By now, you've read the Cyclingnews article, Stevo's comments and maybe some other things about Jonathon Chodroff's purchase of EPO from Papp's online store.
A few things about Chodroff:
He raced the Tour of Millersburg in 2007 as a Cat 2 and won the TT, but not by a huge amount.
His racing age is 25.
He went to Yale, where he was a rower.
His grandfather was a prominent dentist who suffered from cancer and died from cancer in 2007. His grandfather was intensely interested in Jonathon's cycling career.
His blog during his cycling tenure is here.
He won his first pro stage race, and the first race won by OUCH, enlisting the help of Bobby Lea in his victory.
He put out 415 watts for 28 minutes at the Valley of the Sun TT in 2008.
Riding in China earlier this Summer convinced him that "he didn't have it" and to retire from cycling to go to medical school.
He purchased EPO when he was a Category 3 racer. He presumably used it then, and later.
Thus far, he is the only one of Papp's customers to step forward and admit guilt. There are, it has been suggested, approximately 187 others who purchased EPO but haven't had to balls to step up and admit what they did.
I'm not worried that the guys who beat me in local Cat 3 races are doing it "on the juice." In fact, I'm pretty sure almost all of them are clean. I see how hard they work, and I recognize that I'm not at the kind of sublime level where being beaten by dopers even matters.
But take a talented kid like Nate Wilson who just announced he may step out of road cycling--he's competing directly with guys like Chodroff. How can we advise him to stay in the sport, knowing that even our best and brightest--Yale grads, for God's sake--resort to juicing?
I'm not sure I'd advise Nathan to continue to ride his bike...on the road. On the one hand, the kid can ride, and it's great seeing talent. On the other hand, if Nate's talent is obscured by no-talent ass monkeys like Chodroff, maybe it's time to join a band or take up spelunking, or writing a proper blog with punctuation and capitalization.
