Hello to you Americans from me, 1999 Liége-Bastogne-Liége Champion Franck Vandenbroucke. I won a large amount of other races but this is a short column so there is not space to list them all. In my time, I was the pride of Belgium and remain a hero to Frankyboys worldwide. I am also called the “enfant terrible” of European cycling for many good reasons. Unfortunately, I do not know the English translation for this phrase but be assured that I have been in several parts of trouble during my career, the types of which your American sports heroes have never dreamed. This makes me perfectly capable of commenting on the drug problems in your American sports.

I have observed the latest happenings in the sport of baseball with great interest. In my honesty, I believe that all of you are having far too large a reaction to the present scandals. For instance, it was explained to me that Rafael Palmeiro is considered an elite player, or a “Hall of Famer” in American colloquial language. He is by far the most successful player to test positive for banned substances in his sport, and many people are now complaining that the integrity of baseball has been annihilated for all time. This is ridiculous, in my opinion. The American sports media, just like the European sports media, feeds off of scandal. They enjoy scandal and they enjoy cultivating scandal, like a farmer who carefully cultivates his crop. But enough is enough. The media has filled their newspapers with this garbage to their most extreme capacity, or as the saying goes where I am from, “they have filled a fifty litre trough with seventy-five litres of manure”.

Mr. Palmeiro is only one elite player, but I have confidence that many others like him are using the same substances. Therefore, everybody should go about their business and nobody should judge. Do you believe that Lance Armstrong never used drugs? Some people do believe that, some people don’t. All that matters is that he has never been caught. Many people in cycling do not like him. Lance, similar to every other athlete in the world, keeps many details of his training very private. Who knows what he is actually doing other than himself and the people to whom he pays money to keep quiet for him? He is busy cooking his own soup, and I cannot put blame to him for that. Baseball players should do the same. A player’s personal business is their own, and anyone who wishes to cook their own soup should do it.

It is never so simple as to say, “this athlete is doing drugs, and we are certain of it”. Nobody ever has complete proof of anything, and it is definitely in the interest of every athlete to remember this when they are under suspicion. Mr. Palmeiro and others have much to learn in this respect. Mr. Palmeiro merely claimed to be ignorant about the whole matter and stated that he was not aware of the mechanism by which the drugs could have entered his body. His reasoning skills sadden me. His story is simply not believable, and listening to him causes me to believe that he is hiding something. Whether he is telling he truth or not is hardly the primary issue here. One must understand that the primary issue is telling a story that clears the athlete of the maximum possible blame.

Nobody has ever proven that I commited a serious crime, unless one considers two DUI’s and threatening my wife with a small firearm to be serious crimes. After finding several quantities of performance-enhancing drugs in my home, the police and the media naturally assumed that they were meant for my personal intake. If this had happened to Mr. Palmeiro, he would have claimed that he had no knowledge of the drugs having a presence in his home. As I already mentioned, such an explanation is obviously not believable. Fortunately, I am not Mr. Palmeiro. My reasoning was absolutely solid — I told everyone that the drugs were for my dog . What could they do? Throw my dog into a prison? Speak with my dog and ask it to confirm my story? Test my dog for drugs? Make my dog ride a bicycle and evaluate its level of physical fitness? My assertion could not be verified at that time, and hence, it was perfection. Admittedly, I was recently forced to pay a rather large fine as a punishment , but that is a completely different sphere of hay. It should satisfy you that I am tremendously angry about the whole situation and that my fine is an unfair humiliation to my person, particularly when there are murderers and burglars walking the streets who deserve the negative attention far more than I do. I am not a dangerous person. I am an athlete trying to earn a fair wage. Thus, I must bring myself down to the level of watching American sports in order to provide my opinion in columns like this and receive a small payment in return. Now, let us return to the central issue. You must understand that the primary point is this: my explanation was effective, whereas Mr. Palmeiro’s was not.

There were many choices that Palmeiro did not grasp. I saw several excellent choices here on this website a few days ago. Mr. Bonds is a man of low reputation, and is therefore an appropriate receptacle for the blame. Mr. McGwire is no longer involved with the sport, and is therefore protected from persecution — again, a satisfactory vessel for receiving blame. However, these explanations do not go far enough, because there is no need to transfer suspicion to other baseball players when the entire world at large is available. Why say that the drugs were fed to you by another athlete without your prior knowledge when you can say that they were fed to you by your dentist? Do you notice the difference between the two stories? The other athlete might be guilty himself, which reflects badly on the athlete making the claim. The dentist, on the other hand, is a universally respected health worker who clearly knows exactly what he is doing. Thus, he is entirely free of guilt. Who could blame an athlete for accepting medicines on the advice of a trained physician, such as a dentist?

In a similar manner, he who is caught in possession of illegal substances should not blame it on another athlete. “These are not for me, they are for him!” is a poor excuse which merely casts a wider net amongst more athletes. The press will assume that a widespread doping conspiracy exists, bringing shame to multiple athletes instead of one. Instead, he who is caught should claim — for example — that the substances are for his mother-in-law. What options would the media vultures have? Would they question a weak, helpless old woman and induce marital stress upon an unsuspecting family? Nobody in the media would do such a thing for such actions would be soulless.

Many elite athletes can recover their careers following a drug scandal. Many cyclists have admitted to doping and eventually earned back the trust of their fans. I have done it myself and I believe that Mr. Palmeiro can do this as well. He must remember that the only difference between himself and the scores of other dopers in his sport is the perception of his guilt. If the the perception is altered, using methods that I have described above, then the guilt can also be altered. It is clear that your sport of baseball and its players can learn a great deal from the athletes of Old Europe.