Redemption

Drug use in cycling is a frequent, if unpleasant, topic here at BKW. It is a cancer that has the potential to destroy the top echelon of cycling and take with it hallowed events that we await each year with the anticipation of a child looking forward to Christmas.

In the fifth season of the A&E series “Intervention” the producers profiled a former cyclist addicted to crack. Some of you may have seen episode 64 on Chad Gerlach, the one-time U.S. Postal Service rider who was booted from the team after clashing with team management.

Gerlach was crushed by his turn in fortune. Though he signed with other teams, he turned to crack and eventually stopped racing fell into a life on the street.

The once promising pro’s problem wasn’t one of performance enhancing drugs, and so it may seem his story isn’t relevant to our typical coverage of drugs in cycling. However, his story is significant in that it shines a bright light on how so many people see all drug use through the same lens; it’s all illicit to a large swath of America.

Gerlach’s family persevered in their love for him and belief in his abilities, which led to the intervention and resulted in his rehabilitation at a facility in Florida.

To the casual viewer, the dream of returning to the pro peloton could easily have seemed unrealistic, a goal so unattainable as to be a setup for relapse. Yet that promise drove Gerlach. After his release he began training again and—incredibly—returned to the pro peloton this season, riding for Lifetime Fitness.

Gerlach just gold-plated his comeback by winning the opening stage of the Tour de Nez. Four laps into the criterium Gerlach broke away with Jonathan Baker and lapped the field. At the finish, Gerlach easily outsprinted Baker to take his first pro win in more than ten years.

The philosopher in me sees simple confirmation in the power of the love of friends and family and what we can achieve when we believe in ourselves. The pragmatist in me sees a story as removed from reality as a romance novel, the very exception that proves the rule.

I know many cyclists who view the entire peloton, to a man, as almost certain dopers. They eye testing programs such as Rasmus Damsgaard’s with the wary distance reserved for used-car salesmen. They are non-plussed by David Millar’s fervor for racing clean and reason if he was lying then, then he is probably lying now.

Gerlach deserves his consideration in our thoughts for how someone can truly turn his life around. An about-face doesn’t have to mean a retreat. We shouldn’t need a lesson so stark in its drama to teach us, but we’ve been trained into suspicion by a mountain of lies. It doesn’t mean we should never believe.

In defying the odds not once, but twice, first by getting clean and then by sprinting for the V., Gerlach ditched the naysayers. We can be suspicious all we want, but what he has in his heart today even the best of us can envy.

Episode 64 of Intervention is available on iTunes.

Image courtesy Lifetime Fitness.

Hamilton, Finished

USADA has handed down an eight-year suspension for Tyler Hamilton. The Rock Racing rider tested positive in February tested positive for testosterone or its precursors in February. When the announcement for the non-negative result was announced, Hamilton declined the B sample test and immediately admitted he had taken the steroid DHEA as an alternative to prescription antidepressants in an effort to combat depression.

Hamilton retired immediately. As noted by USADA’s CEO Travis Tygart, Hamilton’s eight-year penalty is effectively a lifetime ban for the 38-year old cyclist.

For his part, Hamilton said he was disappointed by the ban, “The eight-year suspension is unfortunate and disheartening. At this time, however, my focus remains on my mother, my family, battling my depression and getting better. This has been an extremely difficult and trying period, but I am determined to get through it.”

The length of the ban is irrelevant to all but those closest to him. Even if the planets had aligned to dismiss consideration for the principle of strict liability, he would likely still have received a ban of two years. Did Hamilton really think he would have had the legs of Joop Zoetemelk or even Kent Bostick at 40?

"Although we believe the sanction is exceptionally harsh and completely disproportional to the transgression, Tyler has chosen to focus on getting better instead of fighting a pointless battle against the anti-doping regime," said Chris Manderson, Hamilton’s counsel.

Hindsight is blah, blah, blah. If we set aside the anger we felt when we heard he tested positive—the first time—and apply honesty to our recollections of Hamilton’s career, most of us will recall the jubilation and shock we felt when we heard that an American had won the Gold Medal in the ITT at the 2004 Summer Olympics. When we learned it was Hamilton, surprise was added to our jubilation.

Hamilton gave the United States its first victory in a Monument—Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Who can forget his performance in the 2003 Tour de France following his broken collarbone, not to mention his epic breakaway through the Pyrenees on his way to winning stage 16 in Bayonne? And what of his second place and stage win at the 2002 Giro d’Italia, despite a broken shoulder?

Should we excuse his doping? No. The wheels of justice have turned and by at least one objective measure things are as they should be. Should we turn our backs on his earlier results? Depends on your point of view. Most cycling fans will admit that at his best, Hamilton was surrounded by other riders who were engaged in similar levels of doping and so he was most probably playing on a relatively level field. And if that sounds like a tacit acceptance of his doping on some level, then consider this: Even after throwing out his results you are left with a guy who rode through broken bones and molars ground to expose nerves. In the annals of hard men, those stories earned him a permanent seat at the bar.

Hamilton’s end as a rider is sad and ignominious. But given what we know of the time in which he competed on the international stage, he did achieve memorable results. The inspiration we felt to see his courage is worth remembering.

Image courtesy of John Pierce, Photosport International.

Passing the Buck

I can’t let this one go. The UCI has declared that they can’t complete disciplinary proceedings against Tom Boonen in relation to his second cocaine positive in time for the Tour de France. As a result, they have declared that Boonen is permitted to race the Tour de France.

They can’t complete it in time? What? This isn’t the restoration of a 1968 Camaro or the design of a web site. It’s a disciplinary proceeding. And the relevant facts are known. Hasn’t anyone heard of midnight oil?

No matter what your personal feelings on Boonen’s positive are, this is the wrong message to send. When I was in third grade, we would have called this wishy-washy. Is the UCI uniformly hard on drug use or not? If they don’t really see a problem with recreational drugs out of competition, that’s their choice, but they shouldn’t have made a fuss last time.

Given that most of the world can’t differentiate between performance-enhancing and recreational—which is like not being able to tell the difference between the Space Shuttle and Disneyland—a firm stance against recreational drugs would be understandable for the UCI and WADA. To most folks, drugs are either medicine or illicit. And anything that isn’t medicine isn’t tolerated in lots of places, The Netherlands notwithstanding.

What is so surprising in this is that the UCI didn’t like the Amaury Sport Organization deciding independently which teams and riders could and could not compete in the Tour. And yet, by delaying any action on Boonen, they are in effect forcing ASO’s hand, asking Prudhomme et al, to decide what the race is willing to accept.

Meanwhile, Bernard Kohl is passing the buck as well; he is concocting fictions that would make for a promising Hollywood script. He says he was cooperative from the outset, but CyclingNews reported October 15, 2008 Kohl wanted his B sample tested.

Worse yet, he asserted that the entire Top-10 of the Tour de France general classification must have doped, only to retract the statement and say l’Equipe invented the entire interview. Right. Shaun Palmer did the same thing years ago when Specialized wasn’t thrilled after he told a journalist he did recreational drugs and watched porn. The French rider’s union, CPA, has decided to sue Kohl. As Cedric Vasseur said, "He might think everybody else was doped as well but he has to prove it."

Kohl’s idea of cooperation is suspect. The one thing he has said—retracted or not—that is truly helpful is his insight into how sophisticated dopers would use the information found in positive tests to guide their manipulation of blood and the biological passport.

If Kohl were truly a man of substance, he’d admit his part and wouldn’t try to accuse everyone else of doping as a means of excusing his poor decision.

Image courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International.

Crossing the Line to Success

By now you’ve heard that Team Katusha’s Antonio Colom is the second rider from the Russian team to test positive for EPO. Christian Pfannberger tested positive earlier this year. The situation reminds me of the fine backwoods-residing gentlemen from southeastern United States who try to outrun the cops in their pickup trucks after running across a spike strip. Escape is really only an option when you are smarter than those in pursuit of you.

For as long as I’ve covered pro cycling the Union Cycliste Internationale has found ever-evolving ways to come up with decisions and procedures that seem arbitrary, illogical and just wrong-headed. And I’ve been critical of those decisions whenever I’ve had the chance to speak up.

For instance, it doesn’t sound like the UCI informed Colom’s team through the proper channels or in a timely manner. We must take it on faith that the lab that did the testing performed to standard as Colom is unlikely to have the Euro to mount a real challenge of the result. He will probably ask that his B result be tested, but confirmation is no assurance that the first result is correct. Ultimately, it is unfortunate that not everyone has unwavering faith in the UCI’s ability to act in a logical and unbiased manner.

At its heart, the UCI is a bureaucracy and for all that Europe does well, their bureaucracies suck harder than a Hoover powered by a V8 on aircraft fuel. While I detest rule-following for rule-following’s sake, that organization needs a measure of discipline to bolster our faith in its best initiatives. That said, I need to offer the same measure of praise for this catch.

Colom didn’t just happen to test positive. He was caught precisely because his biological passport showed some irregularities. The UCI calculated when he would be likely to dose with EPO by examining his racing schedule. Working back from his next appointment, the UCI elected to target the Paris-Nice stage winner on April 2, 2009.

Bingo!

I decided to check in with Jonathan Vaughters to see what he would have to say about the UCI’s methods. Here’s his response:

“There are 2 ways the passport can work:

1. The blood values are irregular enough to cause a positive on their own right. This hasn't happened yet, but will, soon.

2. Even when the values don't bounce around enough to cause a proprietary positive, they can bounce enough to cause suspicion and LOTS of extra out-of-comp and surpise urine analysis. This is how Colom got caught.

Either one is a magnificent use of the passport system. We're just now seeing the fruits of this massive effort, as it takes awhile to have enough data points to be able to see 'irregular'...

I'm happy to be in a sport willing to take it on the chin for true and fair competition. Glad to see the progress and I'm sure there is more to come.”

The biological passport has been criticized by many, among the critics have been scientists who say it is only as good as the first test; if the baseline is doped, more dope just looks normal. The challenge is that because it is imperfect, the longitudinal testing is pointless. It’s the same sort of criticism that has been leveled at the Toyota Prius. The argument goes that because it is not perfectly green it is a failure. The batteries contain nasty chemicals, it still uses gas, most of its materials can’t be recycled, blah, blah, blah. But the real world isn’t binary like football where you either win or lose. High school exit exams aren’t given to third-graders for a reason: a 10-year-old is a work in progress. And so is the biological passport. The UCI could do nothing worse in the name of clean sport than to throw up its collective hands and cry out, “We can’t catch them all so we give up! Uncle!”

I don’t like the idea of the UCI finding suspicious any rider who wins. Such a cynicism poisons the person who holds the view, not those viewed. I’ve seen it in plenty of fans who have turned away from the sport because they suspect all the riders are doped up. However, using objective methods to target riders for further attention is exactly the step the sport has needed.

Highly is the likelihood that some riders are doping and still evading detection. If we are to enjoy professional cycling as spectators, then we need the assurance that someone competent is on the case. If the record books get corrected six months, a year down the line with an asterisk, so be it. What the sport doesn’t need is to see a guy raise his arms at the line and have the TV audience suspect immediately he will test positive.

Image courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International.

Laissez-Faire

Recreational drug use is one of those subjects (and activities) that evokes reactions as diverse as politics does. It’s easy to find folks who see recreational drug use as an utterly harmless way to blow off steam. Others see it as a forgivable indiscretion of youth. And we’re well aware that millions see it as a crime that can only be corrected with incarceration.

I offer that as a backdrop to Tom Boonen’s current trouble. Many cycling fans are ready to forgive him for doing something stupid so that he can get back to racing in time for the Tour de France. Plenty others see nothing that requires forgiveness. There are likely many others who want his license pulled, possibly even for good.

So cocaine isn’t illegal outside of competition. It’s a drug that carries a double-standard, and that is where the problem lies. If it’s use outside of competition isn’t illegal, then why do out-of-competition tests screen for it? They don’t test of aspirin and alcohol. The bigger question is why a rider can test positive for a substance that authorities shouldn’t be screening.

The answer is easy.

As individuals we’re all entitled to our views about how Boonen should be addressed. But our personal views are irrelevant, unfortunately. Here’s why: Our sport exists at the PRO level because of sponsors. Sponsor dollars are the gas the peloton runs on. They make the races possible, the teams possible and TV coverage possible. Without them, many of these guys would be working the fields.

Consider some of the organizations that no longer exist because of sponsor departures: the Motorola team, the Midi Libre race, Team ONCE, the San Francisco Grand Prix, Festina, the Tour DuPont, ad nauseum.

There is perhaps too little forgiveness in most of our lives and that at least some cycling fans are ready to say, “He deserves time off to enjoy himself; he’s not a monk,” is a kind and laudable response. Forgiveness from cyclists who see a difference between recreational drug use and doping may be nice, but it does nothing to assuage the concerns of those who see all drug use as criminal behavior. And those are the people whose opinions sponsors are concerned about.

It’s clear that the UCI and WADA have a zero-tolerance policy regarding all drugs that anyone might deem unacceptable. And while WADA’s handling of Boonen’s case raises ethical questions—why are they announcing a positive test for a substance that isn’t illegal out of competition—they do have a clear understanding of the morality of the average cycling fan.

As long as the casual follower of cycling believes all drug use to be roughly equal, or as long as the average sponsor believes casual followers believe this, then two actions are likely: Sponsors will be reluctant to sign cyclists with any sort of doping taint, or worse, they will leave the sport entirely.

It may be that serious cyclists don’t see cocaine as a gateway drug to PEDs. But the average viewer out in TV land doesn’t agree and this is, like most things, a battle of numbers. Whatever more people believe wins; just consider elections.

Just as Boonen’s drug use may be held to a double-standard, he himself is held to a different standard than other riders. If a nobody with no results is caught doping, then he’s just an idiot, but with Boonen, because he’s a champion, he’s a cheater and a bad example. Is it fair? Not much. Is it typical? Ever watched TMZ?

The average follower of cycling seems to accept that Boonen did actually test positive. Should we also accept the assessment that he has a drug problem that deserves treatment? That seems a bit much. The latest Hollywood real-life script is that after getting caught using drugs the best response is to cry mea culpa and to enter treatment. It makes for great public relations, but how appropriate a response would treatment be? How many people really think that Boonen, with two known positive tests for cocaine, is an addict? Probably mostly folks who think cocaine is a gateway drug to PEDs.

From 1999 to 2005 Lance Armstrong lived an ascetic life that revolved around his training. Even so he faces accusations of doping, correct or not. His asceticism is an example that ought to serve as a blueprint for PROs. Boonen seems to be getting the job done, just as Jacques Anquetil got the job done. But times have changed and the average viewer isn’t willing to turn a blind eye to drug use of any variety.

Fair or not, Boonen faces a choice: He can party like a "Lost" star, or he can be a god of Flanders. Turns out, even his sponsor thinks he can’t be both. But that won't matter if he winds up incarcerated; in prison he can't do either.

Image courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International.

Tornado Tom ... Indeed II

Look, we at BKW love this guy. Love him. He's the hardest of hard men. But a positive test for cocaine can derail his hopes for going back to the Tour de France for a second year in a row. We want him racing for the green jersey, so while it would be nice if he weren't embarrassing the sport for recreational drug use, what we really need is him clean enough to go to the Tour. The competition for the greeen jersey won't be as interesting without him going head-to-head with Cavendish.

I've said my piece already. Ibid.

Image courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International.

Hit or Miss?

Researchers led by Dr. Carsten Lundby at the Copehagen Muscle Research Center have just published a paper on testing for EPO via urine sample. Lundby and company administered recombinant EPO to eight male subjects to track the performance-enhancing effects of the drug. While the results of this study are plenty revealing in their own right, in the course of performing this study the researchers decided to send the samples to two laboratories to see if the subjects would test positive using the current test protocol approved by the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA). The results of this study were just published by the Journal of Applied Physiology, a peer-reviewed journal.

The seven-week study began with a two week “boosting” period in which subjects received high doses of EPO, followed by a two week “maintenance” period of reduced EPO administration and ending with a three week “post” period. During this time some 32 urine samples were sent to each lab. In the paper the labs aren’t identified; they are just labeled “A” and “B.” Lab A found all samples from the boosting period positive. However, it only found two of 24 maintenance-phase samples positive.

Much worse was the record of the lab labeled “B” in the study. It didn’t identify a single sample as positive, and only determined only seven of the eight boosting period samples as suspicious; no other samples raised proverbial red flags for the lab. Lab B has since been identified as the Laboratory for Doping Analysis (LDA) in Cologne, Germany. The LDA is a WADA-accredited lab. It’s director, Wilhelm Schanzer said the study’s finding that the lab could not accurately identify recombinant EPO is “outright false.” He went on to say, “It’s not true that you could take EPO and not be detected.”

Schanzer went on to claim that because the samples were for a research project his lab didn’t perform all the tests necessary to verify a positive finding. He said under normal testing procedures his lab would have detected EPO accurately. He makes a great claim, but there is a problem with it: all of the samples were submitted blind. LDA weren’t told anything about the samples that might tip off the lab’s staff.

Perhaps more chillingly: One sample taken during the post period when theoretically no EPO should have been detectable was deemed positive by one of the labs.

BKW spoke to Paul Strauss of the Agency for Cycling Ethics to get some perspective on the issue. He began by saying, “WADA needs to look at this very seriously.”

The first observation he made was to note that the markers used to distinguish EPO depend on its production. He says the test WADA uses is optimized to find Amgen-produced EPO, while EPO produced in Mexico or China, and recombinant EPO can all escape detection if lab technicians only look for Amgen EPO.

Strauss also said that the criteria for a positive result can and do vary from one lab to another.

Ultimately, it may be that in the short term the best way to deliver clean riders to the start of races will come through programs such as Strauss’ Agency for Cycling Ethics, Paul Scott’s Scott Analytics or Danish physician Rasmus Damsgaard’s testing program.

“Longitudinal analysis which uses statistics to compare individuals and populations of athletes is very effective in raising a suspicion of doping in a particular athlete,” Strauss said.

However, even longitudinal testing has its own drawbacks. Strauss continued, “Its weakness is that it is not specific as to the exact drug being used. This leads to the problem of pursuing a sanctionable event for doping on a non-analytical adverse finding.”

It may be a foregone conclusion that catching athletes using performance enhancing drugs will remain an imperfect science. The question that remains: What we are willing to accept as the margin of error—the innocent or the guilty? What is the greater injustice: To allow some cheaters to escape detection and gain wins that shouldn’t rightfully be theirs, or to wrongly convict the occasional athlete who didn’t break the rules?

If we look to legal systems for parallel, this is where the United States and some European countries differ significantly. The American view of justice is that no innocent person should be convicted (in theory, if not in actual practice), while many countries, such as France with its Napoleonic Code, would rather scoop up a few innocents along with all the guilty. This characterization paints with a broad brush, but it seems a helpful way to frame what ought to be a conversation for how drug testing should be considered.

Even if Landis had succeeded in his defense, the result would hardly have been as damning as this study which was funded in part by the Danish anti-doping agency. The message is simple: Use recombinant EPO and finish your boost phase before the Tour starts; we won’t catch you.

Denied!

So the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has rendered its decision in the Floyd Landis case. Saying that his charges were “unfounded,” the court delivered a shocking rebuke to the Landis defense.

The 3-0 decision found no merit at all in Landis’ defense which is surprising given that even the American Arbitration Association (AAA) panel uniformly agreed that there were problems with the work performed by the French National Anti-Doping Laboratory at Chatenay-Malabry (LNDD), though ultimately they weren’t considered enough to exonerate him. You may recall that the panel found the LNDD had performed the initial test resulting the non-negative testosterone-epitestosterone result poorly enough to disallow the finding. It also stated that it might be difficult to find athletes guilty in the future should the LNDD continue to perform work in a manner other than specified by the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA).

Bluntly put, CAS would not have thrown out the initial T:E result. The panel stated in its decision the lab was guilty of nothing more than "minor procedural imperfections." One could be forgiven for thinking of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman presiding over the proceedings with a “What, me worry?” bubble above his head.

The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart, was quoted saying, “We did a full review of the evidence from the start. Before we brought charges in this case, every day we reviewed the evidence we had and asked the same question, ‘does this point to a doping violation?’ We were comfortable that we had the case when we started.”

This statement simply isn’t supported by the facts of the proceeding. Tygart never questioned the validity of the test results that lead to Landis’ prosecution; rather than mount an inquiry for the truth, Tygart and USADA worked to defend the LNDD.

I’ve read the full transcript of the AAA hearing at Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, California. More than 1000 pages. I don’t see how a reasonable, rational person who doesn’t have agenda can come to a conclusion other than Floyd Landis wasn’t caught doping. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was innocent, but if he was doing something, LNDD didn’t find it. That’s fundamentally the problem with the outcome; the truth got swept aside in the rush to get a conviction.

Landis’ next step (Surely you didn’t think the plus-size gal had had her moment on stage?) would be to challenge the outcome in U.S. federal court. Such a move has been hinted at in the past by Landis’ attorney, Maurice Suh. This move may be in doubt given that the panel took the extraordinary step of assessing Landis $100,000 of USADA’s defense costs as a penalty for “the unprecedented scope and intensity of the technical challenges" the defense raised despite the fact that they had been rejected in the first proceeding.

This is a punishment for style, not substance, and that goes against everything Americans understand the judicial process to be.

If athletes who appeal a conviction are punished for, in essence, appealing the conviction, this outcome will have a very chilling effect on any athlete attempting to defend him or herself against doping charges, whether or not the lab work was performed correctly.


Image courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International

Tornado Tom ... Indeed

If outrage or incomprehension was your reaction to news of Tom Boonen's positive test for cocaine, then you get the situation better than he does. To be fair, a cyclist of Boonen's stature in Belgium is a rock star, which is a sort of demi-god, and like other figures of mythical status can generally get away with acts that would be criminal by mortal standards. Think Apollo.

A Belgian King of the Classics. Yes, he's supposed to drive a Porsche. And yes, he's supposed to get stopped for speeding; he's a bike racer! But cocaine? That rock star comment was supposed to be metaphoric. Oops.

The situation seems no different than when Jan Ullrich was caught for taking ecstasy. It seems likely it was a "just this once" sort of mistake. Only Boonen had Ullrich's example to show what can go wrong. Imagine yourself in a club and you're the most popular guy there. I know, but try to imagine it. You're going to be offered everything in that club. Everything. There are at least a few of those things to which, as one of the world's great bike racers, you need to have the cojones to say , "No."

The problem here is that cycling is in such a tenuous state of credibility that the only way this situation could be worse was if Boonen had been riding for a team such as High Road, CSC or Slipstream that has taken great public steps to demonstrate it's riders are clean.

Drunk driving would be understandable; irresponsible, but understandable. Alcohol is an acceptable (at minimum) part of a meal. A fourth (or fifth) glass of wine or beer before getting in the car is a mistake that some folks make. But cocaine comes with the taint of party boy, which implies a different sort of recklessness. And because cocaine is a stimulant par excellence, if you didn't think, "Boy, I could make my bike go a million kilometers per hour on this stuff," we'd have to question your sanity, not your judgement. And there's the rub. For the bike racer, anything that can be construed as a drug ought to be seen as off-limits.

Perhaps Tom didn't get the memo. The memo came from the viewing audience. It was brief. It said, "Don't embarrass our sport anymore."

Under other circumstances, his apology would have been acceptable, applaudable even. He said, "Lately, my name has appeared several times in the news in a negative manner. I realise that with this I have hurt my family, my friends, my team and my fans. I wish to apologise for that. But I am not perfect. I will accept the consequences. You will understand that in spite of everything that has been written, rightfully or wrongly, I am not here to defend my conduct."

That wasn't good enough. Frankly, it smacks of Johann Museeuw's apology for not being "100 percent honest" during his days as a racer. Now, more than ever, we need someone caught red-handed to step up and say, "Yes, I did (insert name of drug here), and I apologize. I don't know what I was thinking."

Don't let the fact that his team is standing behind him obscure the gravity of the situation. Lefevre can be credibly accused of being one of the better architects of systemic doping in the peloton. To expect exemplary leadership from him is like asking a fifth grader to teach calculus; it's not fair because he just doesn't get it.

Which, is exactly Tornado Tom's problem. He can't possibly be seeing the issue through our eyes, otherwise such a gaff would never have occurred. And now that we have a clear illustration that his view of the "doping problem" isn't our view of the "doping problem" it calls into question his judgement as a whole. It hurts, because he's one of the last guys in the peloton we wanted this from.

Now we are faced with the ugly question of wondering what else Boonen may find acceptable on a "just this once" basis.


Photo courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International

Justice, ASO Style

Each day Alberto Contador wears the pink jersey at the Giro d’Italia he proves his mettle as a Grand Tour rider. Contador is putting on an impressive display of talent and determination (Andreas Kloden’s disappointment at being unseated as the team’s leader notwithstanding) after arriving at the Giro in something other than peak form. It’s a rare rider who can ride into better shape as a grand tour progresses.

To say Contador will arrive in Milan to take his second Grant Tour would be putting the pack before the breakaway, but his chances do look good. Contador’s transfer to Astana to follow Johan Bruyneel raised eyebrows or didn’t, depending on your outlook on the refugee of Operacion Puerto. Bruyneel retained the services of Rasmus Damsgaard and since doing so there hasn’t been a single whisper about the team’s, uh, cleanliness. No accusations, no positive tests, no non-starters, just a string of wins in every stage race they have entered this season save the Tour de Georgia.

The message Astana has been sending is that by being not just competitive, but consistently the most competitive team in stage races during the 2008 season (as evidenced by their victories thus far), they deserve to race the Tour de France.

Someone might want to phone Johan Bruyneel.

The Amaury Sport Organization’s problem with Astana seems to be as much about Bruyneel as it does the previous management of Astana. While Mssrs. Prudhomme and company haven’t said as much, their concern about Lance Armstrong—and by extension his methods and his team—hasn’t abated. If anything, Contador’s win last year was all the confirmation they needed that Bruyneel’s team must be up to something other than fair play.

Their ongoing suspicion of Astana—whether warranted or not—makes a tragic statement about ASO’s regard for team-retained longitudinal testing programs. It’s unlikely they know something about the possible fallibility of these programs that the rest of the world doesn’t, so if they are, in fact, suspicious of the programs themselves then we are entering a new era marked more by cynicism than proactive science.

Trust is a human contract that the PRO peloton has killed more convincingly than Nietzsche’s announcement that God is dead. ASO wants its race to be won by a rider utterly beyond suspicion, though how that can be accomplished is a matter that could be debated until the start of the ’09 Tour. One thing is certain: They don’t trust anyone riding in azure and yellow.

It’s clear that Astana’s riders and management believe that by demonstrating the team’s competitive worthiness that they will have earned the right to race the Tour de France. Leipheimer has illustrated the team’s naivete by saying, “We deserve to be in the Tour de France.” For those who aren’t clear on the concept (Leipheimer included), the Tour de France is a private company and rather like a restaurant, they have elected to retain the right to choose whom they will serve. Think of it as a ‘no shoes, no shirt' clause for the doping set.

Should Alberto Contador arrive in Milan the color of a flamingo, many people will believe that Astana's performances justify an invitation for the Tour. To ASO, the exact opposite will be true: Without having more thoroughly cleared up suspicions and concerns before winning yet another grand tour, ASO will believe its actions to be completely just. Moreover, winning the Giro despite the team’s lack of preparation will be proof positive to the Tour de France that Astana must be doing something shady.

Image courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International

Six Figures

Jan Ullrich has elected to pay a fine to the Bonn Prosecutor’s office, thus ending the investigation into his possible sporting fraud through doping. Ullrich is reported to have paid six-figures to make the investigation go away. Most of us wouldn't voluntarily write a check that large unless real estate was involved.

Naturally, the out-of-court settlement allows Ullrich to admit no guilt. That works fine for major corporations, but in this instance it has the feel of closing the gate after the horse has left the barn.

The case began after allegations arose that Ullrich was one of the athletes who had used the services of Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes’s Spanish clinic. An alias for Ullrich had been found in the doctor’s records. That was enough to send German authorities into action.

German authorities launched a criminal inquiry that allowed them to request blood and plasma from Spanish officials. The basis of the criminal complaint was sporting fraud, that by winning the Tour de France while using banned substances and forbidden doping techniques, Ullrich had defrauded his employer of millions of Euro, thus illegally increasing his income.

The authorities tested both blood and plasma found at Fuentes’s clinic. Prosecutors, in a turn that wouldn’t fly in the U.S., announced that they had confirmed a DNA match between the seized blood and plasma and Ullrich. As trials by public go, the announcement was effective enough that Ullrich retired from the sport almost immediately after the announcement.

In a gentler time, the world might have let Ullrich go quietly. But there has been a widespread desire to know the truth, to find out just how prevalent doping was, if only one rider at a time.

Ullrich’s settlement lacks the finality of a conviction in court and while he insists he has done nothing wrong—that he has never used performance enhancing drugs or used illicit means to boost his performance—there is ample credible evidence that he all but had Fuentes on a retainer. Even though the criminal investigation has ended, there is more than enough damning evidence to have tarnished the athlete’s career

So the chapter on doping titled “Jan Ullrich” is at an end, right? Wrong. Ullrich’s settlement seems to be an effort into stopping any further inquiry into his alleged (or confirmed) doping. Unfortunately, Ullrich has a history of underestimating his opposition. First it was Marco Pantani. Then Lance Armstrong. Then the German Cycling Federation when he moved to Switzerland and registered as a Swiss pro; that didn’t stop the investigation into his activity as he was employed by a German team. It could just be that Ullrich hasn’t taken into account the next phase of “The Persecution of Jan Ullrich.”

T-Mobile has ample evidence to file a civil claim against him.

To the degree that his settlement was meant to end investigation into doping activities by the Olympic Gold Medalist, Ullrich was successful, but to the degree that the settlement was meant to protect his legacy, and ultimately his Yellow Jersey from the 1997 Tour de France, the settlement might prove to be fuel for a civil claim by T-Mobile. If they do file suit and prevail in court, ASO is guaranteed to come calling for that yellow shirt.

For the PROs of the '90s, riding in a doped peloton was a classic double-bind. The riders were damned if they rode clean and damned if they abandoned their values to be competitive. And now it is our turn.

As fans of cycling, there is no satisfactory outcome for us. If we choose to endorse the retroactive rewriting of the record books, we find ourselves on a slippery slope that would eventually see not only Bjarne Riis’ and Ullrich’s Yellow Jerseys seized, but also that of Marco Pantani and the Polka-Dot Jerseys of Richard Virenque on our way to record books filled with names we don’t recognize as greats.

If, instead, we dismiss the doping of the '90s as being an unfortunate footnote to cycling’s past, we turn our backs on those honest athletes who suffered at the hands of a supercharged peloton, suffered as only Prometheus could appreciate. Who says Ullrich shouldn't pay for his part?


Photo courtesy of John Pierce, Photosport International

Raw Deal

I read Paul Kimmage’s Rough Ride in the spring of 1991. Why? I’m not sure to this day. I didn’t believe there was a drug problem in professional cycling and am not by nature a suspicious sort. Yet, for some reason, I decided to pick it up.

The picture Kimmage painted was so alien to what I thought I knew of professional cycling as to be practically science fiction. His was a dystopian world where the dreams of hard working innocents are dashed in a daily regimen. Worse than the tribulations mortals suffered at the hands of the gods in Greek Mythology, to race a Grand Tour among the PROs was clearly preferable to having your liver pecked out by an eagle on a nightly basis. Especially if you raced clean.

I hadn’t thought much of the book for some seventeen years. Then one day in a blaze of discretionary spending, I went nuts on Amazon and picked up a half dozen volumes without which my life seemed incomplete.

As I read the revised introduction I began to see all that I had missed in my first reading. In 1991, I knew the players, but not in the way I do now. The intervening years have given me time to read more about each of the protagonists and to become familiar with others whose names were little more than a footnote to me then. A line from the James Tate poem “The Lost Pilot” came to me as I read: He was more wronged than Job.

The stunner in this isn’t how Kimmage suffered as a pro trying to race clean. No, he was really just incidental damage in a system gone awry. There was nothing particularly malicious in his treatment as he got chewed up racing on bread and water. No, the outrage is how he was treated for, as the French call it, craché dans la soupe—spitting in the soup.

Rider after rider disputed the truth he told, and his hero and team leader Stephen Roche betrayed him and insulted him in a way that might make Roger Clemens smile. And while what was done to Kimmage was unfair and tragic, his personal tragedy was nothing compared to what the sport itself suffered as a result of hanging him out to dry.

Shakespeare himself would appreciate the cruel turn of events that occurred in 1990. As Kimmage was working on Rough Ride, the peloton was familiarizing itself with EPO. And by familiarizing itself, I mean the first Dutch cyclists were having heart attacks in their sleep.

Kimmage showed how the lack of testing allowed the cancer of doping to grow unchecked from the beginning of cycling through to the 1980s. The late 1980s ushered in a new age thanks to few tests, lax testing protocols, a culture that actively encouraged doping as a coping mechanism and three Italian doctors who saw EPO as something of a real-time eugenics program—a way to help the athlete to reach his full potential. It’s fair to wonder if Greg LeMond’s 1990 win at the Tour de France was the last clean win at the Tour.

In reading about Kimmage’s relationship with Irish journalist David Walsh—yes, that David Walsh—a different portrait of Walsh appears. Rather than the single-minded writer known for pursuing any rumor about Lance Armstrong, one sees a knowledgeable sports journalist mentoring a cyclist disillusioned with his sport because of his inability to get on board with doping. One can see how Walsh might have adopted Kimmage’s disillusionment as his own and how he may have grown outraged at those who victimized Kimmage for speaking the truth.

The cautionary tale here isn’t that in pro cycling you will face drug use. No, the cautionary tale is that by ignoring the doping problem when it was relatively simple and unsophisticated, the UCI missed the opportunity to get on top of the problem before it entered the realm of systematic practice. No longer was it the game of the farm boys.

Once doping became the province of doctors who introduced the athletes to the new drugs and team managers who instructed the doctors who peaked when, pro cyclists lost their dream. Kimmage’s story is not uncommon; on the contrary, his is the story of most cyclists of the modern era. It is the destruction of one cyclist's dignity after another.

Coercion

Astana’s exclusion from ASO events has resulted in an unsurprising backlash in opinion against ASO’s policies, or perhaps more accurately, it’s lack of them. It has also resulted in one rather surprising reaction. Levi Leipheimer’s www.letleviride.com is taking a novel approach to race selection: coercion.

Based on the theory that public support for the top American rider in the pro peloton can sway the organizers of the Tour de France into changing its team selections, Let Levi Ride supposes that support for one rider can overcome the disdain ASO feels for an entire team.

Coercion, of course, isn’t new to the pro peloton. David Walsh theorized that among dopers there are the draggers and the dragged. His need to find a culprit, a bad guy, on which to pin blame for the evil of doping is simpleminded. Not a single interview with a rider who has confessed to doping has ever turned up a bully who said, “Take this, or else.” However, many riders have copped to the belief that doping was so rampant that unless they took EPO, they would wind up unemployed.

It was this fear of unemployment that moved the majority of the peloton from occasional steroid, amphetamine and caffeine usage to rampant EPO use. The coercion riders felt was powerful enough to overcome the resistance of even some of the most ardently anti-drug cyclists.

Is it possible that Levi’s ploy could work? Could an outpouring of support from Americans for one American rider cause ASO—an organization pathologically opposed to further embarrassment—to rethink its exclusion of the architect of the last eight Tour de France victories? It doesn’t seem likely and any attempt to force the French hand seems likely to result in further outrage on the part of Tour organizers, let alone the French national psyche.

Americans’ outrage over Astana’s exclusion seems myopic to Europeans. Mistrust for Bryneel and Contador is so widespread as to be the starting point for all attitudes toward the pair. And in a land where a sacrifice of the rights of an individual in the quest for the greater good is seen as both fair and logical, the loss of one over-the-hill rider’s shot at not winning the Tour de France yet again isn’t considered tragic.

Coercion will change things in cycling once more. Each clean rider who misses a ride in an important race, or is sent home following a teammate’s non-negative result (as the riders from Cofidis were in last year’s Tour) is going to get pissed off. Is there an anger greater than that of the unjustly persecuted man?

And so the threat has changed for the pro peloton. With sponsors departing the sport, the threat now is that a rider could wind up unemployed not because he wasn’t fast enough, but because of his teammate’s misdeeds. The need for a real brotherhood among riders has never been higher. Men may go crazy one by one, but the road back to salvation can only be found in a community.

A Stain on Yellow

Astana is out of the Tour de France. No sooner than High Road was refused entry to the Giro, RCS reconsidered and gave the team a spot. And Operation Puerto has been reopened. Even Hollywood blockbusters don’t have this many twists of plot.

There can be little doubt that ASO and RCS want drugs out of cycling. And frankly, if it’s what ASO and RCS wants, then that is where the sport will go; the small race organizers don’t have much influence for good or ill.

Here’s what’s so fascinating about Europe: The complete lack of rationality in the administration of justice. Last year at the Tour (as if you don’t remember) Astana wasn’t the only embarrassment. Certainly Cofidis and T-Mobile brought some amount of embarrassment to the event courtesy Christian Moreni and Patrick Sinkewitz. But can anything in the entire 2007 season compare to Michael Rasmussen being fired from Rabobank?

So how is it that Rabobank will be at Paris-Nice and, ergo, the Tour de France? ASO clearly deserves the right to restrict invitations to only those teams that meet its standards. When asked about Rabobank, Patrice Clerc responded that the problems with Rabobank were limited to one rider and a director: Michael Rasmussen and Theo de Rooy, respectively, and not with the sponsor. Similarly, the problems at Astana could be said to be limited to a director, Mark Biver, and two riders, Alexander Vinokourov and Andrei Kashechkin. Umm, so how are they different again?

To be fair, the French are suspicious of Johan Bruyneel the way cats are suspicious of dogs. He’s the only team director with more than five victories to his name and the fact that he replicated his previous success with Armstrong with the second youngest Tour winner ever give them ample reason to worry that Contador could stand on the podium until his 33rd birthday—another nine years. ASO’s exclusion of Astana is as much about Bruyneel as it is Vinokourov et al.

Is refusing entry to Astana supportable? Maybe. But the only way it can seem a remotely just decision is if Rabobank is refused entry as well.

The problem with ASO’s inconsistent selection process is that it makes their choices seem arbitrary. If we were discussing rock musicians or starlets, irrational would be a selling point, but when it’s a corporation organizing the largest annual sporting event it’s a little scary.

The worst part is the irony. The stain on cycling caused by doping has tarnished the Tour, though not irreparably. However, if ASO uses arbitrary criteria to exclude teams, or applies objective criteria inconsistently, their disrespect for clean riders will cause a new problem that doping control can’t solve. There is no stain like crazy.

Photo courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International.

Positively Positive?

When Basque rider Iban Mayo of the Saunier Duval team tested positive during the Tour de France for EPO, hardly anyone was surprised. Those who follow professional cycling took the single non-negative test result of Mayo’s A sample as yet another example of how cycling had distinguished itself as the most corrupt of sports.

According to a release by the Spanish Cycling Federation issued Monday, Mayo has been cleared, thanks to a negative test result of Mayo’s B sample. Testing was performed on his B sample at a laboratory in Belgium and the results reviewed in Australia, neither of which confirmed the initial positive test.

WADA’s own rules indicate that should have been the end of the story, more or less. BKW spoke to a doping expert who requested anonymity for this story; he said it was curious the lab in Gent, Belgium, was chosen to test the B sample. According to the expert, the lab in Belgium isn’t particularly competent to perform EPO testing. On the other hand, he said that while the Paris lab’s IRMS group is “atrocious,” their EPO and blood group is “quite good.” Remember, the doctor who helped to formulate the EPO urine test is based at this lab.

According to our source, any result from testing the B sample that does not confirm the non-negative A sample is ordinarily considered a negative test, and the end of the case. It is not unheard of to test the sample further, but the case is closed once any result other than positive is returned, and we are told that judging an EPO test is very simple, that the results are very “cut and dry.” So when the UCI’s Anne Gripper said that “Mayo’s B sample wasn’t negative, it was inconclusive,” the testing community would ordinarily judge such an outcome negative, the end of the case. For further testing to take place, the UCI must allege something extraordinary took place, say, incompetence at the Gent lab. Gripper has indicated a willingness to appeal the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Mayo’s situation is exactly the converse of the Landis case. If all lab work was performed properly, Mayo is innocent of doping. If, however, the A test was properly administered and the B test alone botched, Mayo could conceivably have doped and still be acquitted. Gripper has indicated she believes the case is worth pursuing. But for this case to go forward, it appears that the UCI will have to accuse a WADA lab of shoddy work.

The question is: Why would they be willing to risk such a self-indictment? Pursuing such a case seems a lose-lose for the UCI. If they won the case against Mayo, it would undermine the case against Landis by demonstrating faulty lab work. And if the UCI lost the case against Mayo, their professed doubt of a WADA lab would certainly fuel the Landis defense team’s contention that the labs do not perform without flaw.

Photo courtesy: Saunier Duval-Prodir Pro Cycling Team

The Fix Is In

Had Floyd Landis’ arbitration been handled by the American judicial system, the 2006 winner of the Tour de France would have red hair. Put another way, were logic the overriding principle used for deciding the arbitration outcome, the matter would be settled once and for all. Unfortunately, the arbitrators managed to set aside their own concerns and find in favor of USADA.

In the American court system, material found in an illegal search is disallowed in court proceedings. So if the basis of a search is found to be logically flawed, the search is thrown out. The arbitrators struck down the initial adverse T/E result, saying it DID NOT meet the requirement for a positive test.

That bears repeating. In the initial test that started this process, the arbitrators found that Floyd Landis did not test positive. Logically, if the initial test was not positive, there should not be grounds for the flawed IRMS test that USADA claims shows Landis used exogenous testosterone.

Equally disturbing is the arbitrators’ threat that if similar procedural errors such as those that were demonstrated during the Landis hearing were to continue, they might dismiss such a case. “The Panel finds that the practises of the Lab in training its employees appears to lack the vigor the Panel would expect in the circumstances given the enormous consequences to athletes.” That is the most serious indictment of the testing process ever offered by a sympathetic party. And yet, the majority wrote, “If such practices continue, it may well be that in the future, an error like this could result in the dismissal” of the case against the athlete.

Hello? How could errors dismissed in this case be considered substantive enough to derail a case in the future? The fix is in. The arbitrators have effectively said, “Okay, we’ll let you slide this time, but don’t embarrass us or yourselves again.” It is further demonstration that this process has been a kangaroo court meant to satisfy a political agenda rather than a judicial process meant to uncover the truth. No reasonable person can come to the conclusion that justice has been served if substandard lab work can result in two different findings on two different days. That’s not justice, that’s mercy; only mercy isn’t generally granted to the prosecution.

If LNDD’s (Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage / National Anti-doping Laboratory) work ethic will be deemed unacceptable in the future, then it is unacceptable today. And if it is unacceptable today, then a miscarriage of justice has been served.

One cannot be surprised that the arbitrator chosen by Landis’ team, Christopher Campbell, found in favor of Landis. He was supposed to be sympathetic. However, strenuous dissent deserves the light of day. Campbell wrote: "The documents supplied by LNDD are so filled with errors that they do not support an Adverse Analytical Finding. Mr. Landis should be found innocent." He went on to point out a larger problem of competence: "If the LNDD couldn't get the T-E ratio test right, how can a person have any confidence that LNDD got the much more complicated IRMS test correct?"

Here’s the scary part. This process shows that labs are allowed to execute the shoddiest of work in order to get some sort of positive test. Once they achieve that result, they can then begin a fishing expedition employing all means necessary (including character assassination) in order to prove their case.

One last question: Would you want to be a pro cyclist right now?

Photo courtesy: msnbc

Catching the Criminals

At the Landis hearings the testimonies by Drs. Don Catlin, John Amory and Wolfram Meier-Augenstein add up in a surprising way. It never seemed possible—let alone likely—that the average public would follow the science involved in the IRMS testing, but the transcripts are comprehensible. Near real-time access to the proceedings has been possible thanks to Trust But Verify. Surprisingly, Catlin, Amory and Meier-Augenstein were able to paint a coherent picture of issues that seem to give any reasonable person pause to consider the contents of Mr. Landis’ urine last July.

Catlin has essentially testified that to be a WADA-accredited lab, one of the most important responsibilities a lab shoulders is not bearing witness against another lab. The distinction is significant in that it defines a lab’s duty not as fact-finding instrument but enforcement apparatus.

Amory provided testimony on the only peer-reviewed study of testosterone gel use as a recovery aid. This is exactly what WADA alleges Landis did. The study says it doesn’t work. Now, athletes have been known to be terminally stupid, stupid enough to believe that old wives’ tales will make them invincible. Considering that it is possible that Landis could, unfortunately, be that stupid (witness his dealings with one Will Geoghegan), Amory went on to testify that Landis’ test profile didn’t fit any known profile of metabolized testosterone gel. Put another way Amory said, “Eating a truckload of oranges won’t make you faster, but if you try it anyway, your urine will come out orange and as we can see, Mr. Landis’ urine is still clear.”

And flown in from Ireland, Meier-Augenstein told us in terms accurate to a thousandth of an inch close is good in horseshoes and hand grenades but the margin of error in the LNDD work was too great to consider positive. This is like dropping a bomb in Iran. It’s close to Iraq, and shares 75% of the spelling, right down to the order of the first three letters; could the difference between “Q” and “N” really be that big a deal? Only if you want to avoid an international incident. Oops.

Occasionally, an accused athlete will cry out that he or she is the subject of a conspiracy. Judging from the LNDD records, the work seems too shoddy to meet the standard for deliberate. So that brings up the question: Could it be WADA believes it must not only not lose any case it prosecutes, but it must also get results? Could it be that Pound, Tygart and company believe the organization must have periodic prosecutions no matter how tenuous the data? This smacks of the often-rumored scene in which Dick Cheney screams at the CIA: “Find me some damn WMDs!”

Catlin’s testimony is the most disturbing of the bunch. Testimony concerning the WADA laboratory code of ethics that Catlin drafted—but was changed by someone else—shows that labs are not to testify against other labs. WADA strategy is to circle the wagons first and foremost. In other words, prosecution trumps truth. What is shocking is that finding the truth is not a priority. Implicitly, the mission is to get positive tests and then to do anything necessary to support the result, rather than make sure the result is accurate.

Whether or not Landis doped, the system exposed in the course of these proceedings should not be tolerated. It is not based on a presumption of innocence nor does it place a supreme value on fact. American tax dollars should not fund this operation. It seems likely now Landis didn’t dope and WADA and USADA are colluding to cover the incompetence of the lab with an organizational structure designed not to protect the sport but to legitimize careless lab work as irrefutable proof. USADA is funded by Congress. If you vote, you get say in whether or not these practices continue. By writing your Congressman, you might help save cycling from a fate worse than doping.

This entry was written out of love, frustration and a desire to see some clean, healthy competition in the PRO peloton. Thanks to Padraig for this great contribution.

At All Cost

Is it any wonder that WADA is going after Floyd Landis tooth and nail? Consider a possible situation in the abstract: A cyclist tests positive. Following an evaluation of testing procedure, auditors find that procedures were skipped, machines mis-calibrated and rights violated. A reasonable person could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the resulting black eye to WADA would undermine public confidence to such a degree that there would be little respect for the findings. Kinda like how we view intelligence reports of WMDs by the CIA in say, oh, any Middle Eastern nation. Put another way, if WADA were to lose such a case, many people would—rightly or wrongly—come to the conclusion that the organization lacked the ability to catch the real dopers and would mistrust any result as yet another false-positive. Ever heard of the boy who cried wolf? WADA knows lost cases undermine credibility, which is why the organization believes it can’t afford to lose a single doping case. But such a strategy is counterproductive.

Whether you believe Landis’ Wiki-defense or not, the truth is none of us really know if he doped. He makes a compelling case for his innocence, but we really don’t know. And the truth is there are cyclists who are innocent of doping but whose names have been forever tarnished. Take the case of hapless Danilo Hondo.

Danilo Hondo has been shown to have had such a low concentration of Caphedon in his body that it not only didn’t affect his performance but it was most probably too tiny an amount to be deliberately administered. Put another way, he didn’t mistakenly take too little, such as might happen in an error concerning order of magnitude where someone takes 10mcg instead of 10mg. This guy didn’t intend to dope and didn’t benefit from the presence of the drug in his system.

He received the same penalty as a rider who doped in order to win as a result of a policy known as “strict liability.” It dictates a zero-tolerance environment (adopted to give the appearance of being tough on dopers) in which any stray compound found in a pro’s system results in a penalty.

Another hypothetical: Suppose you are driving down the street in a 35 mph zone. You approach a construction site that is soon to be a new school. You miss the new 25 mph speed limit sign and an officer notices continued rate of speed. He pulls you over. In the United States, the officer has leeway to give you a warning instead of a ticket for what would otherwise still be a minor infraction. In the world of WADA, you don’t drive for two years. Period.

Some people may think that the “strict liability” standard is reasonable. It is not. American jurisprudence is built on the idea that intent is significant when a crime is committed. The courts in America hold that the penalty for striking a pedestrian with your car should be different if you never saw the pedestrian and did so only accidentally than if the pedestrian was your former boss and you waited outside of work for the chance to run him down and subsequently backed over him before fleeing to Tahiti. Grading crimes according to severity helps to give the public the perception that outcomes are fair. Stealing a pack of gum is not the same as stealing a car, no?

In the Landis case the defense has accused WADA and the lab at Chatenay-Malabry of poor record keeping, shoddy lab work, changing and erasing computer data and refusing to let their representatives attend a procedure WADA’s own rules grant. An American prosecutor accused of such action could wind up disbarred.

WADA tested B-samples of Landis’s urine to which the A-sample was clean—this is a clear violation of its own procedure. Logically, if the A-sample was clean, the B-sample cannot be tainted, provided the lab did the work correctly in the first place. If the lab didn’t do the work correctly then it shouldn’t be permitted to perform any further testing until an audit of its procedures and equipment has been performed. In finding a B-sample positive when an A-sample is negative, only one thing has been proven: The lab is not performing its science consistently. Repetition of results is one of the most basic standards of science and any lab that can’t manage that isn’t much of a lab.

Because the administrative process is not transparent and WADA and USADA seem engaged in a win-at-all-costs ideology, we are unlikely ever to learn the real truth to whether or not Floyd Landis doped at the Tour de France. If we cannot be certain that the outcome was justly based on fact, then there are four victims: The first is Landis; he deserves an outcome based on the truth, whether he doped or not. The second is WADA; if we are not convinced justice was served, we will not trust it is fulfilling its mission. The third is the sport itself, which is losing fans due to the general mistrust for all cyclists in the PRO peloton. And the final victim, of course, is us; if we are not convinced WADA is pursuing its mission competently and that the athletes are clean, we are robbed enjoyment of our favorite sport.

This entry was written out of love, frustration and a desire to see some clean, healthy competition in the PRO peloton. Thanks to Padraig for this great contribution.

Photo Courtesy: www.theage.com

Omerta

The term “Omerta” is known as the silence of the mob. Don’t rat. Until recently, the term has only been used in connection with the mafia. Recently, though, Omerta has come to be identified with cycling’s collective silence on the problem of doping. Attached to the term in its original usage was an odd sense of honor and integrity, a captain-goes-down-with-the-ship mentality. If caught, you defended yourself without implicating anyone else and if convicted, you did your time … quietly. Plea deals were for drunks, not gangsters.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present Ivan Basso, Mister “I was only researching the possibility of doping, but didn’t actually dope just yet.” If you want to be an honorable louse, this is how it is done. He will tell nothing of what he might know, only of his involvement in what he says was yet to become doping. Lest anyone think his admission is a step in the right direction, this is Omerta at its classic best. He has copped to only what they have irrefutable proof of. This isn't a light bulb in the darkness but a flashlight pointed the wrong way--after the Giro victory was on the books.

Should anyone think his admission will help turn the tide against doping, what he has done, in fact, is teach his brethren a sort of low-impact plea. His statements were to full disclosure what the Toyota Prius is to a carbon footprint. Frankly, his behavior stands in stark contrast to what are now the typical displays of mob togetherness as seen in trials such as John Gotti's and on the Sopranos: "If I'm going, you're going too." Should we actually praise Basso for his amazing integrity? Not if we want a dope-free sport.

This entry was written out of love, frustration and a desire to see some clean, healthy competition in the PRO peloton. Thanks to Padraig for this great contribution.

Blah, Blah, Doping, Blah, Blah

What can I say that has not already been said about doping in cycling?

When I started BKW my goal was simple: To shed light on the cool and often overlooked aspects of cycling. To keep all my posts positive and avoid the negatives of the sport. Focus on the little things. All well and good, but I don't think I can take much more of this doping crap. I do not even know where to begin. Do I blame the journalists, the riders, the doctors, the DS, Dick Pound, the UCI, WADA, Cyclingnews.com, that damn rock 'n roll music, MTV, or myself? Has my patience run out before everyone else's?

I would like to hear from you, so post your thoughts and your opinions. What's going on in our sport and where does it leave the diehard fans of PROfessional cycling?