Saturday, June 21, 2008

Saturday Roundup

News
The CyclingNews says the UCI is prepared to contest any plans on a return to competitive cycling by Alexander Vinokourov. The UCI dropped plans to appeal his case to the CA when he retired, but rumors persist that he is training for the Olympics and the UCI vows this will not be allowed:

"We have had indirect reports that Vinokourov is training again," said UCI legal adviser Philippe Verbiest to AFP. "Should it appear that Vinokourov really is training for a comeback we will start up the appeal procedure again." According to the Belga news agency, the Kazakh cycling federation has made little secret of its desire to see the 34 year-old participate in the Beijing Olympics.


In other news, the hacker who got access to Michael Rasmussen's email has been jailed proving once again that your email password should not be something the average Joe can guess. Finally, Bjorn Leukemans will learn his fate on Friday the 27th when a decision in his testosterone usage case will either be thrown out completely, or submitted for reexamination.

VeloNews reports Tom Boonen is back to winning races after his dust up over out of competition cocaine use, by the way he says he's learned a lot about cycling.

Blogs
Gift Cycle, a program that takes gifts of an artist's work from one town to another artist in the next, is resting today in beautiful Lancaster, PA. Farmersville to be exact, as it appears they stayed with the most generous Neal and Tammy Martin who are good friends of the Landis family. It is rumored that sleeping in a signed Floyd Landis t-shirt will allow one to climb hills with the greatest of ease, good luck with the project!

SpeedDream Sports (Shirk Cycling) has us as a team favorite link. Thanks!

Cycle-racing.com lists us as one of but 10 US sites for cycling news -- good company.

3 comments:

bostonlondontokyo said...

Re: Joe Papp Article in The Outside: I read this piece and grew increasingly sad by the whole Joe Papp story. I only knew him as a minor figure in the Landis case, but wasn't fully aware of his background.

It seems to me that on an ethical level, the guy has clearly paid for his issues with Banned Substances... what I am confused by is the fact that Papp has been strung up and beaten here on this blog, yet does anyone really think that he could have avoided testifying at the Landis hearing?

I am not saying that the hearing was the right place for Papp's confessional, but did he really have much of a say in that? I personally have no idea what that kind of pressure is like, when you're being persuaded under interrogation-like settings, and threatened with God knows what, but I wonder if that article ought to give us all some pause and reflection about picking sides and beating up the other - does this serve much purpose? I may get hounded for this post, but I reall think there has to be some humanity when judging this guy.

wschart said...

More of the censure re Papp's testifying has to be directed against USADA for bringing him in to testify. He had absolutely nothing to give on the facts of the case. I think in part, USADA was reacting to statements made by Landis pre-hearing that it made so sense for him to use testosterone, which was widely perceived at that time as a muscle building drug.

While this issue was mentioned in opening statements by Landis' attorney, it was not raised at all in their case. Indeed, there would have been little point, as this issue speaks solely to motive, which was not at issue. Thus, there was little if any need for USADA to have called him to the stand.

DBrower said...

the fact that Papp has been strung up and beaten here on this blog, yet does anyone really think that he could have avoided testifying at the Landis hearing?

BLT,

I don't recall our having beaten him up personally (though some commenters have). I believe we think he was a pawn of USADA generally, and Richard Young in particular, having Matt Barnett do the dirty work. I think if you look back at our contemporaneous coverage and remarks, all of our ire was directed at the fact that he was called, not at him personally. We believe he was very badly served by USADA, who served him up to be cruxified to support their own case against Landis, about which he had nothing relevant to say. He was but one of several "dancing monkeys" that USADA threw out to divert attention from the science case.

I do believe Papp had a choice: he could have said, "no, I'm not going to testify in the Landis case because I don't know anything about it that could be relevant." What was USADA going to to him -- increase his sanction in a way that meant anything more?

He got very bad legal advice, and got used despicably by USADA. I don't blame him for that.

TBV