The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you havea comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen incycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write toWebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name andhome town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writersare encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month.The letters published here contain the opinions of the submittingauthors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positionsof VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company, InsideCommunications, Inc.

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Regarding the rant: Some teams get it
Editor:
As a fan for 25 years, I want to thank Patrick O'Grady for cutting through all the doubletalk and lies in pro cycling and saying the obvious truth. Pro cycling does have the ways and means to clean up its act — it just has not had the will.

As the 1 million fans who showed up Sunday for the Tour of Flanders would tell you, pro cycling is entertaining as recreational suffering. Since doping decreases the suffering, it is equivalent to basketball lowering the hoops two feet: It undercuts the core of the sport. The plain truth is that in the 1990s, pro cycling went from dabbling in doping to becoming addicted to doping.

Recently, some teams have taken brave steps that would give reasonable assurance of a clean sport. These measures would be relatively simple to expand to all the top teams. Until all the top teams uniformly adopt the kind of independent program that CSC and T-Mobile have, then pro cycling is indeed just singing "Titties and Beer."

Rick Treleaven
Bend, Oregon

Flogging Ullrich was empty and lazy
Editor:
Pounding Jan the loser is like a pro taking a club cyclist and expecting a grand bouquet for the effort. It just seems empty and lazy.

Mick Palmer
Las Vegas

No, it was brilliant
Editor:
Patty my boy, you made my day! What a brilliant rant on such a stupid defense! Laughed my own brass noisemakers off!

Dave Bradley
Fishers, Indiana

No, it wasn’t
Editor:
I’d really be interested to see O’Grady's feedback in a percentage format: positive, negative and don’t care.

Put me into the neg’.

Russ Walker
Shreveport, Louisiana

Too much coffee?
Editor:
Straight up - O'Grady rocks. ’Nuff said. How much back-pedaling can Jan et al do? Do we need to bring up Clinton's parsing of "is" again? (Don't forget that one, Patrick.)

Anyway, there's bound to be a loophole in all of this, but I'm just going to sit back and watch how it unfolds and collapses on itself. Makes me happy that I can develop web pages all day and ride my bike on Yerba Mate' (thank you, Gera!) and the boldest Italian coffee out on the market and not get busted yet.

Thank you for bringing to life what we've all been thinking. But don't stop, Patrick. Me want more!

Mark E. Kantner
Team Nature's Path
Richmond, Virginia

It ain’t funny — let’s fix it
Editor:
Of course everyone laughed. We laughed at the obvious statement made by Ullrich and his attorneys. We laughed at the fact that this nonsense is continuing almost a year later. The Spanish courts say one thing, the Italian courts say another, Ullrich and his clowns say something else.

Is the dope-testing system that broken or convoluted, or is doping so rampant that the reality is that everyone is doing it and there is nothing the doping police can do about it?

Come on, people, let’s get this situation settled.

Dan Wyszynski
Englewood, Colorado

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The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you havea comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen incycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write toWebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name andhome town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writersare encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month.The letters published here contain the opinions of the submittingauthors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positionsof VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company, InsideCommunications, Inc.