Written by: Collin Batchelor
Contributing Writer

People say the worlds greatest invention is the wheel, personally I think they’re wrong, the worlds greatest invention is the second wheel.

Another invention to give thanks for is dopers. What a great stress buster your average doper has become.

Had a tough day at work? Almost got killed on your ride home? Got a flat and realised the spare is on the kitchen table? Need to let off steam? Need to vent that pent up anger? Have a desire to curse, shout and scream?

Don’t take your anger out on your family, or your dog, don’t shout at total strangers, take your wrath out on dopers. Surely that’s why they were put on this earth for.

As a relaxation therapy abusing dopers is second to none. Forget massage and meditation; ignore calming music and a long bath. No if you really want to knock stress out load some pictures of dopers onto your PC and each night spend 5 minuets hurling abuse at them.

It works great, but be careful, limit yourself to 5 minutes per day, and stick to dopers. I have a friend who pasted a photo of his bosses head onto Alexander Vinokourov’s body and became so angry that he picked up his PC and threw it out of the window, not a good idea that one.

The other thing I love dopers for is they make me laugh, I mean really, really laugh. I’ve given up going to comedy shows. At the weekend we get onto You Tube and sit back for a stream of bizarre excuses and strange fantasy that seem to make up the life of your average doper. ‘I was in Mexico’, ‘No the EPO you found in my apartment can’t have been mine, you see I was racing at the time.’, ‘I’m innocent, I’m innocent, I’m innocent, I’m so sorry, I was under pressure’ and ‘I know you took that blood out of my arm, but it’s not my blood’, if you wrote this and submitted it to the TV networks they wouldn’t believe you.

But like all aspects of out great sport doping excuses evolve, wheels have progressed from steel to aluminium to carbon. Like wise dopers excuses have progressed from total denial, through the ‘please feel sorry for me’ to the surreal. And at each stage they get funnier and funnier, ‘It was for my dog’, ‘It was my twin’, ‘I know it shows I’m pregnant, but my wife can’t have kids’, it won’t be long until they are claiming that they have been transported into spaceships and ‘It was Aliens that made me do it.’

Whilst the UCI fiddle and the sport burns I have taken it upon myself to propose new sanctions guaranteed to cut the offending rate. Instead of banning them for two years the UCI should compel all failed dopers to ride for a single team, but their team uniform should consist of a Borat style pink thong and a sombrero (a nod to the master of doping lies and confusion) and they should be forced to wear that, what ever the weather until they retire. Flanders in the spring? Oh yes I’d pay good money to see Vinokourov and company bouncing over the cobbles, icicles hanging from their, er, their bars!

Cigarettes in various parts of the world have dire warnings about death on the packets, in some places they have pictures of diseased lungs, surely by the same argument EPO should carry a picture of Michael Rasmussen, you know the one where he’s got his shirt off and looks like he hasn’t eaten in a year, now that would put the kids off dope.

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