“you can’t dope up skills”
Tomac is on the record saying that from 1996 onwards the XC World Cup had a lot of new top riders doping and he, Ned and Tinker etc couldn’t compete anymore. If he was doping, surely you would just dope more/better to win!
"I will keep this very complicated subject a bit short and sweet. Dopers suck and they are cheaters. They take the easy way out, and what good is a win if it is not real. Early XC mountain bike racing was clean, but it changed in the early to mid 1990s in my opinion. When I was road racing as a pro in Europe in 1990 and 1991, I knew it was not on the level, so I left that sport and went back to full time mountain bike racing. Then it crept into mountain bike racing which sucked, but at least mountain bike racing was a bit technical and you can’t dope up skills. I was never really all that tempted because I made a moral decision not to do it early on. Once I decided that, I just did the work and did the best with what I had."