Thursday, December 06, 2007

Thursday Roundup

News
The VeloNews reports that, ostensibly in the wake of sponsorship defections due to doping scandals, USA Cycling has hired a business specialist who will help to generate outside revenues and develop "affinity partnerships" within the cycling industry in order to provide monies for cycling in the US. In a PM Update the VN reports that Alexander Vinokourov got a one year suspension for blood dopjng from his Kasakh cycling federation, and the UCI is angry.



The VeloNews Mailbag contains letters addressing the sponsorship issue as well as a note or two which proclaim that yes you can still have fun as a roadie.

The CyclingNews somewhat surprisingly posts some good sponsorship news, at least for Cofidis riders and fans. The CyclingNews Flash also reports the light one year ban for Alexander Vinokourov. And in their regular PM update the CN reports on the infamous Dr. Fuentes:

"They considered me a criminal. The papers were printed with my name and photos of me, while talking of hidden trafficking using initials," Fuentes said to Filippo Maria Ricci of La Gazzetta dello Sport. The resident of San Bartolomé de Tirajana (Gran Canaria, Canary Islands) was arrested shortly after the case came to public light in May 2006. "The judgement for the journalists was already written, and instead I was released. The €120,000 bail? I have not yet received it back because there is an appeal against the sentence.

A later CyclingNews says Vino is retiring, despite comments by Suh, representing him, that he's looking forward to returning.

We think there are games being played here -- the Kazakh Federation gave him a ban that is partly served to avoid sanction by the UCI -- but made it an odd one-year term that will force the UCI to spend the money for an appeal to CAS. Wonder what arguments Suh was making? They haven't been public, to our knowledge.

Over at rec.bicycles.racing, known zealot MagillaGorilla says it somehow reflects badly on Landis that Suh is Vino's attorney, because Vino is obviously guilty, and if Suh fronts for him, then Landis must be guilty too. At least, I think that is the argument. The same tar brush has been used on Jacobs in the past. We don't link it because it's pretty nasty in a number of respects.

The Boulder Report is read worthy today as it comments on "Broken" an upcoming "Bicycling" article about riders who are hit by inattentive or just plain careless drivers and then are subsequently also hit by a system which fails to recognize the severity of these tragedies.

The WSJ, in a piece we had overlooked, exposes the denials about doping expressed by members of the PGA who were responding to the announcement of drug testing for their sport. The author seems to remember similar protestations coming from cycling a while back.

Blogs
Epic Riding says that
I think Floyd Landis is either innocent, or horribly delusional. Either way though, his drawn out fight against USADA, WADA and public opinion was messy and ultimately achieved nothing.

Nothing? Not entirely true-- there is quite a legacy in seeing WADA's sausage making machinery on display, and microscopically, the folks here are TBV have made a number of acquaintances we'd never imagined.

6 comments:

PEM said...

I was considering sharing this link for several months now, demonstrating how the human mind will see what it wants to see, even when told or know otherwise. (Look around this person’s site, there are many more amazing illusions.) I was inspired to share this after seeing those NASA pictures.

http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html

After seeing this illusion, can you trust “eyeballing” graphs? Should we not look at more than just the “science”, especially if it involves some degree of human interpretation?

PEM said...

Link did not work. 2nd try

http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html

Sorry, cut and paste below:

http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/
adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html

Mike Solberg said...

Wow.

Here's another amazing one.

http://library.thinkquest.org/
05aug/01744/
shepard_tabletop_illusion.htm

Unfortunately, I doubt the LNDD chromatograms are quite as tricky, but I get your point.

syi

m said...

Guys,

An off topic and non relevant optical illusion is not going to persuade me.

Make it on topic and I might pay attention.

Remember, the 5B peak is anchored in the GC-IRMS . We know it is properly identified from the mix cal. We know that the 5A immediately follows the 5B in the GCMS, the blank urine etc. The 5A is right there after the 5B in the GC-IRMS. There is no getting around that. Ergo the 5A peak is properly identified.

As I keep repeating even Duckstrap hasn't been able to get around that.

Mike Solberg said...

m, just to be clear, when you say the 5bA is anchored in a mix cal run, do you mean USADA 360, 361 or 362, 363? Or something else?

syi

Larry said...

Swim, I think M is referring to the two mix cal acetate runs performed in the IRMS testing, the first before the first blank urine test and the last after the test of the last FL fraction, as shown in USADA 181-184 and USADA 360-363.

M, I spent some time last night going through your argument here. I'd like to call this the "5B Anchor" argument, so we have an easy way to refer to it. IMHO this is a good argument - not conclusive (not in my mind, not yet anyway), but worthy of further discussion. If it's OK with you, what I'd like is for you to ask TBV to set up a discussion topic for the 5B Anchor, and for you to present your argument in a longer format (with references to the documents and whatever supporting information you want to include). I was going to do this for you - I think I understand your point - but this is your argument, and you are likely to present it better than I can. OK?