More thoughts on Boonen
BikeRadar’s North America Editor Gary Boulanger has weighed in on Boonen’s transgressions with this:
Placing any sports figure on a platform is not healthy. Give them suitcases full of cash, and many times all hell breaks loose. It’s one thing for a professional American football, soccer, basketball or baseball player to choose to let fame go to their heads (or through their nose or veins) when they come from poverty or straight out of high school, but when a rider with Boonen’s background takes a turn like this, and has a team surrounding him that doesn’t acknowledge a bigger problem, how can we - media, fans and sponsors - feel safe in the knowledge that what we’re witnessing is pure athletic achievement and not synthetic, orchestrated behind the scenes because there’s so much money at stake?
The statement about athletes coming “from poverty or straight out of high school” is outrageous. Basically, Gary is saying that we shouldn’t even bother to ask for what he considers acceptable behavior from poor people because they don’t know any better. Same goes for athletes coming out of high school, like those miscreants LeBron James and Kevin Garnett. Then there’s the issue of the color of most America pro athletes’ skin. I can imagine the shitstorm that would erupt if a sportswriter from a major newspaper had written that sentence.
On top of that, it’s hard to believe that anyone who follows cycling, let alone a journalist, was ever “safe in the knowledge that what we’re witnessing is pure athletic achievement and not synthetic.”