Lance Armstrong... greatest doper there was or ever will be

"The everyone is doing it so it's fair" argument also falls over as oxygen vector doping/ transfusions used in cycling can have massive benefits to one rider and next to nothing for the next guy with identical power output to begin with but a naturally high blood cell count.

The % weren't small at all, the interview with Johnathan Vaughters on Bicycling gave examples of a >20% improvement in climbing power possible if your blood cell % was naturally low whilst he might have only got a 5% boost as he was already at the 50% limit before doping.

This. There is no level-playing field with drugs, people react differently and the richer can pay for better doctors. You listen to Vaughter's or Millar's story and you hear stories of isolated pros desperate to do well to secure contracts or keep their team where it is.

You hear stories of Lance and remember him riding, this big bull of a man charging up hills and you think of someone whon revelled in his cheating, not someone wracked with guilt and shame but driven to it by desperation. Then they way he used to bully the other riders to enforce the omerta, and they way young pros were encouraged to dope otherwise they wouldn't make the team. The impression you get is of a brazen doper, arrogant and aggressive and somehow in colluision with the UCI, who presumably saw him as a golden ticket to get the sport big in the US