organization educating riders on teh problems of drug use... sport net was like a typical teen anti-drug thing for sports and i think it was effective in starting early with athletes to form a bad opinion of doping...

in my new team we will make a strong effort to educate riders on the dangers of drug use and to make it clear to them that they will have to make a choice in their lives and careers... its like the teen drinking or weed smoking ads.. at some point you are going ot have people offer you beer when you are 15 or they are are going to say try this weed or smoke this meth or have some e or something and you have to know what you are going to say ahead of time... ostensibly you say no... yeah... but this sport net thing was to say to people- you will have to make a choice at some point, and chose against it... i will say that to my riders... at some point, the better you get and the longer you stay in, you will come to a place where you can choose to take drugs or to not take drugs... and it is very true... there does come a point where you have this presented to you as an option.. even if you dont seek it out...

it a responsibility of everyone who works with young athletes to address the doping issue... its irresponsible to fill peoples heads with all this of whats possible in the sport and how they can be these great riders if they train hard and all that crap and then you dont even say a word to them about doping... maybe people just dont understand that doping is a reality and that the opportunities that a rider has to go that route are many and easy to come by... these people maybe dont know a damed thing about sports and maybe they should just be a boy scout troop leader... in putting together this young team i am more and more aware of other programs that are attempting what i am doing... and i dont know that they are run in a professional manner and i dont either think that they have anybody who really knows what the hell is going on in a bike race to tell you the truth.. but i hope that they at least are able to talk frankly about doping in their team... because if they dont then they should just forget about the whole thing... they arent the right people to be invovled...