Monday, October 27, 2008

Irregular Report 34

Velonews published a letter by TBV about life bans and misrepresentation of the Landis case in a prior letter.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Darcy (in the Oct. 24 Mailbag) feels the need to say those who disagree with him are "morally bankrupt." This seems to reflect the tenor of the times where we people can't come to different conclusions without disrespect.

Mr. Darcy misstates a number of points regarding the Landis defense. Landis' position has always been that he didn't do what he is accused of, and he has been trying to find out why the tests have reported incorrect results. In particular, his' defense team has never agreed that the second type of tests (IRMS) can't produce false positives. Here, Mr. Darcy puts words in Landis' mouth.

The IRMS test is complicated and subject to many possible errors and interpretations that can lead to erroneous conclusions. At the same time, the WADA Code's adjudication procedures are not designed to reveal such errors, but to find the accused guilty. When riders are caught literally red-handed or confess, this is not at issue. There is no doubt that much doping does occur, and that most reported results are correct. Problems arise when someone who may be innocent of the charge runs into the stone wall of The Code, and the circled wagons of agencies protecting their own interests

The Italian Association's call for life bans is well intentioned, but may be problematic given the fairness and due process problems inherent in the WADA Code. It is not helpful for those who want harsh penalties to label those interested in fairness and transparency of the enforcement as "doping apologists" who are "morally bankrupt." It ought to be possible for us to agree that doping is a continuing problem in many sports, and that we should have a trustworthy enforcement mechanism.

As to whether the current enforcement systems in cycling are trustworthy, it is probably fair to say that nobody is happy.

The IHT re-posts what appears to be an ancient bit from 2007 that the organizers of the Zurich Championship race are blaming Landis' for their failure to secure sponsorship -- and they hope to run the race again in 2008.

We've learned that our own Mr. Idiot has joined the ranks of the desperately seeking attention and validation by starting his own blog at Swim Mike Swim! He must be cleaning up his act, as he didn't take the blog title one would have expected, but we fixed that for him.

10 comments:

strbuk said...

Bravo TBV...

Mike Solberg said...

Gee, what a reasonable guy. Nice work, TBV. If Landis wins the TdeF again I vote for you being his press secretary.

SwimMikeSwim.com

Unknown said...

Your position makes too much damned sense. Well written. Congrats!

TiGirl said...

Write on, TBV! I just hope I can be as eloquent and clear when I discuss things with USADA in the next few weeks.

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

TBV,
Hear, hear! Great response.

And to Mr. Idiot,
Dude, you're in some pretty good shape already, judging by what you wrote. Good luck with the Channel swim. Are you going to time it so that you can watch a bit of the Tour in person, too?

whareagle said...

Mike, awesome blog, and good luck with the efforts. Good to hear TBV's eloquence is reaching a wider audience.

Mike Solberg said...

TBV, I was tempted, but didn't think SwimYouIdiot.com would work too well for the fundraiser part of my Channel swim.

Rant, my swim has been moved back to sometime between Sept 11-16, so I won't get to see the Tour. Bummer. I never saw Lance ride, so that would have been cool. Of course, if Floyd is riding the Tour in 2010, that might be worth a special trip.

Richard, thanks, I have a long way to go in training, but plenty of time.

syi

Eightzero said...

Grabsch's comments on being "betrayed" by dopers is interesting new spin:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2008/oct08/oct29news2

Hard to tell, but I think he's pretty pissed about working hard and not getting rewarded. Gotta say I think about that everytime I'm on a bike (or after just about every fencing tournament I enter) too. Maybe bike racing isn't for him. Still, he is the UCI World TT champ. That and $3.59 gets him a latte.

So...Grabsch is more upset about people that were forced to confess to get lesser penalties, but seemingly so because they got more attention for doing so? Does he *really* want the kind of attention Floyd got at the hands of The Code?

bobble said...

I hear crickets chirping so I thought I'd stir things up with more perception vs. reality courtesy of more euro idiots:

more unbelievers

The more of these idiots I read about the more I REALLY want LA to CRUSH these morons just on principle.

Kind of like how I want anyone but Ferrari to win the F1 title now that they are clearly the house team. Oh yes I did!

Eightzero said...

It's Official:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2008/oct08/oct31news

Go Floyd, go OUCH!