The VeloCast Journal

(via Chris’ Custom Commuter)

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:43:49 +0100

velocast cc - Comment - Richmond Is Another Blaze McQuaid Should Have Controlled

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:27:11 +0100

velocast cc - Comment - Richmond Is Another Blaze McQuaid Should Have Controlled:

From now on I’ll be posting at the new website, Velocast.cc. However, I’ll make sure that posts written there are also sent here.

Postscript: What happened to Tumblr’s ability to automatically create posts from an RSS feed? Grrrrr

Muur The One That I Want

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:15:00 +0100

The organisers of the 2012 Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders) have announced the route for next year’s course. The talking point is that it will not contain the Muur van Geraardsbergen climb as the race has been designed to give a new finish, in Oudenaarde instead of Meerbeke, where it has ended since 1973.

So in the absense of both the Muur and the Bosberg, the route takes in the Oude Kwaremont and the Paterberg three times on a final circuit.

Director of the Centrum Ronde van Vlaanderen in Oudenaarde, Rik Vanwalleghem, told Het Nieuwsblad,

“With Oudenaarde as a finish, the route of the Ronde van Vlaanderen will be completely different in the finale,”

Well, that’s certainly true.

‘Mixing Things Up A Bit’ fever seems to be spreading around the race directors fraternaity like a venerial disease at a North London Comprehensive school. Tour De France director, Christian Prudhomme, has been spicing up his 3-week grand tour in the past few years, but it is generally accepted that the Grand Boucle has been all the better for it.

Others haven’t been looked on quite as kindly. Take, for instance, Angelo Zomegnan who was removed recently from his role as Giro d’Italia director after seven years in charge. It was he who had toughened the route up, year on year, until finally, this year, the teams and managers said ‘enough is enough’ when faced with the decsent of the Crostis. Following a major row, the stage was removed from the Giro route the night before it was due to take place.

So what to make of the decision to omit the Muur and the Bosberg from the 2012 Ronde van Vlaanderen?

I can’t help but liken this to attending a gig by that band you really like and them not playing that really great song that was at number 1 for 18 weeks and that was the only reason you got into them in the first place!

Or perhaps you’ll find it more apposite of me to suggest it’s like being the cycling off-spring of a Herr and Frøken Rasmussen and actually showing up for a whereabouts test.

Or, or, or, yes, I’ve got it; Like the Tour of Flanders without the bloody Muur van Geraardsbergen and the Bosberg!

As Inrng pointed out in his piece:

Repeating the same climb again and again is something you see in the Amstel and that’s because the Dutch don’t have too many climbs so they need to reuse them. Doing this in Flanders somehow reduces the romance of the race.

So while there is nothing inherintly wrong about changing the route of a race, there are some aspects of races that shouldn’t be tampered with. Grand Tours are able to dabble in course experiments because the nature of the race allows it. Sometimes the organisers get it right. Other times they get it spectacularly wrong.

However, one day classics, like the Tour of Flanders, should be left alone and their landmarks celebrated for what they are: icons of the sport.

I come back to what I’ve said in this column before. Without the fans, the sponsors don’t sponsor, the riders don’t ride and there would be no races to tamper with. So where was the voice of the fans in this decision?

McQuaid Bullies His Way To Beijing

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 10:18:38 +0100

In my post yesterday I wrote the following:

Rumour has it that the UCI threatened to pull the ProTour licenses of every team that did not go to Beijing and that sponsors were even contacted to get their teams to comply.

Shane Stokes from Velonation.com also wrote about this rumour in his original report that race radios were coming back for 2012 and that the teams would cancel their threatened boycott and attend the inaugural Tour Of Beijing.

I can now confirm that this rumour is true.

The UCI individually and directly contacted the marketing personnel of key sponsors of cycling teams. This was also done in isolation so as each individual sponsor would not know that others had also been contacted. The UCI wanted to tell them that if their team didn’t race in Beijing, their license would be removed and that they should also consider removing the team management who were making such unreasonable threats to the Tour Of Beijing.

Further to this, the UCI claimed that pulling out of the Beijing Tour would result in direct involvement from the Chinese government who would hurt the sponsor’s business interest in China itself.

The understandable reaction from those individuals contacted was to panic and urge the teams to comply with the request by the UCI to call off the boycott.

Frankly, this is unacceptable behaviour in any sphere of life. On Pat McQuaid’s watch, and to facilitate a race which he has a direct financial interest in, the UCI is now resorting to threats, bullying and coercion. These kind of tactics should be below any organisation, least of all a governing body whose only interests should be of a sporting nature.

The actions of the UCI are nothing short of appalling. There is no other word for it but thuggery and, like doping, it should have no place in cycling. Heads must roll.

Race Radios Leave Egg On Vaughters Poker Face

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:09:00 +0100

The AIGCP and the UCI have reached an agreement over radios and Beijing. But who got the better deal?

It is said that the British have a reputation for not being able to haggle. There is, apparently, something deep within the psyche of those peoples which makes it nigh on impossible to enter into negotiations which could see them get a better deal on the things they want. Paying for goods or services almost becomes an apology. “Are you really sure that you don’t want me to give you any more money for this item? I don’t mind, old chap. Really, I don’t.”.

The inhabitants of other countries, we are told, tend to fare better with the business of bartering. Americans, it is said, being especially good at it. For in the land of the free commerce is an inalienable right and it is understood from the moment that the curtain goes up in the theatre of transaction, all the players know that it is every man for his or herself.

Of course these are huge sweeping generalizations. There are people in the UK who can come away from buying a new car not only having got thousands of pounds off the asking price but also a year’s Road Tax (common parlance, Carlton, don’t get worked up - Pedant Ed), free insurance, free petrol for a year and conjugal rights with the salesman’s wife whenever the purchaser fancies.

Similarly, when faced with the natural bell curve of populace against national trait, there are bound to be thousands of Americans who come away from intense negotiations feeling that they have been well and truly shafted.

Which brings us neatly to Jonathan Vaughters.

Shane Stokes of Velonation.com wrote yesterday that the teams association, AIGCP, whose President is the afore-mentioned Jonathan Vaughters, and the UCI have kissed and made up following some tense times in the past year. Their differences stemming from the banning of race radios and a threat by the teams to boycott the newly installed Tour Of Beijing.

Things, we were told, got so heated that members of the AIGCP had organised a walk-out of a meeting with the UCI which led to a furious Pat McQuaid and Cyclingnews.com not being able to hold a camera properly.

In truth, the walk-out was less organised than we were led to believe. This was not co-ordinated action. It was unilaterally instigated by one particular Directeur Sportif in the absence of the AIGCP’s President and everyone else simply followed suit thinking that they had missed the memo.*

However, it was clear that the situation would have to addressed before October and the start of the Tour Of Beijing and you would think that Vaughters would be confident going into the negotiations.

Why? Well, apart from being an American and hopefully falling into that part of the bell curve which finds it easy to haggle, the AIGCP President seemed to hold all the cards. The Tour Of Beijing, for those that don’t know, is being organised by Global Cycling Promotion SA, a company that members of the UCI, Pat McQuaid included, have a direct financial stake in. The race has been given World Tour status without so much as a ‘by your leave’ - although McQuaid insists that there was no conflict of interest in the UCI’s race being given such status by the UCI’s licensing commission.

The issue of race radios, it was felt, was merely a cover for a desire to gain more influence when more important decisions were made. We’ll boycott Beijing unless we get our radios back, was the public cry, but privately anything could be up for grabs. If the teams didn’t go to McQuaid’s race, not only would the UCI be left with a considerable amount of egg on their chin, but Global Cycling Promotion SA would be considerably out of pocket. If you wanted to conjure up a mental image of the situation try Jonathan Vaughters grabbing Pat McQuaid by the, ahem, “gentleman’s vegetables” area while shouting “Dance, monkey boy, dance!”.

So as I read Shane’s piece on Velonation.com I was intrigued to find out what the UCI had agreed to in exchange for the teams’ participation in Beijing.

Well, for starters race radios will be re-introduced for WorldTour and .HC events. Also………………hang on. Oh, right. Well, it seems that’s about it.

So Jonathan Vaughters, as President of the AIGCP, has sat down with the UCI holding all the aces and come away with a concession on race radios!? I can’t help but see this, as I’m sure Pat McQuaid will, as a victory for the UCI and nothing short of an utter shafting for the teams and riders. Vaughters seems to have gone into the chocolate factory holding a Golden Ticket and come out with nothing more than a couple of Coffee Creams - and who the hell likes the Coffee Creams?! Jonathan, we expected the chocolate waterfall, the three-course meal in a stick of gum, chocolate delivered by television. And while we’re at it, a few Oompa-Loompas scattered about the bloody place wouldn’t have gone amiss!

Rumour has it that the UCI threatened to pull the ProTour licenses of every team that did not go to Beijing and that sponsors were even contacted to get their teams to comply. That, Jonathan, is known as a bluff. Take a moment. Think about it. If the teams didn’t go to Beijing there would have been a hell of a mess, but in reality this is a newly installed, controversial race with no history, no pedigree, relatively little in the way of current sponsors interests and no die-hard fans to disappoint. On the other hand, pulling the licenses of all the teams that refused to go would be cataclysmic for the UCI. They simply would not have done it. Bluff.

Pat McQuaid, Alan Rumpf and all concerned with the Tour Of Beijing must be laughing all the way to the bank over this.

So when Jonathan Vaughters comes home to find Pat McQuaid sitting in his favourite armchair, wearing his slippers, smoking his pipe and sporting a post-coital grin he should really know that he only has himself to blame.

*Update: I have just been very reliably informed (and when I say very, do mean VERY) that the walk out was not a unilateral decision made by one DS, but was organised by the board. Apologies for this. Hopefully more on this story soon…

L'Equipe Is Dead Wrong About Leopard Trek

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 11:06:27 +0100

The French newspaper believes that Leopard-Trek is to come to an end this season. Now why on earth would they think that?

The rumour mill has been in full-force recently, industriously producing speculation and conjecture over the possibility of a merger between Team Radioshack and Leopard Trek. At first most people treated this with incredulity and disbelief and more than a few resorted to Sean Connery impressions, crying; “Shum mishtake, shurely!”. But despite denial after denial this is a canard that simply refuses to die.

This morning, following a night’s speculation on Twitter, L’Equipe published an article stating “Leopard, c’est fini”, and that 11 riders currently under contract will have to look elsewhere for 2012.

That Radioshack have been a thorough disappointment in most of their European outings is clear for all to see. The team has managed some success on U.S. soil, taking the Tour of California and the recent Pro Cycling Challenge, and that may be of some comfort to its American title sponsor. But when the company signed on in July 2009, they thought they were buying in to the Armstrong / Bruyneel fairy tale. A miraculous Armstrong comeback (again) would be followed by more Grand Tour victories as Bruyneel worked the magic he was famous for, and brought the next Lance to the fore. It was genius. It simply couldn’t fail. Trouble was, it simply didn’t happen.

It’s easy to simply sweep such marketing follies aside when the company is rolling in cash. But Radioshack, like many others in a global recession, have felt the pinch and must surely be wondering what on earth they are doing propping up a Europe-centric sport where they have no retail presence?

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Frank and Andy Schleck having felt it necessary to escape the tyranny of Bjarne Riis at Saxo Bank, teamed up with Brian Nygaard and Kim Andersen to form Leopard-Trek, with squad being financed by the Luxembourg real-estate mogul, Flavio Becca.

In terms of the Grand Tours, it’s fair to say that Leopard-Trek has faired a little better than Radioshack, with two places on the Tour De France podium. The mood within the camp was said to be good, albeit tinged with disappointment at missing out on the sport’s biggest prize. Results, for a team in its first season were more than passable.

So why would Leopard-Trek want anything to do with an aging Radioshack squad whose title sponsor has financial problems, whose marketing objectives are almost exclusively based in the United States and whose Directeur Sportive is under increasing scrutiny from the U.S. Government regarding allegations made by Floyd Landis?

Some would assert that Flavio Becca has been upset that a title sponsor has not yet been found for the team to alleviate his €12 million investment (€2m is said to have been paid by Trek) in the team’s first year. It is my understanding that this is simply not true. The rumour mill leapt to the conclusion that Leopard-Trek was in a similar situation to that of HTC-Highroad and feared imminent a repeat scenario and resulting collapse. The fact of the matter is that a better comparison to Leopard-Trek can be made by looking at BMC, rather than HTC-Highroad. Becca, like Andy Riis, is rich beyond most people’s comprehension and is funding the team based on the desire to fund a team - and more specifically, the Schlecks - than for the marketing dollars that such an endeavor would bring.

Others would claim that John Burke, president of Trek, wishes to see his company sponsoring only one team - and who better, you would think, than old Tailwind Sports co-director, Johan Bruyneel, to lead that team? If that is true, Burke has a very funny way of showing this supposed loyalty.

The recent Trek World expos, where the company show off their new product lines, was notable for two things. Firstly, Johan Bruyneel was not invited. Nor indeed was there any mention of Team Radioshack in any of the signage or marketing material produced for the events. In stark contrast to this, and to highlight the point, was the fact that members of the Leopard-Trek squad were in attendance as were numerous posters and billboards bedecked in Leopard livery. Does that really sound like the actions of a company whose President has had a hand in the downfall of the Leopard-Trek squad?

The central point that L’Equipe fails to tackle is that Becca has made a 4-year guarantee to the UCI to fund the Leopard-Trek team. An individual rider, such as Roman Kireyev for example, can be made to conveniently “disappear”. But a four year commitment to the UCI simply cannot. That, frankly, is drawing too much attention to places where the UCI does not want attention to be drawn. Creative accounting and administrative slight of hand wouldn’t allow those involved to wriggle free from that kind of mess.

It also fails to understand the raison d’etre of the team that brought Becca, Andersen and Nygaard together; the Schlecks. Commentators the world over, myself included, have been nothing short of incredulous at the persistence of Frank and Andy to stick together when to everyone else it seems blatantly obvious that they should be on separate teams. The team was set up as a vehicle for these two brothers. And if we then can conclude that the family has had a central role to play the in both the formation of the squad and the overall careers of the two then why would Frank and Andy’s father, Johny - a former pro cyclist himself - acquiesce so readily to the collapse of the Leopard-Trek squad when he has vehemently resisted any advances by Bruyneel towards his two sons in the past? The last thing Johny Schleck wants to see is his sons fall into the clutches of Johan Bruyneel.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes is often quoted as saying “Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, whoever improbable, must be the truth”.

So what is the truth? I’m afraid to say that there can be only one conclusion to all of this, and it’s not a pretty one.

The improbable truth, you may conclude, is that this particularly dark, satanic rumour mill is being fed from the desk of Johan Bruyneel himself. Bruyneel is cutting an increasingly lonely figure these days. Sources close to the Belgian have seen him make bizarre, isolated decisions and there appears to be a desperation to bring back the glory days at any cost. It’s almost as if Johan Bruyneel believes that if he spreads the rumour for long enough then it simply must come true.

But cycling’s great Machiavellian schemer may be running out road here.

It is no co-incidence that Armstrong’s right hand man has set up residence in London and that he hasn’t set foot in the United States for quite some time. This is a last ditch attempt by Bruyneel to get back in the game. Back in the center where he feels he belongs. But there are larger forces moving against the Belgian these days, than move with him. It could well be that all Bruyneel will find is that all roads will lead to Washington.

Biological Passport: The UCI's PR Stunt

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:42:18 +0100

When the UCI released its press release as a response to Gerard Vroomen’s Biological Passport blog post, I couldn’t help but feel that there were a few questions that remained unanswered.

Vroomen said that he had not heard of any riders being tested from the end of the 2010 Tour De France until April 2011. He also suggested that this may have been because of legal fees incurred when riders, such as Franco Pellizotti, have gone to court to prove their innocence.

In the press release the UCI said that 1074 tests were conducted from 1st of July 2010 (excluding urine tests and Tour De France 2010) and 1577 completed to the period to the 30th April 2011. It also refuted the aforementioned claims that the funds used for fighting legal cases.

So, that’s fine then. Isn’t it?

Well, no. By concentrating solely on the period that that Gerard Vroomen mentions and throwing some numbers somewhat belligerently in his direction, the UCI have, unconsciously or otherwise, completely side-stepped the issue that Vroomen was trying to highlight. As he said in the follow-up post,

I did not say there were zero tests, just that I’ve heard from riders and team managers that they haven’t seen tests being carried out, while nobody told me the opposite. And that’s a stark contrast to say 12 months ago. Obviously I did not check the 1000+ pro riders all individually.

All the UCI have done is point to the fact that there were some tests carried out. They have said nothing regarding whether the total number of tests has risen, fallen or been consistent since the commencement of the biological passport programme.

And if Gerard Vroomen’s anecdotal evidence isn’t enough, how about Michael Ashenden, on of the leading experts in anti-doping. Speaking to Cyclingnews.com, Ashenden said;

“It’s correct that the observation made by Gerard Vroomen matches with my experience. I have noticed a significant gap between tests in some of the profiles I have reviewed. It’s definitely not in every single profile, but enough to have left an impression on me,”

Somewhat worryingly, what both Ashenden and Vroomen assert is true. The numbers of tests have fallen.

When Anne Gripper gave her presentation on the biological passport to ANADO in the autumn of 2008 she stated that the target number for testing in 2009 would be in excess of 11,000. The actual number for that year was 10,603. The number of tests carried out in 2010 fell to 8,342.

I asked the UCI why this would be. Spokesperson for the UCI, Jane Moraz told me;

The success of the biological passport has allowed us to better target riders rather than blindly test across the board.

A relatively high number of tests must be carried out to establish a rider’s biological passport, but fewer tests are required to maintain the passport once it has been established. Only those riders whose passports give cause for concern will be tested more often.

It seems to me that the thinking here is flawed. Potentially fatally. A high number of tests at the beginning of the programme should continue to be a same high number of tests throughout the programme. The whole point of the biological passport is to provide continuing data for all riders. It was devised to monitor biological markers of doping over a period of time. But the UCI’s targeting policy assumes that these other riders deemed not worthy of their continual attention aren’t up to no good in their absence. It wouldn’t take much for a rider to notice that he isn’t being tested quite so much as often as he was the previous year.

Going back to Anne Gripper’s presentation, where she also stated that there would be “anonymous public release of the data each quarter”. This simply has not been done.

When asked about the failure to meet this promise the UCI told me;

“It is true that it was stated at one point that there would be an anonymous public release of results each quarter. However, in the light of our experience with the biological passport we realised that this measure would not be particularly useful, especially as an anonymous report would carry little weight.”

Fair enough, except that some people are more than a little geeky and have nothing better to do with our time but pour of the resultant chemical analysis gleaned from months and months of a pro-cyclists pee! If you indeed one of those people I can only apologise on behalf of the UCI that they cannot assist you with your chosen pastime.

That being said, I was assured by the UCI that cycling’s main stakeholders - the teams - were receiving regular updates of anti-doping tests and statistics. This information, the UCI said, was not being sent out to the media.

However, sources from three teams have confirmed that they only receive anti-doping data once per year. Certainly, you can’t argue that sending data to the teams once every 12 months constitutes regularity. But is it in the spirit of the word’s definition? I don’t think it unfair to suggest that the statement I got from the UCI would lead me believe that “regular updates” was something more substantial than yearly. I wouldn’t consider getting a Christmas card from someone as “regular” correspondence - even if they include an typed A4 piece of paper detailing how little Johnny was doing at school and how they spent their holidays in Mexico this year (lovely place, you should try it - can’t recommend it highly enough. Oh and the food…!). Regardless if the amount of data represents all the the UCI have collated, yearly is a world away from regularity.

This is not what you and I believed would happen and it’s not what the teams signed up for. Elite level teams are paying €120,000 each year in contributions towards the biological passport. Did the UCI make it clear that this figure would remain constant while the number of tests undertaken would fall?

Indeed it is not only that the price the teams have to pay is to remain constant. In March this year a letter was leaked to the nycityvelo.com website. The letter was written by Jonathan Vaughters in his role as President of the AIGCP and was sent to UCI President, Pat McQuaid. Vaughters was responding to UCI demands that Pro Conti teams should receive a €20,000 increase to their biological passport bill from the €60,000 that they previously paid. As the AIGCP President pointed out, the teams support 70% of the biological passport annual budget and the increase represents in excess of a 33% price hike. The UCI only contributes 14% to the budget and saw its bill rise by a meager one percent in 2011.

Interestingly, in the leaked letter, Jonathan Vaughters also points to teams noticing a “significant drop in unannounced spot checks to their riders since the the start of 2011…”*

What is clear here is that the UCI are not using the biological passport in the way that was intended at its inception. The teams are being asked to pay significant sums of money yet see the number of tests to their riders fall and only receive notification as to the biological passport analysis once per year.

Is it any wonder that some are asking what on earth the UCI are doing, and if their implementation of the passport is nothing more than a feel good PR exercise aimed more at calming the nerves of sponsors, than actually catching dopers?

*original French text from the leaked letter: “équipes s’étonnent paradoxalement d’une baisse significative des contrôles inopinés auprès de leurs coureurs, depuis le début de l’année 2011…”

Where Is Roman Kireyev?

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:38:59 +0100

Yesterday the official Astana team website announced the retirement of 24 year old Roman Kireyev. According to the website, the Kazakh rider told the Astana team management of his decision on Friday, August 19th (remember that date. It’s important, Conspiracy Ed) and is the result of a back injury picked up last year. The site also claimed that this decision came as no surprise to them as Kireyev had informed Astana sports directors some months ago.

It certainly surprised most of us.

For those that haven’t been following the latest in the Borat style shenanigans coming from team Astana, here’s a quick, bullet-pointed summary:

July 10th: Alexander Vinokourov crashes out of the Tour De France with a broken femur and promptly announces his retirement.
August 1st: Andrey Kashechkin transfers from Lampre to Astana. In the absence of the injured / retired Vinokourov, Kashechkin has been signed in order to ride the Vuelta.
August 21st: L’Equipe run a story saying that Vinokourov was told by Astana on the 19th that he was no longer a member of the squad. Vino, unimpressed by this, tells L’Equipe; “I’m still a rider. I’ve a valid contact [NB until 2012]. I’m especially disappointed by what’s been happening behind the scenes at my expense”. L’Equipe also points out if Vino is still a member of the squad (Vinokourov was never removed from the UCI listings), that in signing Kashechkin, Astana now have one more rider than is allowed by UCI rules. Although the UCI demanded an explanation, the governing body do not remove the new Astana rider from the Spanish Grand Tour.
August 22nd: Having related the L’Equipe article on the 21st, Inrng.com takes the saga on by pointing out that Roman Kireyev has mysteriously disappeared from the UCI rider license listings.
August 23rd: Shane Stokes at Velonation speaks to Enrico Carpani at the UCI who says that “It is not our mistake, as L’Equipe wrote, because we trusted Vino when he said that he will retire.” and that the UCI were awaiting further information from the Astana team on this matter.
August 24th: Inrng.com asks further questions about who did what and when?

This, put simply, is a mess.

From a purely technical point of view, I find it hard to believe that the UCI do not have an administrative system in place that alerts them when the number of riders logged in their database exceeds the requisite number. Even with the exceptions made for neo-pros, a first year computer programmer could do this. Aside: They are using a database for this, yes? PLEASE don’t tell me there’s a ancient filing system in place that only a sweet, but scatty octogenarian called Helga can fathom?

The date of the 19th of August is, as mentioned earlier, important. If Roman Kireyev, as is claimed, did inform his team that he wished to retire, then the assertion that Vinokourov was sacked, also on the 19th, is null and void. Vino’s status - retired or on the road to a comeback in the Giro De Lombardy - does not matter as long as the UCI don’t have it in writing.

That being said, and with Kireyev’s mysterious, career ending back injury aside (mysterious as he came in a respectable 40th place in the Tour de l’Ain on the 13th of August), it still leaves 18 days, following the signing of Andrey Kashechkin that Astana had more riders than they are allowed to have under UCI regulations.

Astana are obviously trying to play fast and loose here; hurriedly recruiting a rider to fill the space vacated by Vino at the Vuelta due to an unforeseen leg break at the Tour. It’s not that I don’t have a problem with this, but can understand their motivation. But where are the checks and balances at the UCI to stop things like this from happening? If it wasn’t for journalists at L’Equipe highlighting this case and writers like Inrng and Shane Stokes taking it up, we may never have known there was actually a problem. If that’s the case, what’s to stop Astana or any other team quietly recruiting a couple of extra stagaires every now and again, knowing full well that the UCI are unlikely to spot the deception?

However, my real concern lies with Roman Kireyev. I mischievously tweeted that “Roman Kireyev is currently propping up a new motorway bridge near the Kazakhstan / Uzbekistan border if anyone is looking for him”. I sincerely doubt that this is the case. But where, in fact, is he? Why haven’t we heard from the rider himself to explain what happened to cause his career to come to an abrupt end and what are the 24 year old’s plan for the future?

Pinotti To Receive His Irish Tour Money

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:12:28 +0100

On the 18th of August Cyclingnews.com published an interview with soon to be ex-HTC rider Marco Pinotti in which the Italian discussed his plans for the 2012 season and a possible move to BMC.

At the end of this article was a section on Pinotti’s links with the now defunct Tour Of Ireland which Marco had won outright in 2008 and placed fifth in its final ‘09 edition. Pinotti announced via Twitter that he had not received prize money from this race.

“It wasn’t a pleasing situation for anybody, for us riders or for the Tour of Ireland, but the economic situation didn’t help.

“I received a personal message from Rushton after I wrote about it on Twitter. He said that there had been financial problems, but that he would do everything he could to pay the prizes, even if he had to do it personally.

“I replied saying that I understood the situation. My tweet was simply to find out if anybody had received prize money, I didn’t want to blame Rushton.”

The Tour Of Ireland was organised by Alan Rushton, who is now part of the management committee organising the Tour Of Beijing, and Darach McQuaid who is currently involved in organising the Richmond, Virginia bid to host the 2015 World Championships. Darach McQuaid is also the brother of UCI President, Pat McQuaid.

As the Cycling News article pointed out:

According to UCI rules, race organisers must deposit the prize money with their national federation at least 30 days before the event, and that money is then distributed to riders within 90 days of the end of the race.

Having contacted Cycling Ireland about this interview I was told that, as far as they were concerned, Marco Pinotti had been paid directly by the race organisers and had assurances from Rushton some months ago that this had been done.

Given that I had brought the apparent lack of payment to their attention last Friday, Cycling Ireland contacted Alan Rushton yet again and further assurances have come from him that plans are in place for a settlement to Marco Pinotti in the next few weeks.

Cycling Ireland also said that they did not seek any advance on the prize money as it was to be paid directly by the organisers. The UCI Road Races Organiser’s Guide states:

Payment can be replaced by a guarantee delivered to the National Federation. In this case, the prizes are paid directly to the riders by the organiser within 90 days. If this does not happen, the National Federation calls in the bank guarantee.

Given how easy it seems to be to circumvent this rule (by assuring the national federation that prizes have been paid when in fact they haven’t), you do have to question its validity.

It shouldn’t take a rider to sent a Twitter message, or be interviewed by a cycling website or indeed for a blogger such as myself to ask questions of a national federation for a rider to receive the prize money owed to him.

We all appreciate the difficulty that the Tour Of Ireland found itself in 2009 and lamented its demise. However, rules are supposedly in place to stop this kind of thing happening. It would interesting to hear from Alan Rushton and Darach McQuaid, as organisers of the Tour Of Ireland, as to why it did.

Sky Make The Case For The Radio Ban

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:55:00 +0100

The earliest mention I can find of radio communication in cycle racing is Paul Köchli, the Directeur Sportif of the La Vie Claire team, being offered a prototype system in 1985. The Swiss, nicknamed the Professor due to the meticulous coaching course that he ran, declined the offer and dismissed the emergent technology out of hand.

Fast forward a decade to the mid-ninties and we started to see the widespread use of radio communication in the pro peloton. Looking at footage from the time you can still see riders hauling out the earpieces and letting them dangle from the straps of their helmets - those that wore helmets, of course. Riders complained that they were unreliable and more often than not all they could hear from them was staccato, garbled non-sequitas closely followed by ear-splitting white noise. I can imagine that there probably was a couple of times where some riders would have picked up the erroneous broadcasts of a “Madame Dechamps seeking a taxi to take her to the airport in Lyon”.

Moving on to the present day and we find a situation where radio communication is as ubiquitous as the bike itself. Bike riders need their radios they say. Faced with the experiment of having radios banned for stages 10 and 13 of the 2009 Tour De France, 14 out of the 20 teams participating lodged a protest which achieved two things. Firstly, the radios were instantly re-instated for stage 13 and the go-slow from Stage 10 cured insomnia problems for roughly 300,000 people.

However, the UCI has persisted with its desire to see radios removed form pro cycle racing, with the management committee deciding in September 2009 that their use would be prohibited at all events except for the majority of elites.

USA Cycling also decided to ban radios at all their events.

The 2010 World Championships in Australia saw the ante being upped once more where the UCI, who own the event, banned the radios here too. It was a clever move by the UCI (yes, it can happen!) as they knew that teams and riders wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to instigate a “go-slow” on an important one-day event such as this. The Rainbow Stripes spoke louder than the peloton’s concerns over safety, it would seem.

More recently we have seen the teams’ organisation, the AIGCP, and that of the riders, the CPA, threaten to boycott the emergent Tour of Beijing unless the radio ban be lifted. Even to the casual observer this, of course, is nothing more than a smokescreen for the desire to stand up to the UCI and gain more power - the Tour of Beijing being VERY much a UCI event.

As I observed yesterday on The Spokesmen podcast, AIGCP President Jonathan Vaughters, nor his peer representing the riders, Gianni Bugno, is in any way, shape or form Bernard Hinault; a patron who is brave / foolhardy enough to carry out a threat once he has issued it. I can see neither President punching a spectator for heckling a finish line protest dismount over riders having to endure long transfers and two stages in one day. Come October, the ovine peloton will disembark at Beijing airport and trot to the Depart pen with Pat McQuaid snapping and barking at their heels all the way.

The trouble is, the peloton has chosen a particularly stupid agenda to base their play for power on. The issue, they say, has nothing to do with tactics or strategy when communications between rider and DS. They cite safety as their rallying call in keeping the radios. They are essential should there be a crash so that the DS can get to the stricken rider as soon as possible.

The obvious rebuttal to this spurious argument is that it is not the DS that should be contacted in an emergency. It should be the doctor assigned to follow the tour. Directeurs Sportif are not the right people to treat medical emergencies. They should never, in fact, be making decisions as to whether a rider is capable of continuing in a race. As is the case in every other walk of life; we acquiesce to the experience of trained medical professionals when someone’s life may be in danger.

So if riders want to use radio communication for safety reasons, let it be to the Tour doctor and not the DS.

The sad fact is that the UCI is right here. Riders have become to too accustomed to using radios. It’s not their fault. We are now in a position where none of the peloton has ever raced without them. And it is not only spoiling the enjoyment of watching the sport (can anyone honestly cite a race or stage that has been more enjoyable because of radios?) but it is turning riders into automatons who are lost and bewildered when the technology fails them.

Yesterday Team Sky rolled off the oversized skateboarding ‘half-pipe’ on the beach in Benidorm with ambitions of setting Bradley Wiggins up for a Grand Tour win in the opening stage of the Vuelta.

However, things didn’t go at all to plan. Inside the opening kilometer Kurt-Asle Arvensen crashed, Xabier Zandio lost his place in the train and had to chase to get back on. At one point the team was down to only four riders with Wiggins looking confused and agitated. The aforementioned Zandio had to solo across the gap while the depleted Sky team slowed to wait for him.

Writing on the team’s website, DS Stephen de Jongh said;

A rider sat up and didn’t really understand what was going on. It was tough to hear on the radio with the public shouting so it was a difficult situation.”

I can’t help but feel that if all concerned hadn’t been so reliant on information coming through their earpieces yesterday’s fiasco, although not avoided all together, may have been diminished.

Opinion, I understand, may be divided on this but I would like to see riders thinking for themselves on the road again. Tactics are developed the night before or on the morning of the race. But the strategy may have to change as situations develop during the race itself, and there is nothing wrong with checking with your DS due to changing circumstances by scuttling back to the team car.

The Team Time Trial is the probably the ultimate test of rider intelligence. All of the riders must be both thinking not only of their own performance but of that of their team mates: ‘Where are they? Is everyone in line and accounted for? After coming off the front has he dropped into the slipstream of the last man in the train?

When relying on a disembodied voice in your ear to tell you the answers to all these questions, the rider forgets to answer - or even ask - these questions himself.

Tyler Farrar recently commented on the proposed radio ban;

“Are we going to have a day where we race in wool jerseys, or a day when we race with a single speed?”

I’m all for technology in cycling. The bike itself is a piece of technology that allows the sport to even exist and I want to see the continued development of technology to further the sport where it can. But Tyler’s specious reasoning that those who seek to remove one piece of technology because it has taken us down the down the road of diminished spectacle are simply luddites who would have the riders on Velocipedes and chain-smoking Gitane’s around the course doesn’t hold water.

Technology, yes, but not simply for the sake of technology.

BMC and La Vie Claire

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 10:16:53 +0100

I’m in the process of reading Richard Moore’s book ‘Slaying The Badger’ which details the extraordinary events leading up to and including the 1986 Tour De France battle between Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond. As I say, I’m in the middle of it, so don’t tell me how it ends.

As I made my way through the opening chapters which seek to introduce the protagonists, their individual personalities and how it all came to a fascinating, if not bizarre, head in ‘86, news arrives that Phillipe Gilbert has signed with BMC. So with Moore’s words ringing in my ears is it any wonder that I’m looking at BMC and thinking La Vie Claire?

The details of transfers are rarely known i.e. we are never privy to the ‘who spoke to who first’ and ‘who said what and when’. With La Vie Claire, Greg Lemond says that he was summoned to meet team owner, Bernard Tapie, by a sexy, leather-clad motorcyclist in the dead of night from his hotel in the Alps. It is not known if the subsequent meeting took place in a hollowed out volcano. However, I do find myself asking if BMC’s other recent signing, Thor Hushovd, knew or was informed as to the imminent arrival of the Belgian, Gilbert?

BMC’s roster for 2012 now reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the 2011 season; Tour De France winner, Cadel Evans, 2010 World Champion, Thor Hushovd, and arguably rider of the 2011 season, Phillipe Gilbert. The only other significant name missing is Grand Boucle Maillot Vert Mark Cavendish. Could he be…..? Nah! Of course, as many, many people have realised and pointed out, this seems could spell disaster for the Swiss squad.

Like La Va Claire’s Tapie, billionaire Andy Rihs, owner of BMC, is not frightened of putting his hand in his pocket. Tapie, when told of the budget for his new cycling team, said to Bernard Hinault that he didn’t want to know the figures as he had just “bought a yacht that costing 3 times that”. But the question that arises is; when money is no object, what kind of team do you build and what is the strategic vision for that team?

So, did Rihs or team manager John Lelangue consult Evans or Hushovd over signing Phillipe Gilbert? Having a cycling team is about more than tactics on the road. History will tell you that it’s as much about managing each rider’s state of mind and any possible conflicts between them. The arrival of a rival or someone you perceive as having too much of their own agenda is enough to put a rider’s nose out of joint.

Evans hasn’t commented on Gilbert’s transfer, but did say that he expected Hushold to work for him (and not the other way around) when the Norwegian signed on the dotted line. If he wasn’t informed that, to me, spells trouble. Seeds of doubt will have been sown in Evans’ mind as to whether this team is really set up to defend his title next year. It could be argued that Cadel won his Tour De France largely on his own. A tired Alberto Contador and the on-going Frandy love-in contributed to that. Bert may not see the 2012 season, but I doubt Evans wants to assume that Andy Schleck won’t be better prepared for the next Tour.

Of course, Evans could have been consulted and one of two things may have happened. He could have quietly acquiesced, in which case I think he was silly to do so. I thought Evans, at this stage of his career, was starting to exhibit some of Hinault’s patron qualities both on and off the bike. If that isn’t the case, at least with the BMC hierarchy, then 2012 could be very tricky indeed for the Australian.

On the other hand, if Evans did blow his top when consulted over Gilbert and Rihs / Lelangue over-ruled him we come back to what is the strategic vision for this team? Will Gilbert, never mind Hushovd, ride for Evans in the Tour?

With Hushovd and Gilbert in the same team the Spring Classics are going to be very interesting indeed. The Beligian rider has stated that he wants, at some point, to win every single one. Paris-Roubaix is the only notably exception in his Palmares.

And Thor? The Norwegian has Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Gent–Wevelgem on his C.V. and you can only assume that the God Of Thunder will be gunning for more in 2012.

The Classics may show the first cracks in a team that could spectacularly self-destruct when they arrive in France next year. Unless, of course, there have been some very clever negotiations during the signing of Gilbert and Hushovd - and unlike La Vie Claire, everyone keeps their word.

Cycling Fans: What Exactly Are They For?

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:54:13 +0100

The world over, fans of every sport must find themselves asking the same question at some point in the lives. Namely; why on earth do I bother? Following your sport of choice can sometimes seem like one of those bizarre psychological disorders that BBC3 seem compelled to document where the sufferer repeatedly pokes them self in the ear with a knitting needle. And sometimes it’s less fun even than that.

We bother, of course, because every now and then there is a breath-takingly beautiful moment that we know is going to stay with us for ever. Fignon and Lemond in ‘89. Lemond dropping Hinault in ‘86. Armstrong’s “Look” to Ulrich on Alpe d’Huez in 2001. Or for those of a slightly more mature vintage the Anquetil/Poulidor duel on Puy de Dôme in 1964 (wasn’t around at that point myself, but I’m told it was exhilarating).

We all have our favourites and, love or loathe the characters involved, these moments are indelibly inked in our memory.

But looking from the other side of the fence, what are the fans to the riders, the teams and those who run professional cycling itself? I’m sure that some riders would say that the fans are a bloody nuisance, especially when you’re breathing out your backside, struggling up a Pyrenean climb. And, let’s face it, they do have a point. Who really wants to ride through an endless tunnel of lunatics in ‘Mankinis’, who’ve had nothing to do for three days while camping on a mountain but get absolutely rat-arsed on cheap booze from the Supermarche down in the valley. The sight of a mad German dressed as the Devil bouncing around like a 6 year old on a trampoline must appear like the seventh circle of hell when you’re in oxygen debt.

If you haven’t felt an uncontrollable desire to shout at the television “GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!” whilst watching a mountain stage of the Tour then I suggest you seek some counseling and a course of suitably mood altering drugs from your doctor. This denotes a lack of empathy, my friend. Having said that, I’m sure if I was lucky enough to be one of the tens of thousands who line the route of mountain stages of grand tours every year I would be shouting “ALLEZ, ALLEZ, ALLEZ” with the best of them.

However, a recent conversation with a friend has led me to ask what is the role of the cycling fan? Is it simply our job to line the route or slouch on the sofa and just watch? To quote the New York band The Strokes; Is This It? Is this all we are; slack-jawed, duo-syllabic simpletons gawking at an endless magical spectacle while wearing the collective Mankini of passive voyeur?

Surely not?

Let’s turn the world on its head for a moment and look at things the other way round. What if we didn’t exist? What if there was no such thing as a fan of road cycling? Imagine a binary world where you either raced a bike or you didn’t. And if there were no fans of cycling it would be highly unlikely that there would be any teams as we know them today. The traditional method of funding a cycling team is through sponsorship. Companies sponsor cycling teams to draw attention to their brand and associate it with sporting prowess.

With no sponsorship to fund the sport and no professional teams to pay wages then there are no professional riders.

With no professional teams or riders, the UCI would be reduced to nothing more than a few blokes with a flag and stopwatch (actually this is starting to look rather appealing!)

So getting back to the world as we know it now. The teams and the riders must act, or lobby for, their best interests - which is only right and proper. However, those that govern our sport - and given how we have seen how the world would look without us, it is our sport - should act in a way that not only is best for the sport itself, but also in a way that is best for us, the fans. Those that make decisions will do well to remember that they should not make decisions based on what is best for them, but what is best for us.

There is plenty that is wrong in cycling. There is plenty that needs changing or requires a re-think. On that I’m sure we all agree. But the next time you learn of some new daft law or edict that the UCI has laid down from on high, remember that they do it in your name. The UCI themselves may not even realise this. Maybe its high time they were reminded.

Burning Down The House

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:59:29 +0100

The Great Lafayette was the highest paid magician of the Edwardian era. On May 9th 1911 he was performing his signature illusion “The Lion’s Bride”, an hugely popular affair in which a live lion is magically transformed into the magician and then made to re-appear safely in a cage, at the Empire Palace Theatre in Edinburgh (now the Festival Theatre). midway through the show a fault in one of the stage lights caused a fire. The elaborate set went up in flames within minutes. The audience, thinking that this was all part of the illusion, sat in awe and wonderment and did not evacuate until the theatre manager signaled for the orchestra to play God Save the King. Many of the company, however, were trapped on stage when the safety curtain was lowered and jammed, leaving only a small gap at the bottom, through which a strong draught of air fanned the flames into an inferno. Lafayette himself had ensured that the side-doors to the stage had been secured, both to exclude unwanted interlopers and in case of an escape by the lion.

Ten people died that night including the magician himself.

Why bring this up now? Other than the mere coincidence of this disaster being a century old this year I’m starting to get the feeling that those of us that take an interest in the political side of professional cycling (and, really, that should be everyone) have become nothing more than the hapless audience audience at Lafayette’s great tragedy. ”Oh look, that man’s head’s on fire!” we yelp. ”Isn’t it exciting?! How simply wonderful,” we sigh like the prim, gawping Edwardian ladies we’ve become. And all the while we do absolutely nothing to put the fire out, so enthralled we are, by the spectacle itself.

On Twitter recently I lamented the dearth of investigative journalism in cycling. Joe Papp replied, dryly, that there wasn’t “enough journalism in cycling!”. I wouldn’t quite go that far as I think there are some excellent journalists covering cycling but I don’t think there are many willing to get their hands dirty.

Lionel Birnie from Cycling Weekly said on Twitter that the wording Gerard Vroomen’s recent blog post was irresposnsible and that bloggers should be held to the same standards as journalists. I wholeheartedly agree with that. Blog posts can often be about shooting from the hip, publicly asking questions or stating a point of view. All of which is fine and dandy but it must be clear that what you are writing falls into that category. Vroomen simply didn’t do that. He said he hadn’t heard of test being done in the period in question but didn’t check to see if this was actually the case or not. And for someone in his position, who is perceived to be on the inside, this is dangerous.

I’m not saying that Vroomen isn’t actually pointing to very real flames that are licking up the side of the building but by saying “I’ve heard” there might be a fire he lets the UCI off the hook with a “no there isn’t - because we said so!” press release that gives him a public slap on the wrist and we all go back to watching the Great Lafayette and his simply marvelous stage show.

The problem I believe journalists have, as opposed to bloggers, is exactly the same problem that the teams and riders have when considering pointing out unfair treatment, conflicts of interest or any of the other goings-on in Aigle. At the back of their mind is are concerns over commercial interest. Teams need sponsors to give riders jobs just as much as cycling magazines and websites need sponsors in order to hire journalists. Journalists also need access to do what they do. Rock the boat too much and the wagons circle and your editor starts wondering why you can’t get that interview with Pat McQuaid that he/she wants for the next week. Do the names Paul Kimmage and David Walsh ring any bells here?

But it doesn’t have to be like this. The Guardian newspaper has consistently been at the centre of the News International phone hacking scandal which may yet bring down a multi-billion dollar organisation. Probably the most famous case of investigative journalism is when two low-level reporters from the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, managed to bring down a President of the United States over the Watergate scandal.

This post, whoever, is not solely about the dearth of investigative journalism in cycling. As I say, it’s about all us sitting here watching the inferno and being nothing but entranced by it.

Let’s be clear; the UCI and Pat McQuaid do not care what you or I think. They don’t even care about what the riders or the teams think. Dario Coni is one of the riders representatives on the Professional Cycling Council. In an interview with VeloNews earlier this year he felt the riders had a “limited voice” and that most of the decisions were made when the riders reps are not in the room. Kudos to VN for publishing the interview but it seems nothing was done with that information. The UCI, as far as I can tell, were not even asked to comment.

Even when the riders and team representatives do start to complain, for example over the issue of the race radios ban, all McQuaid has to do is bar them from the PCC meeting.

The reason Pat McQuaid can do this is that he is not beholden to the teams, the riders or the fans of the sport for his position. They don’t pay his salary and they (we) don’t have a voice when it comes to his re-election.

Those that do are The Congress who are 42 cycling official delegates from around the world. They voted him in, at the behest of previous incumbent Hein Verbruggen, in 2005, re-elected him in 2009 and there is nothing to suggest that, come the next election in 2013, they won’t do so again. The job is for as long as Pat McQuaid wants it and there is very little that anyone can do about it.

I say very little, so not impossible. According to their annual report, the UCI made 11,334,064 CHF in 2009 from the World Championships - their biggest source of income by far. (An aside: the 2010 annual report has not been published on the UCI website. I’ve been told that this cannot be done until after the next meeting of the Congress which will take place in Copenhagen on September 23rd, 2011). I cannot envisage the circumstances in which the World Championships would be boycotted.

But hitting McQuaid where it hurts; his wallet (and increasingly it is his wallet) would certainly make the Congress sit up and take notice.

The circumstances which have brought about the Tour of Beijing - a tour which is being organized by a private company that members of the UCI own, including McQuaid -is a massive conflict of interest.

Of course a boycott of the newly installed Tour of Beijing has been threatened over the race radio ban. It’s easy to see how this could be construed as a smokescreen and is a convenient way of leveraging more power within the UCI for the teams association, AIGCP and the riders CPA.

My feeling is that this is, ultimately, pointless. The UCI needs root and branch reform, not the picking of a few leaves and twigs somewhere near the bottom of the tree.

I urge Jonathan Vaughters, as President of the AIGCP and Gianni Bugno, as President of the CPA, to use the proposed boycott of the Tour of Beijing as a call for a motion of no confidence in Pat McQuaid.

The Congress, as I said earlier, next meets on September the 23rd. We have the chance to shout “Fire!”. Can we please use it and stop giggling at the spectacle of the house burning down all around us?

Renshaw & Cavendish To Part Company?

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:31:00 +0100

Well, I didn’t see that coming, as I’m sure many newly installed residents of the after-life have been heard to remark following head-on encounters with cars, buses or the business end of a blunt object. Since I’m not dead - although a quick visit to one of England’s fine inner-city streets of an evening, dressed in Tweed and demanding that “you young man, put those trainers back in the shop window where you found them” would soon put pay to that - there must be something else that I didn’t see coming, and has surprised to a sufficient degree to warrant this new dispatch.

News arrived today from Der Telegraaf that Mark Renshaw, lead-out man par excellence for Mark Cavendish at HTC-Highroad has signed a two year deal with Dutch squad, Rabobank. The deal will mean that Renshaw will be the team’s appointed sprinter.

One curious aspect of this announcement is that, according to Cyclingnews, sources close to the Australian were maintaining that both he and Mark Cavendish were to sign with Team Sky for 2012. Indeed many were expecting that the pair were would to continue their partnership following any move from HTC, regardless of the team.

Renshaw to Rabobank is certainly a shock move - more of a shock is that the Dutch team were able to outbid British behemoth Team Sky for the sprinter’s services.

The immediate question that is likely to be asked is “Will Mark Cavendish follow his lead-out man to Holland?” The answer to that is almost certainly ‘No.’

Renshaw said in 2010 that this season he wanted more wins of his own and hoped to captain the Australian Worlds team:

“Leading out Cavendish is a prestigious job for sure, but I still have ambitions. I think this year I’ll have a little more of a chance to fight for some objectives myself, and get the chance to win a race or two. It’s something I’d like to do because I’d like to go to the world championships in Denmark for the Australian team as a leader,”

My feeling is that if HTC-Highroad hadn’t collapsed in such dramatic style last week, Renshaw probably would have gone to Sky with Cavendish. But with the demise of Stapelton’s team, all riders and staff found that all bets were off and that work should be sought wherever it could be found. In this environment it would be easy to see why Renshaw felt now was the time to go it alone.

Don’t expect this to come to a swift conclusion. Sports commentator Michael Tomalaris said on Twitter today that Renshaw cannot comment on any new contracts until September 1st due to strict conditions at HTC-Highroad. You’d be hard pushed to understand why, though!

This, of course, could also explain why Mark Cavendish has been keeping quiet over which team jersey he’ll be pulling on next year. Cavendish told Brendan Gallagher of the Telegraph:

“A number of teams have expressed interest in me riding for them in 2012. I have now made a decision I am happy with and will be in a position to discuss my intentions once everything has been finalised.”

Not a peep since then.

Before this morning I thought that GreenEDGE were in the running despite numerous sources telling me that the Sky deal was done and dusted. Following this leak that the Renshaw / Cavendish partnership looks likely to be split up I would say that I simply can’t see Cav going anywhere other than Sky. I still don’t believe this would be the best move ever made and have said so before.

So, barring meetings with the afore-mentioned cars, buses or blunt objects I guess we’ll find out come September the 1st.

As a postscript I offer up this tweet from Cervelo founder Gerard Vroomen:

In 2yrs of CTT I never saw a deal we were working on leak, only “leaks” about riders we never even spoke to!

Great Expectations: Where Will Cavendish Go?

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:27:00 +0100

The Specialized Venge. It’s lovely, isn’t it? According to the Specialized website the Venge is the:

..competition-crushing combo of Tarmac-inspired stiffness and light weight with Shiv-inspired aerodynamics makes this pure race machine truly more bike than aero. Throw in a FACT IS 11r carbon frame plus Pro Tour-proven Shimano Dura-Ace components, and this bike will elevate you—and Team HTC-Highroad—to a whole new level.

You’d be hard pushed to argue with any of that - with the notable exception of that last bit about HTC-Highroad.

HTC are all over the Specialized website and it’s companion I Am Specialized, which focuses on individual riders across the multitude of cycling disciplines that Specialized are involved with. Click on ‘Road’ at Specialized.com and there’s a panorama shot of HTC at the head of the peloton. The pictorial menu has a thumbnail of Cav in HTC livery for the ‘Road’ section here too and a visit features a video titled “Cavendish Rhapsody In Green”.

Clearly Specialized are making a lot of their association with Mark Cavendish and his defunct team.

In fairness, HTC-Highroad won’t sigh it’s last breath until the end of the 2011 season. But with owner Bob Stapleton announcing it’s condition as terminal a couple of days ago, we’ve all crying into our handkerchiefs over it’s soon-to-be sad passing. All that’s left now is to sit by the hospital bed and watch, and wait.

However, we’re an unscrupulous, greedy bunch and before the body is even cold we’re wondering who’s going to get what in the will? How are the assets going to be divided up and how long is going to be before someone is complaining bitterly that “that sniveling little shit never had a kind word to say about the deceased (McQuaid rest his soul) and now he’s buggered off with a lifetime supply of bib shorts and that portrait of Jan Ullrich I always liked!”

Maybe Stapleton will yet surprise us all and HTC’s last will and testament is for Cav, Renshaw, Eisel and the rest of the HTC-Highroad staff to be donated to charitable organisation for the protection of sexually abused seal pups. Who knows?

So what will happen to the poor orphan-child, Mark Cavendish, now that he is set to become a homeless waif and stray? Certainly Great Uncle Brailsford at Sky Mansions has yet to step forward and make public his decision to adopt the boy.

The conventional wisdom is that Mark Cavendish is on his way - and has been on his way for several months - to be re-united with his long, lost Uncle Dave at Team Sky, and that Renshaw and Eisel have to be part of the package.

Which brings us back, in a roundabout way, to the the Specialized Venge.

How much does it mean to Specialized to keep Cavendish on one of their bikes? You may recall that one of cycling’s big 3 were able to persuade Alberto Contador to sling his diminutive leg over their top-tubes, regardless of team deal, back in 2010. Could Specialized do the same for the Manx Missile?

The answer, I fear, for the Morgan Hill manufacturer is an almost definite, no. The enticing prospect of nest-lining sponsorship moolah aside, Cavendish is no fan of Specialized and commented that he would like his Spesh to feel like his old Scott Addict. Which, in turn, probably rules out a move to any other team riding the Venge in 2012 - Saxo Bank-Sungard, I’m looking at you. Besides, Bjarne Riis knows as much about sprinting as Abu Hamza knows about applying nail varnish.

What Cavendish thinks about Pinarello, the current bendy-forked monstrosity favoured by Team Sky, is unknown.

Why are we spending all this time talking about the kind of bike Mark Cavendish prefers, you may ask? After all, most professional riders put their arses on what they are told to (stop tittering at the back) and only really have a say, in this regard, when it comes to saddle choice.

On Monday, Cav issued the following statement:

“A number of teams have expressed interest in me riding for them in 2012. I have now made a decision I am happy with and will be in a position to discuss my intentions once everything has been finalised.”

Richard Moore reported back in June that Cavendish was set to join Team Sky. Now that HTC is on it’s death bed, just why haven’t we heard anything from them? How long does it take to negotiate a contract given that they’ve been talking for at least 3 months?

Is it now time to consider that idea that the decision Cavendish has come to will not see him riding in blue and black next year?

The reason I’ve spent so much time talking about bikes is in the the afore-mentioned relationship that Cav had with the Scott Addict, and how this may be a clue to where this year’s Green Jersey winner will end up for 2012.

Have a look at the sponsors page GreenEDGE cycling website. Turns out that the new Australian team, owned by multi-millionaire Gerry Ryan, will be riding Scott bicycles next year.

Australia’s first professional cycling team is also rumoured to have ambitions that are only matched by their piles of cash.

Like Brailsford with Sky, there are strong links to Olympic cycling as Ryan has been a strong supporter of the Australian Olympic cycling for many years. When I say supporter, I do of course mean that he threw money at the squad in bucket loads. GreenEDGE is also said to be encouraging any riders on its roster to pursue Olympic as well as more professional road-based goals. Whether Gerry Ryan would like this to extend to riders who don’t come from a land down under is another matter all together!

However, with the identity and focus of the team yet to be defined (neither Gerry Ryan or general manager Shane Bannen have made rash predictions of winning the Tour De France with an Aussie rider within 5 years, as far as I know), there may be more opportunity for Cavendish to mould the team as he would like it without the seeming paradox of GC / Green Jersey ambitions of Wiggo and Cav.

No one, least of all Mark himself, underestimates the value of the lead-out train he had at HTC-Highroad. In particular Cavendish has nothing but admiration for wing man number one, Mark Renshaw. And as if you didn’t know already, guess which country Mark Renshaw calls home?

Who Really Killed HTC-Highroad?

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:47:24 +0100

All I can tell you is that I don’t think there has been a single discussion with a potential sponsor where one or the other (Alberto Contador from the 2010 Tour de France and the federal investigation into doping at the US Postal Service team ) wasn’t talked about. It’s been a factor in everyone’s view of cycling in the last year.

So said Bob Stapleton yesterday following the announcement that his HTC-Highroad team is to disband following a failed search for a new sponsor. It was an announcement that no one wanted to hear, but if truth be told there was an air of inevitability around it when, at last, it did come.

So is Stapleton right? Is it now impossible to find corporate sponsorship for a professional cycling team with Bert’s beef and the investigation stemming from Lanids’ allegations polluting the proceedings? Possibly. But putting the demise of HTC-Highroad squarely at the door of doping is, I believe, somewhat disingenuous. I find it hard to accept that a team with nearly 500 victories and who walked away with the green jersey at this year’s Tour De France fell foul of the ‘ifs’, ‘buts’, and ‘maybes’ that currently surround on-going investigations into doping. There certainly hasn’t been anything hitting the headlines regarding doping at HTC-Highroad.

So, if it wasn’t the doping that was stopping the sponsors signing on the dotted line, then what was it?

This is what Stapleton said to CyclingNews.com back in October last year:

I’d love to have a little west coast, geographically relevant compatible group of partners who are focused on common marketing objectives

Of course none of us were in attendance at those meetings and none of us actually know who Bob Stapleton was talking to. But if has restricted his search to the Silicon Valley bubble then I feel he has done his team a disservice.

However, while everyone is pouring over the quote regarding Contador and Armstrong the real assailant, when it comes to HTC-Highroad, is going unnoticed. If you want to know who really killed HTC, ask Richard Moore who was talking to earlier this year.

On the 14th of June Richard wrote an article for the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper which said:

Sportsmail understands the winner of 15 stages of the Tour de France has agreed to leave his current team, HTC-Highroad, to join Bradley Wiggins in the Dave Brailsford-managed British squad for 2012.

Cavendish is set to double his current salary, putting him on a par with Wiggins.

Cavendish was also quoted in the article as saying he was

“committed to a contract I signed a few years ago (but) there’s been no goodwill, no bonuses, nothing,”

He also added that he “felt kind of abused for what I’ve achieved”.

By the time this article appeared and the cycling world went into meltdown, negotiations would have been well under way with potential sponsors for the team which Mark Cavendish rode for - and was, undoubtably, the star of.

The problem that HTC-Highroad had was that they found an incredible talent in Mark Cavendish. He was young and brash when he went to T-Mobile as a stagiaire after finding success at the Tour Of Berlin in 2006. Stapleton quickly discovered just what the Manxman could do and so, slowly but surely, the entire team was moulded around him. And therein lay the problem. No one believes in Mark Cavendish’s abilities more than Mark Cavendish. With HTC unable, or unwilling, to pay him what he thought he was worth it was only logical that he would look elsewhere.

With Richard Moore’s article published, Bob Stapleton had no cards left to play. Cav is the fastest man in the peloton, the first British rider to win the Maillot Vert at the Tour De France and is still only 26. Who wants to sponsor a team that has, maybe, the second or third fastest guy in the world?

Andre Griepel, possibly the only rider who could beat Cav - and even then the conditions have to be just right - had left in acrimonious circumstances last year. I wrote previously about how Bernie Eisel and Mark Renshaw were using interviews at this year’s tour as a vehicle to publicize their intentions to go wherever Cavendish goes.

Recently the Velits twins announced that they had found a new home at QuickStep.

No offense to the following riders but if all you can offer a potential sponsor is Tony Martin, Bert Grabsch, Mathew Goss, and Tejay van Garderen the first thing they are going to say is “Who?”, followed in quick succession by a very succinct “No thanks”.

This is what Bob Stapleton told a hastily arranged telephone news conference yesterday to officially announce the end of HTC-Highroad.

“We went public with our sponsorship search just before the Tour. We were frustrated by the indecision of our title sponsor HTC who, after many months of assurances, had not come forward with a commitment to the team. That indecision remains a mystery to me”

The indecision remains a mystery. Really, Bob? Really?

It could be argued that one part of Armstrong’s legacy is an unhealthy focus for teams and individual riders to do one thing and do it really well. For Armstrong it was the Tour De France. For Bob Stapleton it was creating a team that could put Mark Cavendish at the head of a charging peloton with 200m to go. This was his crowning achievement and, indeed, his downfall. Because when the one element that your entire team is focused on is gone, there’s nowhere else to go. You suddenly find that what you thought was one of the most respected and well-drilled teams in the peloton is really nothing mor ethan a house of cards.

You can’t suddenly magic up a new squad that……well, does what, exactly? Cavendish is still the fastest man in world right now. Bob Stapleton knows that better than anyone else right now, so there’s little point in building another team along the same lines only to come second - at best. Riders with the ability to win Grand Tours don’t grow on trees and those types of rider also need a decent amount of team support around them. Finally, the true mountain goat isn’t celebrated much these days and is usually nothing more than a sideshow while the GC guys tentatively scrap with each other behind.

There is much to discuss about what the end of Bob Stapleton’s HTC-Highroad team means for the sport. There are questions to be asked about how teams are funded and how our sport can thrive when it seems to be at the whim of corporate ‘bang for buck’ sponsorship or the plaything of well-meaning, super-rich fans. There are also questions to be asked of the UCI who govern cycling and the organisations who run the events, such as ASO.

In other sports star athletes can come and go but the team always endures. To return, yet again with ill-deserved enthusiasm, to football; you can proclaim Wayne Rooney as something akin to the second coming of Christ one week when he plays for Everton and call him every name under the sun the next when he signs for Manchester United. It’s the club that you stick with. Always.

In cycling, we worship the rider and don’t care what the name on the jersey says - even when the name on the jersey changes but it’s still the same team. And that needs to change because in reality the riders and the teams are no better than serfs bound to a feudalistic system.

But getting back to the case of ‘Who Killed HTC-Highroad?’. if you really want to know the answer to that question, best ask Richard Moore.

Word Of The Day: Chutzpah!

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 11:15:26 +0100

There are many great things that the Jewish people have contributed to world culture. Granted there are also a great number of things that aren’t quite so good such as a large number of 3-bed semis (master bedroom with en suite bathroom, bullet-proof double glazing throughout) that have wonderful views across the West Bank. Oh and Michael Winner. But we’re not here to talk about them today. One of those things that we can count as being on the plus side is the word Chutzpah. Well done Hebrew. Big tick, A-plus. Come and stand at the front of the class and receive the a certificate for having the perfect word for our times.

Chutzpah, for those unfamiliar with it - or for those too lazy to go pick up a dictionary or to Google it - is the quality of audacity, for good or bad, but is generally used negatively.

The reason this wonderful word has found it’s way into a cycling journal today is, of course, the news that the Tour of Beijing was officially given ProTour status yesterday. Given that the race was already in the ProTour calendar and decorated with an asterix that wasn’t as much there to denote it’s “as yet unconfirmed” status but more as a cheeky wee wink and a conspiratorial tap on the nose, the Tour of Beijing is essentially a black-hole from which no surprise can escape.

Departing and concluding in close proximity to the city’s Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium, the race will be fought over 5 days from Wednesday October 5th to Sunday October 9th.

Alain Rumpf, former UCI ProTour manager and current director of Global Cycling Promotion said;

“Together with the City of Beijing we have brought together a world class event team – including the organisers of the Tour de France ASO.

“The addition of the Tour of Beijing is a crucial step in the UCI’s development of a global cycling calendar, with the UCI WorldTour now reaching Asia, Oceania and North America in addition to its traditional home in Europe.”

Most people reading this will know that the tour is controversial for many reasons including the threat by teams to boycott the event over the UCI’s desire to ban radios from all races. However, the main reason that the race is courting more controversy than Lady Gaga wearing a hat made from Osama Bin Laden’s skin is that Global Cycling Promotions is a private company that is set up and run by the members of UCI itself.

UCI president, Pat McQuaid - who in no way has a financial stake in Global Cycling Promotions, except, of course, that he does - said that;

“Despite the strategic importance of the Tour of Beijing – which has already been highlighted several times – this race did not receive any beneficial treatment.

The licence was awarded to the event by an independent body after an in-depth evaluation of all the elements in the file. It is the result of the excellent work carried out by the Chinese authorities in close collaboration with Global Cycling Promotion.”

I don’t want to linger too long over the linguistic Esherism that is “Despite the strategic importance” and “did not receive beneficial treatment”. You would think that if something has already been identified as being of strategic importance then it must receive beneficial treatment. I certainly can’t recall Winston Churchill saying; “Well, Normandy was identified as being, strategically, the best place for the D-Day landings but don’t think for a second that we also didn’t give Ethiopia a fair crack of the whip around the panning table”. I wasn’t there at the time, though. So who knows? Maybe he did.

What Pat actually means is that he doesn’t want us to think - no, not even for a second. Put it from your mind, dear, valued ~~schmuck~~ cycling fan - that just because Global Cycling Promotions has it’s official address listed as ‘c/o Union Cycliste Internationale, Chemin de la Mêlée 12, 1860 Aigle’ that this influenced the UCI License Committee’s decision to award the the Tour of Beijing, which will be run by Global Cycling Promotions, ProTour status. Not at all.

You at the back; are you following this? Good.

McQuaid continued;

“This licence over a four-year period will allow for the creation of an event that is structurally and economically solid, based on a long-term project which will benefit the city of Beijing and cycling as a whole.

This first UCI WorldTour event in Asia will also provide the UCI with an exceptional showcase portraying its vision of the universal development of sport. In addition it will be a unique opportunity for UCI ProTeams and their sponsors to nurture their growth and further increase their visibility.”

It will also provide Patrick McQuaid, Cattaneo Rocco, Alain Rumpf, Alain Siegrist and Jean Pierre Strebel with the profits from the races over it’s 4 year tenure. And for those cautious Kevins and prudent Prunellas who may be saying that it’s not a given that the Tour of Beijing will make money, I say yes you’re right. But the UCI brought in over 11.3 million CHF from the 2009 World Championships. It only cost it 2.2 million CHF to organise and was the biggest source of income for the UCI in 2009. The Tour of Beijing may never be as big as the Worlds but I don’t think it’s too wide of the mark to suggest that it allow Pat et al to indulge in a few bottles of Bollinger when the mood takes them. And who says that Beijing will be the only race that they will want to run. India and Malaysia are rumoured to be next.

In the end it’s not really the chutzpah that leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. After all, McQuaid and the UCI for which he speaks seem to exist in a vacuum entirely of their own making. A private Walter Mitty-esque fantasy where rules are made and rules are broken simply because they can. There’s no conflict of interest simply because, well, trust us, we’ve said there is isn’t. So there can’t be. Geddit? No, that claggy, bitter sensation assaulting my palate whenever I consider Global Cycling Promotions is that we did nothing, we said nothing and we allowed it all to happen.

I suggested on Twitter yesterday that, given China’s appalling record on human rights, that maybe Global Cycling Promotions should consider Tours of Burma, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea or the Sudan. Now that would be chutzpah!

The Curious Case Of Max Van Heeswijk

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:04:00 +0100

Few of us knew the name Max Van Heeswijk until yesterday. Many of you may still not know who he his.

Van Heeswijk was born in 1973 in Limburg, the southernmost of the 12 Dutch provinces. He rode for Motorola in 1995, Robobank until 1998, rode as a team Discovery rider from 2003-2006 before re-joining Robobank in 2007. he ended his career with the Wiliems team in 2008.

Major career wins were nothing to write home about and included Wachovia International (2004), Paris-Brussels (2000), Danmark Rundt, Points jersey (2004) and one stage of the 2005 Vuelta a España. Max was a journeyman roleur and a decent professional.

On June 17th, Van Heeswijk was interviewed by Dutch journalist Nando Boers for the NuSport magazine. Given that he was a rider team mate of Lance Armstrong during his Team Discovery years, Boers wanted to speak to Van Heeswijk as the only Dutchman to have anywhere near the allegations currently surrounding the 7-time Tour De France winner.

According to NuSport editor, Richard Plugge, Van Heeswijk talked about doping within the team and within the peleton. He was then asked if he himself doped. The answer was yes.

The retired rider then asked for the comments regarding doping to be omitted from the interview. Boers - and who could blame him - replied that this was not possible.

It seems that realising that he was about to likely to find himself in a whole heap of trouble Van Heeswijk grabbed the disk that contained the recording and threw it in the trash. Boers asked for the disk to be returned but Max refused and was “shown out the door by the Van Heeswijk’s rottweiler” - Google translate was obviously losing something in the translation here!

Nando Boers immediately wrote down everything about the conversation and returned to his office. NuSport tried contacting Van Heeswijk to return the disk and, when this was unsuccessful, reported the theft to the local police.

Yesterday, the day before the story was to be published, Van Heeswijk contacted NuSport to say that he wanted to retract what he had said in the interview - he had never mentioned EPO and had never confessed. NuSport refused to accept this, saying that they could not “pretend” that the previous interview had not taken place.

The disk, it seems, will be long gone. However, Nando Boers, Richard Plugge and NuSport are sticking to their story.

And a curious one it is too.

So what have we learned here? That, according to one lowly Dutch rider, doping was widespread in the peloton during the Armstrong years and that Van Heeswijk himself doped? Maybe.

Max Van Heeswijk probably wanted a quiet life after professional cycling. I certainly don’t know what he had planned. However, I’m fairly sure that it didn’t involve a very much on the record chat with Jeff Novitsky, the U.S. prosector currently charged with investigating the allegations against Lance Armstrong.

Remember the name Max Van Heeswijk. You may hear it again soon.

Nurse! Pat McQuaid Is Out Of Bed Again

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:40:47 +0100

Back in days when the VeloCast was a podcast and the world’s madness level was a tolerable “goofy” - these days, of course, we’re all dangerously close to a complete meltdown, teetering, as we are, at frightening “Gaga” levels - myself and John did a fair bit of talking about the UCI and Pat McQuaid. You remember those times, don’t you? A time when Alberto Contador and Bjarne Rhis dreamed of a grand tour triple in a single year. Sad, deluded fools that they were. Salad days indeed.

I also blogged about Pat McQuaid quote a lot too. So much so that in the wake of the Floyd Landis allegations, typing ‘Pat McQuaid’ into your search engine of choice resulted in seeing my posts listed above both the UCI homepage and it’s president’s Wikipedia entry. Surreal but true. So with the world at large growing ever more bonkers by the hour I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was compelled to point out that the old sod was out of bed again, wandering down the corridor of his care home in Aigle, in slippers and bare-arse surgical gown, mumbling something about good old days of Reynolds 531. The opportunity presented itself today when Carlton Reid posted his article on the BikeBiz.com website.

Carlton was at the UCI’s care home for the uncommonly bewildered in Switzerland recently to hear about the lovely things the ~~inmates~~ residents have been doing with a new sticker machine. Or something. The bikebiz editor was good enough to point out that he was there, all expenses paid, “thanks to the largesse of the UCI” to learn about their campaign to have new bikes rubber-stamped by the UCI to say “Pat McQuaid has personally ridden this bike and can assure you that it hasn’t been built by blind, syphilitic, Vietnamese orphans and that a madman won’t jump out of the bushes with a blazer and a clipboard to deny you entry to your next Club 10”. Or something.

I don’t know how much it cost the UCI to bring Carlton from his home in the north east of England all the way to the rarified air of UCI HQ in Aigle, but if I was the UCI I wouldn’t exactly believe that I’d gotten value for money from Mr. Reid. Perhaps we’ll find out when the UCI publish their annual accounts. Oh, hang on…..Hmmmmm.

The article says:

The UCI is largely funded with cash from the International Olympic Committee and it spends much of this money on outreach work, delivering programs in the developing world to foster and encourage cycle sport. The UCI’s HQ velodrome, and outdoor BMX track, are full to bursting with youngsters from nations that don’t benefit from global pay-TV company sponsorships.

This is excellent work, largely unsung.

“Spends much of it…”. That’s the thing, though. We don’t know how much is spent on outreach work or the “approved by UCI” sticker campaigns or PR junkets for the world’s cycling press, throwing as much caviar, champagne and beach towels (seriously! - ask Carlton) as their suitcases will cope with. Carlton called the UCI a “bombastic, bureaucratic, bossy, Bolshy bunch of blazers” so clearly it’s not exactly been a success.

And it’s not that I begrudge the cycling journos the trip. Who would? I could certainly do with a free jaunt to Switzerland at the moment. I like Toborelone and cuckoo clocks as much as the next man.

But Carlton is wrong to suggest that homologation is a grand idea. Certainly not in the way that the UCI are approaching it. The flimflammery over the cost of the programme and not appreciating the size and scale of the world’s bicycling industry is entirely besides the point. It’s tantamount to finding a man bleeding to death in the street and wondering why no one has thought to treat the graze on his knee with a wee bit of anti-sceptic cream.

And that’s before we get into McQuaid’s lunacy of suggesting that a five grand bike is produced in China for $30:

“And they’re turning out thousands and thousands of these carbon fibre or Kevlar or whatever frames, at a cost of maybe $30 or $40 a piece, and that same bike is ultimately being sold as a bike on the market for four or five or six thousand Euros.

“Our problem is, this initial frame, of twenty or thirty or forty dollars, where are the safety aspects? Where are the safety parameters in the making [of that frame]? That’s something we’re going to have to address with the industry as we move on. We have to bear in mind the safety aspect of the sport. There’s a whole change that has happened which is making racing less safe and causing more crashes.”

This was said by Pat McQuaid, as some kind of weird justification of the homologation programme, recently.

If anyone reading this happens to live next door to Pat could you pop over to his house and pass on the following message: THIS IS NOT YOUR CONCERN. Safety is the concern of the manufacturers. Nothing to see here, Pat. Back to bed with a nice cup of cocoa and everything will be OK.

I have yet to see the governing body of swimming issuing a decree that the Speedo trunks being worn by athletes need to be regulated as swimmers competing at London 2012 next year are in serious danger of getting a ‘wedgie’.

The idea of forcing manufacturers to adhere to the UCI’s ludicrous set of standards (Carlton rightly talks about the completely out-dated weight limit) is anti-competitive and it does nothing more than to stifle innovation and put jobs at risk within the industry. Honestly, I am absolutely stunned that Trek, Giant, Specialized and many other manufacturers haven’t chartered a flight to the UCI headquarters full to bursting with rabid lawyers.

When the idea of bikes being approved by the UCI was first floated - or perhaps it was over the stink they created with the Specialized Shiv - I recall saying on the podcast that the only way that the UCI can have the level of control that seem to want was for the UCI to actually become thte manufacturer and build the bike to their own very detailed specifications. This would mean that all riders, from all teams, would all be racing the same UCI bikes, for all races. Problem solved. N’est pas?

However, we do know that Pat McQuaid is mad. But I don’t think even he has gone beyond “Gaga” levels. He’s not quite that mad. Is he?

Lord Sebastian Coe: Once A Prefect, Always A Prefect

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:26:58 +0100

Sebastian Newbold Coe, Baron Coe, KBE, must have been a right pain in the rear end while at school. I can envisage the ne’er do wells and miscreants of Abbeydale Grange school sneaking behind the bike sheds at lunchtime for a quick puff on a shared Benson & Hedges cigarette before facing the horrors of an afternoon spent chasing a rugby ball around a frozen playing field. Unfortunately for our young ruffians, head-boy and prefect, Sebastian, has been watching them all along and has reported them to the Games Master who will, undoubtedly, give them a sound thrashing with a cricket bat - sadistic bastard that he is.

And should those now suffering bruised butt cheeks decide to exact their revenge once the home time bell rings, it turns out that young Master Coe is rather good at running away. So good, in fact, that several years later Seb went on to win four Olympic medals, including the 1500 metres gold medal at the Olympic Games in 1980and 1984, and set eight outdoor and three indoor world records in middle distance track events.

Once Coe had finished breaking world records with the same kind of ease that a Vegan breaks wind he went to become a member of parliament for the Conservative Party (well, with a name like Sebastian he was hardly likely to be a Communist, was he?!). After becoming a life peer, hence the Lord Coe, he headed up the bid to host the Olympic Games in London for 2012. When London was awarded the games, Lord Coe became the chairman of the London Organising Committee. He is also the vice-president of the International Association of Athletics Federations

An article on Cyclingnews.com caught my eye yesterday which detailed Lord Coe’s objections to UK Anti-Doping’s petition to WADA to re-classify recreational drugs such as cocaine and MDMA (Ecstasy).

UK Anti-Doping issued a statement saying:

“WADA annually reviews the Prohibited List and as part of this, UK Anti-Doping undertakes an annual domestic consultation process to seek expert opinion and make suitable suggestions. Consequently, among those recommendations we submitted this year, was for some stimulants, such as Cocaine, BZP and MDMA, to be reclassified as Specified, in recognition of the fact that the use of these substances is almost exclusively for recreational, and not performance-enhancing reasons.”

“These substances would and should remain prohibited. However, we want the Prohibited List to distinguish those substances used exclusively for performance-enhancement, and any sanctions should reflect this accordingly.”

Lord Coe, who is an advocate of four year bans, is having none of this:

“Let’s get real. What are the messages we are giving out here to young people? There is no ambiguity. If you want to be part of this project then don’t take drugs. Full stop.”

“There is no place for drugs in sport. You can’t mix the message up. I don’t even think a two-year-ban is appropriate. If we’re in a position in track and field to do something about it, I would move it to four years,”

OK, Seb, let’s get real. Athletes are routinely submitting themselves to invasive testing procedures in order to prove to sporting organisations that they have not used performance enhancing drugs or substances that could be used to mask such. They do this to prove that they are not cheating their way to success. They do not do this to allow other aspects of their private lives to be revealed - regardless of the illegality of actions perpetrated .

The thing is, Lord Coe and those who seek to send a zero tolerance message on all drugs, must surely be arguing on very shaky grounds. For example, the following is taken from The Citizens Advice Bureau website, a UK charity that gives free legal advice to anyone that needs it:

The police do not have the power to take fingerprints, palm prints or body samples, such as a blood sample, unless you have been arrested and detained.

So if the police have no right to intimate samples from anyone that can be used to test for the presence of illegal substances unless they have been arrested and detained, what makes WADA or Lord Coe think they can?

From the WADA website:

WADA was established in 1999 as an international independent agency composed and funded equally by the sport movement and governments of the world. Its key activities include scientific research, education, development of anti-doping capacities, and monitoring of the World Anti Doping Code (Code) – the document harmonizing anti-doping policies in all sports and all countries.

Anti-doping. Not recreational drug use. And I haven’t as yet, seen any evidence that dancing in a field for 8 hours, off your tits on Ecstasy, is of any benefit in the Individual Track Pursuit.

No one is advocating the use of illegal recreational drugs, merely the desire by some people to use athletes submission to be tested, so that they can prove they are not cheating, in order to also show the presence of other substances. WADA, as far as I can tell, was not set up as an adjunct to individual national governments, their police forces or their prosecution services. So if it is the case that WADA reveal the details of recreational use and, presumably, forwards this to the police there are a few questions to be answered.

First of all, we’re not actually talking about ALL drugs here, when Sebastian Coe says “If you want to be part of this project then don’t take drugs. Full stop”. We’re just talking about those that the government have decided, for legitimate reasons, are illegal. Lord Coe, one would assume, wouldn’t grudge an athlete a glass of red wine or, even though he might think immensely stupid, a cigarette. But, what if an athlete, before flying into London for the Games, has a joint while at home in Holland? Cannabis is decriminalized in The Netherlands but not in the UK. In fact the presence of cannabinoids in urine merely signifies that the person had used or been exposed to cannabis at some point prior to the test. So the athlete is banned from competition and reported to the police. But the police won’t be able to determine if the drug, illegal in the UK where it was detected, found it’s way into the body in Amsterdam.

Taking that point to a rather troubling conclusion: what if we rewind 4 years and play a similar scenario whereby the athlete has used recreational drugs but is attending the Games held in China? Those convicted of drug-related crimes in China face harsh penalties, in some cases capital punishment. Drug abusers and addicts must undergo rehabilitation at police-run facilities or labor camps.

So if Lord Coe wants to go back to grassing up kids to the games master for using drugs, in their own time, and that have no beneficial effect on their sporting abilities, it may not be a few whacks on the backside that they will face. And, I imagine, like those who stupidly indulged a quick ciggie behind the bike sheds all those years ago, we too should be asking, “What the hell has it got do with you, Coe?”