I think that if Lance had won one or two TdF titles no one would have noticed he was cheating. When it was seven, and with the sociopathic behavior he exhibited in winning them, he made himself a target.
I think the fact that no one has been a repeat winner since then (i.e. without getting busted like Contador did after his second win) is not just a coincidence. One-and-done champions won’t face the same scrutiny.
If you have a sport where the difference between brutal effort for almost no money and brutal effort for millions of dollars is the contents of a syringe, people will take the contents of the syringe.
The incentives are misaligned. When one person gets all the money and all the glory, the push to be that one person is intense.
It’s always about the money.