The Winnowing: Carlton Reid
Carlton Reid is a UK-based cycling media mogul.
[Back to the Introduction]
Trust But Verify is closing, but I don't feel closure.
And if I also feel somewhat bitter and twisted, that's nothing to how Floyd Landis must have felt since the beginning of this sorry saga.
I came into this subject equipped with standard-issue, media-myopia goggles. WADA was pure, accused athletes were dirty, cheating scum.
I'm saying my goodbyes to TbV a whole lot more cynical about the anti-doping process. As TbV demonstrated, the anti-doping movement is enclosed, self-perpetuating and omnipotent. It resembles a religious cult. Leaders who brook no opposition; acolytes willing to do or die for the leadership; a central, easily-absorbed, hard-to-refute moral tenet ('you're bad, we're good'); exterior, no-strings funding; hair-trigger lynch-mob mentality; and Spanish Inquisition style jurisprudence.
Fanciful? A touch. But viewed through this prism it's now clear Landis never stood a chance. You can't attack a faith-based system with rationality or science, a faith-based system operates to its own, bendable rules.
Landis may have lost, but his fight - documented so well by TbV - opened a lot of people's eyes, mine included. Injustice is in the DNA of WADA. Without a major overhaul of how accusations can be refuted, innocent athletes will continue to be ensnared alongside guilty ones. This isn't right, it isn't fair. Welcome to WADA world.
Carlton Reid
Editor
1 comments:
And Now This!
http://www.velonews.com/article/86195
Read it... Has No One Learned ANYTHING?
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