Rough Ride with Paul Kimmage

Having just finished reading Paul Kimmage's 1990 book Rough Ride, I thought it was worth taking a moment to reflect on the main themes of the book.
While doping, and the breaking of cycling's code of silence toward doping feature heavily, for me, the central theme of the book is one of how professional cycling has broken the dreams and spirit of a thousand riders.
Those fortunate enough to make it, mainly face a career of obscurity and water carrying. If you're lucky, very lucky, one day they might let you win a stage or an event.  But for the majority, it's a story of toil, commercial pressures, shit hotels and racing against people who you once beat easily but now struggle to stay with on the flat.

Written 1990, read by me 2012. Slow reader

This is the context in which the doping flourished.  It should be no surprise that the doping became more sophisticated as winning became more lucrative and more telegenic.
The other maddening pressure which comes across in his book is the fear of what to do next.  What does a former professional cyclist do?  Open a bike shop? Write a book perhaps.  For the ones that remain in some way in the public eye, there are countless thousands who fade into obscurity and do what the rest of us would do: just get a job, any job.
The final chapter  'Andre' about former team-mate Andre Chappuis brings this fear into unnerving focus.
Kimmage has of course become something of a cycling cause celebre in recent months with UCI beginning legal proceedings against him.  They should put a statute up to him in my view - or, perhaps more appropriately, establish some kind of long-suffering cyclist award!  I jest of course.
In the book Kimmage hoped that the doping of his era would be tackled and ended: that the UCI would bare its teeth and intervene. We know that it didn't and the whiff of suspicion remains that that they actually became further embroiled.
It seems now that the leadership is being shown by the teams - specifically Team Sky and its 'if you doped your out' policy.
As Sky and others move to reassure sponsors, the commercial imperative remains but as a punter and a defender of cycling, I Just hope that the doping can be finally put to bed.