Moving on
While the professional cycling circuits in Europe have been rife with doping, the domestic road racing scene has been relatively clean. There are more domestic pro teams than ever, and most have instilled zero-tolerance policies as deterrents to cheating.

There has never been a better time to be a cyclist in the United States, even though the scandalous headlines have made a lot of large American companies gun-shy about sponsorship.

"It think it's unfortunate because it's really killing the image of cycling," said Durango's Chris Wherry, a top-level domestic pro with the

Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team who has turned down offers to ride for European teams because of the prevalence of doping. "It's frustrating because a lot of companies have backed away from the sport."

USA Cycling, the Colorado Springs-based governing body of bike racing, has experienced record growth since 2001. It eclipsed 60,000 licensed riders for the first time last year and expects to keep growing this year.

The biggest growth has come in the 18-and-younger junior category, where membership has ballooned from 900 in 2003 to more than 4,000 this year. Domestic events, clubs and coaches are also growing in number.

"It's messy, and I think everyone will agree that when the opportunities are there and the stakes are high, people tend to cheat. And if you're looking for cheaters, you're going to catch some," said USA Cycling chief executive officer Steve Johnson. "But you can't indict an entire sport because some people cheat. You just have to make a commitment to clean it up. I think what we're seeing is the -real cost of doing that, fulfilling that commitment and making the sport clean."

Not everyone thinks cycling's sanitizing efforts have gone far enough. Durango cycling guru Rick Crawford, a renowned coach and mentor to American riders like Armstrong, Wherry, Levi Leipheimer and Durango's Tom Danielson, thinks a complete restructuring of the sport needs to take place - even if it means not holding major events like the Tour de France or Giro d'Italia.

As a developmental coach in Europe for several years, he witnessed the pressure on riders to perform. But, he said, the problem is not just one of riders doping, it's a systematic crisis that coincides with big sponsorship contracts derived from increased global exposure.

"I would love to believe what is happening in cycling now is a purging and is going to change things greatly," said Crawford, who coaches the Fort Lewis College cycling teams and several domestic pro riders. "But what is depressing is that the problem is at so many levels, not just with the riders doping. It's with the organizations and politics, the UCI, the Olympic organizations. They're made up of people, and people tend to screw up, especially when so much money is at stake."

The same might be said about baseball, which has had record attendance and revenues since the home run surge of the late 1990s.

"If you have a city and you have no policemen, then there's no crime, is there?" Vaughters said. "But if you put policemen in place, then you're going to catch criminals. And when you catch criminals, that's going to make headlines in the media and it's going to make it look like the city has lots of crime. So what's the better solution?

"In the news, what's going on in cycling looks terrible. But to a young rider coming into it right now, it's a really positive thing right now, and that's more important for the sport."

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