limerickman said:
Kelly is regarded as God......Stephen is highly regarded.
I'm not so sure about that. Kelly is obviously more highly regarded amongst cycling fans, amongst the public at large my experience is that Roche is better known. He won the race everybody knows about and in that amazing year he also won the World Championships and the Giro. Winning the World Championships in any sport always sounds impressive, even in a sport where it isn't actually the most important event, while the Giro is the second most famous race.
Kelly is very well thought of, but few people who don't know cycling actually understand the scale of his achievements. The various Classics, the TdF points competion and even the Vuelta do not have the name recognition of the Tour, the World Championships or the Giro amongst the ordinary punters. So Kelly is seen an excellent rider, but Roche is a great to the man on the street, while those assessments are likely to be reversed amongst those who follow cycling.
Either way it is remarkable that a small country with little cycling traditions simultaneously produced two of the top riders of their era. Of course the third besk known Irish cyclist is Paul Kimmage, which certainly means that doping in cycling has been an issue amongst the wider public for much longer than it has been in most other places. It was mainstream national news here long before the Festina affair because an Irish cyclist was talking about at a time when two cyclists were amongst the country's greatest sporting heroes.
This leads me on to another question: How widespread was doping in the 1980s and what were the substances of choice? My understanding is that EPO and systematic blood doping regimes arrived at the beginning of the 1990s. Obviously doping of some sorts existed long before that, but judging by the difficulties even the best climbers had with the huge climbs prior to the 1990s, whatever substances were in use obviously weren't as widespread or as effective.