ONLY TWO YEARS AGO, Joe Papp was a happy journeyman pro, spinning past Italy's cowbell-ringing tifosi. His team, Partizan-Whistle, was based in the Tuscan town of Montecatini Terme, and there was a plan to get his wife, former Cuban-national-team rider Yuliet Rodríguez Jiménez, out of Cuba and by Papp's side.

But then Papp got busted, and he was forced to reckon with various authorities who now held sway over his life. He hoped to clear his conscience and salvage his image by talking. Since then, he has gone far beyond the standard, sparingly worded drug-use confessions voiced by some suspected riders, dishing up deep insider knowledge of performance-enhancing drugs' availability, effects, and dangers.

Though Papp never turned a pedal in the Tour de France, his example is important, because it shows that drugs aren't exclusive to a few alpha athletes hoping to win at racing's highest levels. Perhaps more significant, Papp's story illustrates why cheating cyclists, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, don't often come clean. Confessing almost always brings a rider more problems than it solves, with the truth-tellers losing jobs, victories, reputations, identities, and even friends.

As a result, talkative riders are scarce. Four years after French mountain-bike racer Jerome Chiotti won the World Cross-Country Championships in 1996, he voluntarily admitted to having doped and gave back his title. His reward was condemnation and a suspension. High-profile Scotsman David Millar, while under police pressure in 2004, confessed to doping, lost his world time-trial title, and drank himself into oblivion before coming back to the sport in 2006. Patrik Sinkewitz, a German pro who rode last year for the T-Mobile squad (now called Team High Road), got busted in 2007 and was immediately dumped by his team and peers. "It was as if I didn't even exist anymore," he told the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Contrast such experiences with those of pro cyclists who got busted but have denied everything. American cycling's two biggest accused stars, Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis, both mounted extraordinary legal efforts to clear their names—despite strong evidence that they cheated. Undoubtedly, they've both suffered major setbacks: Hamilton now rides for the U.S.-based Rock Racing team, a controversial outfit that may never be invited to the Tour. (See "Men in Black," Dispatches, May.) Landis was stripped of his 2006 Tour title by race organizers after arbitrators, siding with the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), upheld the charge that he'd tested positive for using supplemental testosterone during the race. But he will probably ride again as well, even if he loses his current appeal with the Lausanne, Switzerland–based Court of Arbitration for Sport. Whether such riders are innocent or guilty, they can continue to proclaim their innocence while enjoying the silent approval of fellow pros, many of whom admire the fact that they never talked.

"That's one of the great ironies of cycling today," says Greg LeMond, a three-time winner of the Tour de France and no friend of Landis, whom he's accused of using performance-enhancing drugs. "Aren't the ones who confess the people with the moral conscience?"

Then there's Papp, who in the wake of his bust told a level of truth under oath that no American cyclist has matched. Granted, he was cornered. But regardless of his reasons for fessing up, the evidence that his statements have ruined his life, both personally and professionally, is overwhelming. His fellow pros don't talk to him, and the chances that he'll ever race professionally again are negligible. As for the little guys, the recreational racers and fans, they may be his most outspoken critics. Months after confessing, Papp still gets e-mails telling him he's despised—either for betraying a rider like Landis or, more often, for simply admitting that he juiced up.

"If there's a way to keep reminding you of your wicked ways I'll be doing it whether it's 19 months or 19 years down the road," one person wrote him earlier this year. "Your lack of character will follow you the rest of your life. However shortened that may be due to the shit you put in your body."