Harri Kirvesniemi

Kirvesniemi had long been considered the "grand old man of Finnish cross-country skiing," as one Web site put it, and the revelation that he had been involved in doping stunned the Finnish public. His twenty years of training and his numerous hard-fought races were immediately discounted in millions of eyes. Plus, if even someone as respected as Kirvesniemi could cheat, "[m]any people wonder if there are any clean athletes left in our sport," Jay Tegeder wrote on Adelsman's Cross-Country Ski Page. "[T]here are no winners when our heroes have been found to be fallible."