Wednesday Roundup

News
The VeloNews posts its story about UCI threats against any team or rider participating in this year's FFC sanctioned Tour de France. AFLD president Pierre Bordry makes some comments that imply WADA may be undercutting the UCI:

AFLD president Pierre Bordry said that the blood passport scheme which was introduced last autumn would not be used during the Tour because the UCI were refusing to pass on elements to organisers of races outside their calenda

But he said: "I have the direct support of the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) president."

There's also talk of less testing that is more targeted in the name of "efficiency".

We don't disagree with targeted testing, but think less testing is not an answer. We think there should be more testing with more randoms, so that every rider in the race is likely to have been tested twice during the tour. That translates to 10 instead of 3 tests (winner, yellow, random) on each stage. Go ahead and add up to two "targeted" tests and you get 12 instead of 3 per stage. At $500 a test, that's a whopping $4,500 a stage - about $100,000 for the whole tour - additional expense for increased coverage.

They are cutting back to save a trivial amount money ("efficiency"). That says a lot about credibility to us.

If you get on the shit list, you'll get the hell tested out of you, and if you are not, go ahead and load up because you are unlikely to get called to the pee trailer. Dumb.

The Boulder Report follows up on yesterday's suggestion by Joe Lindsey that Astana make its anti-doping program transparent to the ASO/FFC in order to gain an invite to the TdF (which the ASO reiterated today will NOT happen regardless of any action taken by the team, see the VeloNews piece above):

In an e-mail correspondence with Philippe Maertens, press officer for Astana, I asked if Astana would consider releasing results to the ASO as a means of proving bona fides on the sporting ethics front and, possibly, a way into the Tour. Maertens' answer was, effectively, "No," but he added that the UCI already has the information from Damsgaard's testing (I learned subsequently from another source that WADA does as well). "He has carte blanche," said Maertens of Damsgaard's program. "If there would have been 'problems,' the UCI would have sanctioned and the race organizers would know soon," he said. As well, when dealing with medical privacy issues and the ASO, Maertens seemed wary of releasing information to Tour authorities given the ties between Tour organizers and a certain French sports daily. "Give (results) to ASO and the next day you can read medical files of people in l'Equipe," he wrote

The Age (AU) runs a piece by Micahel Johnson, the 400M running legend who crushed everyone of his generation. He's returning his 200 Olympic relay medal because he feels the three other runners who have admitted PED use leave it sullied.

Blogs
Rant is uncomfortable with the FFC contract and "rules" that riders will be subject to as they participate in this year's Tour de France. He also wonders how the UCI can be cut out of the loop if the ASO/FFC has access to WADA files. Good question. Too bad they all can't just get along for the good of the sport, but apparently that's asking too much.

FuzzyJohn caught up to the Landis group before Floyd crashed out, and finished 2nd in the Single Speed category at the Mohican.

SoulSideDown gives a second hand report, along with a link to the official results of the Mohican 100 which we hadn't seen before. Landis, from Murriera (sic) CA, is DNF on page 4.

The Bleacher Report tries to compare PacMan Jones and Michael Vick to Armstrong and Landis, suggesting a racial double standard is in play. Comments call him out on the obvious facts that the former two were busted and nailed by law enforcement, and the latter were not.