Friday, May 04, 2007

Friday Roundup

News
The Guardian Unlimited has David Millar again commenting on doping in cycling and on the fact that the Tour de France will start in London this year, something Millar looks forward to. MIllar is particularly concerned in the year after the Landis affair, and his quest is for cycling to find some kind of solution to its doping problems, or it's "The Lord of the Flies" all over again.

Velonews speaks of a meeting between "Natural Enemies" Prudhomme (ASO), Lefevere (ProTour Council) and McQuaid (UCI), shaking hands and making nice about various issues. SciFiTwin provide analysis, below.

Fresno Bee talks about hip resurfacing, with Landis as a successful example.

SLO New Times
plays up Landis's appearances tomorrow, but manages to get key facts wrong, like "Eyebrow-raising levels of testosterone."

Blogs
Rob's Dream Ride Across America may not be reading the papers, so Bunny hop a Bear lets Rob in on Mr. Pound's latest escapades, and equates Dick Pound with Fidel Castro, except Pound is natually angrier at the world due in large part to his given name.

850 "The Buzz" blogs that the horses were tested prior to the Kentucky Derby yesterday, and that Floyd Landis has called a news conderence to protest. Yet another "snark of the day" candidate!

Rant notes that the concept of "jury nullification" as it would relate to the Landis case is not really applicable.

SciFiTwin shows how fighting doping in cycling works, explaining what happened at the meeting Velonews reported above:

1. Get all the same people who have been involved for decades, from various levels, and make sure they continue doing what they do. New ideas are bad.
2. Get those people together and have them talk about how bad doping is and how those naughty athletes need to be punished.
3. Someone, at some point, should bring up the theoretical possibility of genetic doping.
4. Talk about how your doping program is working. No YOURS is great. No REALLY.
5. Blame it all on Floyd Landis and Jan Ullrich. After all, they started this whole damn thing. It's not like there was an event 9 years ago that we all should have learned from or something.
6. Do NOT ask Lefevere about his team results for 2007.
7. Do NOT bring up the doping system. Do not acknowledge that anyone else should be held responsible in a AAF other than the athlete. Certainly a DS would be in the dark. No team doctor or soigneur would be involved. Continue thinking that athletes act alone. Ignore the grassy knoll. Do not pass go.
8. All agree that doping is very bad and something needs to be done. This is important: Don't actually come up with new ideas.
9. Shake hands, pat each other on the back.

Cycledog liked the Landis article in Bicylcling magazine, but thought the rest was Bike Porn.

The Post Parade writes about tomorrow's Kentucky Derby and is taking predictions from friends, relatives, and others in an attempt to give his blog some "meat". Brother Chuck has his money on Floyd Landis, to win?

Strider is back with three possibilities in the Floyd Landis case, even though he really doesn't give a damn. He is picking number three as his preferred scenario.

WhiteRocketRabbit met Chris Carmichael ,who was Lance Armstrong's personal coach. Now that he has met Chris and Floyd Landis he wonders, who will be next?

Josh was at the Tour of Georgia a couple of weeks ago and gives us blow by blow description of the weekend, where much to his astonishment he ran into Floyd Landis at the top of Brass Town Bald. Josh said Floyd was super nice, but that he couldn't afford to be anything else at this point. So here we have our first snark of the day.

Jellomen respond to our coverage by threatening to skip snack time. It sounds like bluster.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

did WADA finally shutdown DPF? I get a mysql error? What is that?

daniel m (a/k/a Rant) said...

Anon,

It means the database behind the forum had a hiccup (or worse). Hopefully someone at DPF will figure it out and get it back on line.

- Rant

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you mentioned the Velonews piece even though there is no Landis content. For people who are even slightly informed about the present state of cycling that Velonews report practically reads like a parody. It could have come straight from the Onion. (It's not Velonews' fault, just the content of the meeting.)

SciFiTwin has good snark on it, but I'll add two things:

1) They have no "buy in" from the riders on their decisions. They are not going to get anywhere until they get real rider buy in to the way they handle doping problems.

2) This is the clearest example of "WE HAVE TO LOOK LIKE WE ARE DOING SOMETHING" I have ever seen.

They just don't get that the SYSTEM is broken. These guys really need to be saved from themselves before they drive the sport further down into the septic tank.

syi

Anonymous said...

Hey Idiot,

And I mean that literally. Bike racing is in the sceptic tank because racers chose to dope. It's like blaming a high murder rate in a give city on the district atourney's office being outspoken, aggressive and proactive.

No one feels good about a chemically aided competion ... fans, sponsors and the general public. Don't blame the USADA for the high preponderance of performance enhancement drug usage in competitions. Each and every time a racer makes the decision to enhance his or her performance with chemicals, the purity of the sport gets drug down a notch. Wake up.

Anonymous said...

Hey 6:41,

Yes, the riders who dope deserve lots of blame. No doubt. But it is the job people who govern the sport to deal with such problems. They have totally and utterly failed to do so through the years, because of power games, and egos, and money. This three way meeting they just held is good example. A good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This meeting is more of the same, and it's still not going to work. Time to try plan B.

syi

Anonymous said...

In the cyclingnews.com report on the big meeting they include this:

"However, after today's meeting, McQuaid seemed to be ready to keep riders from racing before the evidence has been sifted through. "If great riders have to be excluded, the will is there. Other riders will replace them. Clean riders," he said."

Lovely. Nuf said.

Strider said...

G'Day

Competitive cycling tends to bring out the worst in cyclists - which causes them to cheat and turn on each other, as we have seen in the 2004 doping scandal in Australia.

However, competitive cycling is only an offshoot of recreational cycling, which has a much more prevasive and offensive culture, as we see through the utter lack of consideration cyclists show for other road users and pedestrians (including for their safety), particularly through their 'Critical Mass' campaign.

What these things all show is that there is a particularly dangerous and toxic culture at all levels of the cycling sport, which manifests itself both through the nasty people attracted to cycling, and through the nastiness people develop through prolonged exposure to cycling.

This is why I really really hate cyclists.

Anyway, cheerio, cobbers!