With the Tour de France underway and thoughts of the yellow jersey reaching Paris, I was surprised by a discovery as I was cleaning things out subsequent to driving home from Memphis with stacks of memorabilia from my mother’s estate. I wrote the following piece after Bjarne Riis revealed that he had doped (no great surprise) on his way to winning the 1996 Tour de France. I quickly concluded that this was an opportunity for the Union Cycliste Internationale could turn the tide on doping by asking riders to come forward and in exchange for the truth they could be offered amnesty. With Riis, who was highly respected, leading the way, this was a moment not to be missed.
I wrote the following piece and submitted it to the Los Angeles Times, lobbing it over the transom, so to speak, calculating that they were likely to reject the idea as farcical. Instead, I got a call from an extraordinary editor who helped me sharpen the piece and it ran Wednesday, May 30, 2007.
While the UCI did institute a truth and reconciliation commission as a result of having this piece forwarded to them by several people influential in the cycling world here in the U.S., history shows they botched the job as only the self-interested and power-hungry can do. Ah well. I’m still immensely proud of this piece writing and as a piece of moral thought, should I ever meet my maker, I think this can serve as my bona fides.
