Thursday Roundup

News
The CyclingNews this morning says that reports of Rock Racing's roster for the ToC may have been premature. According to Sean Weide of Elevation Sports & Entertainment / Rock Racing:

"Per the race regulations for the Tour of California, a list of riders was submitted to the race organizers. The official Rock Racing roster for the event will be released by AEG after it is reviewed and all riders are cleared to start."

In an update CN says that Alberto Contador is willing to go to Italy to testify in CONI's resurrected OP investigation.

According the The VeloNews the assertion that team rosters for the Tour of California have been submitted to USADA for approval is incorrect. The team rosters are being vetted by USA Cycling and the UCI, not by USADA. According to USADA chief counsel Bill Bock there has been a fundamental misunderstanding:

"We don't have any communications of that sort with AEG or any race organization," Bock said. "There is some misinformation out there that somehow we have information about who is going to participate [in the Tour of California]. We don't have that information, and we don't give out confirmations about investigations or positive test results until after a case has proceeded through our internal process. We are not providing information to any race organizers, in any sport, concerning USADA testing or investigations."

But, even USADA wonders how USA Cycling and the UCI will have and share the kind of information that may disqualify a cyclist from the teams' rosters. Ramifications about athlete information confidentiality don't seem to bother Steve Johnson CEO of USAC:

"USADA protocol hasn't changed, what has changed is our position," Johnson said. "It used to be that we would communicate information only with the athlete. But we felt that it was our responsibility in this case when the Amgen Tour of California organizers asked us to help implement this much more selective policy. We were happy to help, and we discussed it with both the UCI and USADA. If USADA doesn't want to share information with AEG, that is their prerogative, but until someone tells me specifically I cannot share that information I'm happy to help the Amgen Tour of California organizers."

What in the world does that mean?

There are some delicate machinations going on, with some people who may be "shingling past the edge of the roof."*

Steve Johnson's position on behalf of USACycling seems tenuous regarding potential defamation.


Blogs
Brad Keyes speaks of feelings shared with a friend:

He even shares the view with me that, while we like Floyd Landis and think he’d be cool to party with, he’s surely a doper.

Rant has been wondering about a couple of things, one of them is the deadline for the filing of the Landis appeal briefs, which is today, and all that has been lost by everyone in this entire process. Rant is also starting to think we may not know who the "John Doe" in the lawsuit filed against USADA.

Wizbang uses Landis as a referent for their slam of John McCain. They seem to be Huckabee fans.

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*coinage from John Amory MD in testimony at the Landis AAA hearing, see Transcript, PDF page 1385, line 21