Greg Lemond radio interview

[Lister Farrar]

Worth a listen.
http://media.newstalk.ie/mediamanager/p ... at_itunes/

Not a huge part of the interview, but it made my blood boil when he tells the story of LA being the first to call Greg Strock to intimidate him when he sued USAC for doping him. Strock was a junior who was doped by Carmichael, LA's coach, and another US national coach Wenzel, without his knowledge. Made him sick and he had to quit. Then went to medical school and figured out what they did to him. And wonderboy tries to silence him?! Unbelievable.

[Lister Farrar]

Some details of the Strock case when it first came up in 2000.
http://velonews.competitor.com/2000/12/ ... -speaks_79

GS: In general, the American public has a very difficult time trying to imagine the kinds of things that occur as far as elite athletics in this country is concerned. You know that everyone points fingers at the former Eastern Bloc countries and now the Chinese. We can’t stand to look at things in our own backyard and we need to.

Ethically, the fact this occurred to minors is… is atrocious. Even legitimate physicians can’t do this sort of thing without parental consent, let alone people who have nothing but a high-school education.

VN: What was the initial diagnosis when you fell ill?
GS: Yeah. Well, at one point, they were concerned because I was immunosuppressed and tested me for AIDS. Then it was thought I had lymphatic cancer and biopsies were done. And finally, they found a serious viral infection from what they later found was human parvovirus. Like I said, it’s unusual for a young healthy male to suffer from symptoms like that. In this era I also suffered from thrush (an oral yeast infection), most often seen in those who are immunocompromised, and a very severe case of Bell’s palsy. Bell’s palsy is a facial paralysis that is not uncommon and is thought to be caused by a viral infection. 90 percent of those with it have full recovery; I didn’t. So you can see some common things affected me in uncommon ways, which is typical of an immunocompromised state such as induced by cortisone.

VN: What do you see the federation’s role in this?
GS: I don’t know if they were actively promoting it or not. It’s certainly something we hope to find out.
Certainly when they realized it, they never took any steps to let any of us know. At the very least they should have informed us, pulled our parents into it and been as open as possible. They should have acted just like any responsible organization after discovering that the people they were in charge of had committed physical or sexual abuse. In my eyes, they had an ethical obligation to that at a minimum.

Not to mention that when you look back at L.A. and the (blood) doping scandal there. A lot of the same people are still closely associated with the federation … some of them. When they say that it goes against their core principles, I see no evidence that they have ever taken steps to clean up things when they know about them.