Tom Simpson memorial being restored to mark 50th anniversary of his death

Oops didn't mean it to get that deep - I struggle to fully understand how we learn from history in the 21st century. Prosecuting the dead from history for their crimes seems strange to me. Whilst  surely should learn from them and ensure they are not repeated I worry when resources are spent reworking the crime scene not learning from them and doing what is best for the victims of crime (where they are still around).

Back to the context, for me Tommy was and is a hero, to my mind he was a victim of the times. Not sure we did or have learnt from it, for example why do we allow testing regimes to be run by the competitors own countries? Isn't that marking your own homework?

double post.  And I only pressed it once.

There is a statue of a terrorist in parliment square.

He advocated the use of bombs to gain his political ambitions.

The fact that most of the whole world believed in his cause doesn't stop him from being a terrorist.

And if he hadn't attempted to use violence, he might not have been imprisoned, and upon his release, ended apartheid.  I am pleased that there is a ststue of Nelson Mandela in parliment square.

It isn't always black and white.

I recently read The Great Bike Race, by Geoffrey Nicholson, which tells the story and sets the context of the 1976 TdF (which happens to be the first one I ever saw, when it passed through Bordeaux where I spent that summer). There is a chapter called Illicit Substances which deals with drugs and tells Simpson's story. It's very clear that the riders of the time were very opposed to drug testing, Anquetil going so far as to blame the testing regime for Simpson's death, suggesting that he had used a less well-understood drug in tablet form than he would have done if he could have used one of the newly-illegal injectable ones.

Ncholson's description of the riders' reaction the following year to Poulidor's first test is quite amusing and very instructive about the culture of the time. You'll have to read the book, which is very worthwhile all round.

It makes me really uncomfortable that he is considered a hero. Him and his contemporaries are responsible for the 'cheat to win' culture we have in cycling today. If they were true sportsmen cycling would be in a much better place now.

Ho hum.

Get an education people.

Different times, different attitudes.

Doping was outlawed in 1965 - 2 years before Simpson died. The UCI and so on didn't really care about the issue but were forced to act after pressure from their doctor (after he correctly said that things were starting to get dangerous). This didn't change the riders attitudes and things basically carried on as before for a long time, with both the authorities and riders and teams barely paying lip service to the rules. Get caught doping? Small fine/10 minute penalty or thrown out the race if you were unlucky, but no ban. It wasn't really considered a wrong thing to do at all, and everyone knew it was still going on (the races back then were utterly brutal and it was considered necessary to use amphetimines and so on to make it bearable. The race organisers were happy for this to happen as they wanted to make it more brutal/exciting all the time to sell interest in the race....and however the riders finished the race, they didn't care).

Simpson died in that context.

Best watch what you say, I don't think Tommy was ever found to be taking drugs during his career, so in our current world he can't be branded a cheat. The race he died in sounded barbaric, when he tried to get water he was given brandy.

i think he died from dehydration and sheer exhaustion.

the comment I would make is that if you want a hint of what it would be like if you did as some suggest and just allow doping then the era he rode in is probably the nearest. We would most likely see people die due to extreme abuse attempts.

LA was I hope the end (well the beginning of the end) of all that. I think I watch a sport where the vast majority are clean and what abuse does go on is limited by the testing regimes (Russia excepted).