Life’s busy, eh? Sometimes so busy that the MASSIVE ISSUES that sprung up either through SENSATIONAL BOOKS or profound, deep conversations have just wafted around in the ether like smoke – or like smoke that teases, or threatens to draw you in – rather than being ‘addressed’. (Whatever that means). I kinda like that life can be chock-full of undeniably seminal stuff that somehow contrives to drop down low, low in the list of priorities because the allegedly everyday swamps it. That’s both appalling and charming somehow, right? Can’t sort out the meaning of such-and-such, despite it’s marvellous heft because the bed-linen needs sorting, or the ailing dog just may need checking on, or the team for Sunday needs bunging up on the Whatsapp. Hang on: what about the revelatory import of that, or the mind-boggling measure of this?

I need to be specific but that may also undermine the very abstract (or abstracted?) nature of the mad-wonderness of what goes on. Let’s start with a book, briefly.

Top Raging Intellect and buddy of mine points me at ‘A Death in the Family’, Knaussgaard. My own family baggage may be in play but wow what a blast (of something, of everything) that was! Traumatically compelling but also deeply fortifying; probably on account of the undeniable brilliance *of the writing*, (whatever that means). Dark and deeeep and relentless but also pulling us through, yes? To a place where we are enriched, despite being bloody and exhausted, probably having devoured the 400 pages in the minimum possible time-frame. Emerging to nearly think excoriatingly deeply about x or y, but then yaknow, the washing got in the way.

But great book: surely, truly a great book? May go at it again within a day or two; domestic shite permitting.

So there was that, impinging deeply and then not, and there was also sporty stuff – there always is.

Look we need to light a fire under the loony impostor that is X; we know that. But I’ve always maintained that the Twitters can be tremendously uplifting (and even civilising) because if you offer good energy and make intelligent choices then fabulous, interesting people reveal themselves to you. Amongst the absolute donkeys. That happened again.

Cycling. Tour then Vuelta. Immersed and also dipping in there. Love the wild scenery, the filmic drama, the bewildering strategising, the ridicu-effort. Almost yearn (if that’s a thing) for untramelled belief in the sport of it – the who won, the who dug impossibly deep and found something special. But the buts are big, yes?

I’m not close to this – meaning I’m not even a club-level rider – so *being sure* has been at issue. For years. Watching Roglic and Evenepoel and Pogacar and Vingegaard perform to a superhuman level and wondering. Being unable to trust it, despite a lifetime of loving and believing in sport – despite being culturally behind the power of spinning legs and bursting hearts. Godammit. Feel the effort, here. Can we not just ignore that doubt? Just pretend?

Nope. Not after reading ‘The Art of Cycling’ and exchanging tweets (I know, I know!!) with James Hibbard, author and philosopher and (oh), former elite-level cyclist.

*Inserts: the bloke’s prob’ly getting some zeds in CaliforNIAAY as I write. I’ve messaged him to see how comfortable he might be with being outed as an authority and Man of Ideas around this. Typically I’m blasting on regardless before hearing back*. (Later heard back. he’s cool with this).

Firstly I loved Jimmy Lad’s book. Strongly recommend to anybody with an interest in thinking, never mind cycling/philosophy/psychology/soulfulness/ethics and the other wee corners of humanity that the fella digs into. Secondly, the twittering.

Muskrat’s enclave is still a place where decent people can quietly revolt… by exchanging perdy decent ideas in an agreeable way. By discoursing. We did that and I learned. (For fairness and to avoid litigation – lols – let me say here that not all of the following arose from conversations with James. But some new knowledge certainly did: and some of the rest was extrapolated out, or results from Yours F Truly stretching his cranial wotsits or curiosity towards other sources). It’s been good… and challenging… and may not have unmuddied the waters entirely. But healthy. On.

James was a pro rider and on the US track cycling team, back in the days when (says he as if those days are over) use of EPO and/or similar was widespread. Hibbard, alongside Paul Kimmage went public with fears and truths that remain relevant – not just in theoretical/moral/ethical terms but in relation to how cycling actually is now. In short, JH is clear that recent performances by leading riders have been ‘physiologically impossible’ without doping. He is similarly clear, much to our mutual regret, that the culture of lying persists. Cycling is still not just unclean but brazen. Hibbard argues that because this has gone on for decades – anti-doping technology (or will to prosecute?) being so-o far behind the use and masking of performance enhancement – that the whole eco-system is damaged. Specifically, there is no way that young riders entering the elite arena can expect to remain clean and succeed. (Or vice-versa).

Having read ‘The Art of Cycling’, I am in no doubt that Hibbard is a good man: a student of philosophy; a Proper Athlete and a man of reason. His arguments are compelling – even when they run on towards solutions that he himself admits are challenging. There’s a danger when reducing BIG ARGUMENTS but he is on record as saying that because the generational culture of deceit has been so meretricious, so tawdry and so subversive of all sporting values, we may need to re-set, to get real. Whilst it may feel better and maybe more comforting to up the ante (yet again) on prevention, this is simply not gonna work. So maybe (yes, with a heavy heart) opt for what Hibbard calls an F1-style regulated environment, where doping is tolerated and monitored – in order to keep athletes safe.

Your distaste for this may be the same as mine was. But cop this:

I think the interesting part is just how to go about making sports as beautiful and culturally useful as possible for young athletes.

(This from a message, on the Twitters).

In other words, we are both power-of-sport lovers and romantics: not guys looking to capitulate around our defence of ‘purity’. Hibbard is reluctantly driven there because the reality is so poisoned and the remedies will be corrupted in the same old ways of old. The tradition for what us Brits call diabolical porkies runs too strong, is too resistant to our goddam decency.

Look. The Vuelta and the Tour de France are getting bigger in every sense. Stages are massive and arguably more painful – what with monumental distances and intermediate sprints etc etc. The window of possibility for clean sport is closing as the conspiracy gets deeper and darker and more relentlessly obdurate. We’re all already perverted. To move on, we may need to think the unthinkable – or just do it.

Hibbard again:

I think I weigh the harms like this: sport as an F1 like operation with an athlete and responsible medical staff is not ideal, but athletes/teams doing all of it in dangerous ways to avoid detection with poor psychological consequences for both PED users and clean riders is worse.

Finally, zoom out, because we’re not just talking about cycling here. Other sports have dopers. What about this idea that we the sentient universe *actually might* host a kind of enhanced games, where events are open to performance-enhanced athletes? (Blimey: another worrying lurch on the god-forbid-ometer, surely? Automatic recoil mode engaged). And yet, if medically overseen, is this not where we’re moving – or being shifted?

I’m just about the daftest sports-romantic I know. But I hear the arguments.