racing union blog policy change: bpc-64-s5dft-000-08022007-03.  revision to official blog policy as sanctioned by the ministry of outreach under the wise and benevolent leadership of the supreme revolutionary council for propogation of message.  this document is hereby incorporated into existing blog policies and is to be identified as version 4.3.5.  this supercedes all documents in the 4.3 series which address this topic.

racing union, leaders of the glorious cause that is the revolution in cycling and the social order, bold vanguard in the jihad against the hated four-wheeled hegemon, early adopter of the systeme international d'unites, proud member of the reality-based community, and fiercely protective of the effective and proper use of logic, announces a formal change to our posting policies.  blog posts and associated comments are now forbidden from using the phrase "n-dimensional" in a general context to refer to a vector space which cannot be described in euclidian or simple three-dimensional terms.  blog posts, and all submissions from commenters, including but not limited to correspondence with the authors through internal union messaging systems, or external-standard-public-access-non-revolutionary systems, must from this point on, reference the object or abstraction as a "hilbert space".  

the hilbert space is named in honour of doctor and professor david hilbert, born january 23, 1862, königsberg, east prussia; died february 14, 1943, göttingen, germany.  this policy is to take effect immediately.  for actionable purposes, date of time of implementaiton will be date and time of posting as described in section 1.4.5 (a)(3) of the existing blog post guidelines.  concurrence on the material in this revision was achieved on day 583 of the revolution: full records available within the racing union archives as defined by union protocols laid out in separate documents.

i'm briefly switching gears here this morning.  since the revolution we keep yabbering about concerns both cycling _and_ the social order, issues concerning the social order are fair game.  i have been a bit distraught recently that some of our riders have been hearing stuff.  you know, just warming up before a race or what not, they ride by people and hear something like the following...

rider 1: "racing union, what's that..."

rider 2: "those are the communists"

rider 1: "the what?"

rider 2: "i don't know, the cycling communists or something like that..."

i don't expect a nuanced appreciation from everyone but i do want to be clear about a few things.  first, i don't think anyone on the team is an actual communist, in the literal sense of being a card-carrying member of the communist party.  second, it would be very difficult to characterize the individuals on the team as having any sort of common ideology.  sure, there are a few people who have unconventional political beliefs, relative to current american standards and norms, but the racing union does not at this time dictate how people should think and act.  people, in the near term, are free to go where they like, talk to whomever they choose and pursue such interests as they find appropriate.  as long as they are careful about what they say. 

so as you can see, we're all actually just a bunch of fun guys (and a gal) who like to ride bikes.  nothing to see here, nothing to worry about.  next time you see a racing union jersey, simply introduce yourself and you'll find that we can all get along.  we're nothing to be afraid of.  but if you're the kind of person who is looking for something to be afraid of, well, we've got you covered, and we're off to the second point of this morning's post. 

i'm sure that as educated and interested members of the republic, you all spat out your coffee this morning while reading this.  the short version is that a major us corporation has been funding death squads in columbia.  and that they continued to do this after their corporate counsel told them it was illegal.  though not shocking to anyone who was awake in the 1980's, this is pretty disturbing.  and though you'd think that such a blunt fact would be a great hook for a story, i experienced growing frustration as i read paragraph after paragraph that basically reduced this down to an issue of high level bureaucratic infighting between oligarchic corporate types in private industry and oligarchic corporate types who now control government.  that whole funding the death squads thing appears to be of considerably less interest and importantance than an extended essay on washington dc kremlinology.  the washington post can normally be counted on to view everything through this type of conceptual filter, but you know, death squads, well that's gotta be important too.  right?  it's not really until you get to the fourth paragraph form the end that you get some real context:

An Organization of American States report in 2003 said that Chiquita participated in smuggling thousands of arms for paramilitaries into the Northern Uraba region, using docks operated by the company to unload thousands of Central American assault rifles and ammunition

who knew that the banana trade was so rough?  actually, pretty much anyone who is paying attention because it's painfully well documented.  we could go on about the nexus between this and popular culture or politics or ngo's or business.  but the point i would like to stress is a bit different.  whatever you think about noam chompsky, he has made a very fair point over and over again: that you can't judge socialist- and communist-type governments in centeal and south america by their performance becuase they were so actively undermined by the united states**.  chompsky actually makes it even more explicit, asking non-rhetorically if the westernized carribean islands such as haiti and the dominican republic are better off than cuba.  but putting that aside, one must acknowledge that when government and corporate and social pressure are all being focused on a bogeyman, say communism, of course it won't flourish.  and of course there will be a residual social stigma associated with that as a result of the best efforts of people like senator mccarthy.

which brings us full circle to what i wrote at the beginning of the post: people referring to unionistas as commies.  americans still use the title "communist" as a pejorative.  and they do so unthinkingly.  i think that this needs to end, but i'm not hopeful when i read post articles liek the one that's there today.  we're all coming to see the hypocrisy that's involved in doping in sport and our attitudes towards it.  we need to do a bit of navel gazing on our political hypocrisy as well.

-sg

**brief aside to the "patriots" who lurk in the comments: the same unfortunate dynamic is playing out in iraq right now.  "freedom"(c)(r)(tm) is not taking hold because the place is a chaotic maelstrom of death squads.  anyone who says that the iraqis are incapable of understanding or receiving the gift of freedom is either lying on purpose or delusional.  you cannot logically advocate that the people there should be entitled to self-govern and self-determine their future,and that this requires our total support, but that the people in central and south america should not be entitled to the same privledges and support.  i generally refer to this as maliki-chavez paradox.  and it's so obviously self-evident that i will take no mail on this topic.

 

Commendations to comrade scott for posting about testing and the pitfalls, fallacies and assumptions in correctly determining illegal drug use. However I believe sending the samples to different labs would be an improvement over the current regime, but not because it would necessarily produce more accurate results (i.e., fewer false negatives or false positives). Rather, splitting the samples between facilities might solve other problems and answer other questions:

1. Why is it that the press seems to get wind of A sample test results well before the protocol dictates? How is it that the test results from the LNDD are matched to the athlete control numbers and reported by L'Equipe so quickly?
2. How can a B sample test be considered reliable if the testers already know the desired outcome? These tests are supposed to be double-blind, are they not?
3. Why is it so easy for an accused rider to claim "error" or "conspiracy"?

I think these questions at least could be addressed by sending the samples to separate labs, accredited by different governing bodies. Test the samples simultaneously and report the results at the same time. Known positive samples should be intermixed and sent along to the labs as well, and perhaps even not all of the samples taken should go, for example: 10 riders sampled, 11 samples go to be tested, 2 are dummies (other 9 selected at random from the 10 collected samples), 1 of the 2 dummies is a known positive. This could be "blinded" further by randomly changing the number of dummies and number of known positives in the dummies.

It ought to be a pretty rare occurrence for all of the test results between the labs not to match. (If it's common, there are other issues.) Yes, there will continue to be false results, but the likelihood of undetected error due to human intervention or equipment problems should be reduced. I won't believe you if you tell me the results are never affected by testing error. And having both samples tested at the same lab in succession after the first results are known makes no sense; this is not double-blind testing. The lab and the whole of professional cycling have a vested interest (more on that in another post) in the second test matching the first. With this kind of procedure in place, it will be much more difficult for a rider to claim that there was a problem with the test itself. It will also be more difficult for labs to collude with the press to leak results.

-Michael

introducing a new feature which will investigate the many dynamics of a changing landscape for doping in sports.  topics will include expected subjects such as detection methods and athlete behaviours.  however, we will take in a wider view of topics as well, such as the larger societal impact, media and marketing responses to doping and the science of detection.

the topic i am personally most interested in is the explicit and more subtle or implicit goals behind testing for drugs, and what it means to have clean sports.  however, to kick it off i want to look at a common misconception with regards to testing for drugs.  several of us have been batting around a number of topics with regards to doping and the one i hear, that rears up all too often, is that samples should be sent to different labs, or split and saved so that additional independent confirmations can be made later.  it's important to think more carefully about whether this idea is a good one or not.  this proposed solution pre-supposes that the problem with catching dopers is that the lab is not doing a sufficiently rigorous or thorough job.  this is very likely not the case.  to understand why, one needs to look at the possible outcomes from a doping detection regime.

this is an issue with two dimension: actual state and test result.  the first dimension is the athlete's actual state or behaviour.  you have an athlete.  there are two mutually exclusive possibilities: athelete doped (we'll call this one (1)) or athlete not doped (we'll call this zero (0)).  like schroedingers cat, you know nothing about the state of doping until you intervene by testing.  the second dimension is the test for doping.  as before, there are two outcomes: test revealed presence of compound associated with doping (we'll call this one (1)) or test did not reveal presence of compound associated with doping (we'll call this one (0)).

you can obviously never get an answer to the first dimension directly without cooperation.  the second dimension, however, you control completely.  and this is what makes it both interesting and frustrating, because this is the dimension where the breakdown occurs.  the breakdown is not in the process itself but in the inferences you try to draw from it.

• possible outcome 1: athlete dopes, tests positive.  correct positive identification
• possible outcome 2: athlete dopes, does not test positive.  false negative
• possible outcome 3: athlete does not dope, tests positive.  false positive
• possible outcome 4: athlete does not dope, does not test positive.  correct negative identification

it's helpful to understand what it means to produce a false positive and a false negative.  false positives, where a rider is determined to have doped without having done so, can only arise during testing.  the rider cannot contribute to the cause of a false positive.  a false positive can result from bad handling (contamination or poor care of sample) or from poor analysis that can arise because of several reasons including, but not restricted to, operator error of machinery, bad calibration or bad standards, or machinery malfunction.  false negatives on the other hand can arise for a variety of reasons. 

1. avoidance: many performance enhancing products are only in the body (system) for a few days so cannot be detected afterwards.  if an athlete takes the drug outside a window when testing will occur, they have the effect but will not show the evidence.  this is well documented and well understood.  cycling has an extensive system of out of competition tests and the real meat of the current doping scandal is how lax the international sanctioning body has been about athletes who thwart this system of out of competition checks.  special bonus for cycling fans: anyone who hasn’t read the section of willy voet’s book on how cyclists delivered “clean” urine samples after races under close scrutiny needs to see my prior post on qualifications for discussing these topics.
2. masking agents: there is well established chemistry that will prevent sure recognition of doping compounds.  ambiguous test results favor the athlete (tie goes to the runner) so masking can be an effective strategy.  unless you give yourself away.  garzelli, a very good cyclist was almost dumped during the giro several years back for having vast amounts of probenecid in his system.  http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/?id=2002/may02/may20news  the link is almost comical in indicating no real benefit in either performance or masking.  classic euro old school flavor in that one. 
3. undetectable compounds.  mostly because they are not known.  think how many molecules are in your blood or urine.  they can only identify things they are looking for.  if they don’t know athletes are taking it, they can’t look for it.  if they can’t look for it, they can’t find it.  and if they can’t find it, the athlete is not guilty.  qed. 
4. maintenance of the sample.  one of hamilton’s samples degraded to the point where it could not be tested due to bacterial contamination.  again, tie goes to the runner.  under the current regime, you are innocent until proven guilty.  as it should be.  but this happens more often that the labs would like to admit.  because it should never happen.  it’s a custodial and stewardship issue.
5. limits of detection.  this is a complicated issue.  the labs are able to detect compounds at levels much smaller than the limits that are published.  the limits are there in part because they represent what would be a strictly performance enhancing level of the compound (i.e. caffeine, all riders drink coffee but no one ever tests out for that) and in part based on levels of detection.  the compounds may be there but not in sufficient amounts to pass a threshold to call it a positive test.

this implicit assumption described above is that there is a sufficient amount of information for correctly classifying the cases present.  it represents a problem in understanding what type i and type ii errors are really caused by and how they are identified.  it's like sleight of hand.  you could impose twice the amount of testing on the existing samples, four times, ten times, and in spite of all that extra work, you'd be no more certain about anything other than the variation in laboratory analysis.  and yet changes in the frequency of outcome 1 relative to outcome 2 would be ascribed to this testing.  but it's not real.  the factors that are likely causing outcome 2 cannot be identified by refinements in the way existing samples are tested.  short of testing every 2-3 days for epo, there is no way to be positive that your sampling regime is capturing it's presence.  the mistake here is in the collection regime, not the analysis regime.

the interesting but unintended effect of subscribing to the more analysis of existing samples approach is that it further obscures the important factors contributing to false negatives.  we have a social idea that more testing makes one more confident, but it’s an illusion.  above is only a partial list of the reasons why false negatives might occur and cross lab testing, or additional sample splitting doesn’t address any of them.  it’s a classic case of addressing the symptom and not the cause.  there’s no good evidence right now that the labs are the problem so why would people spend a lot of time and money addressing possible inter-laboratory variation in analysis?  this is the easiest to quantify and the laboratory accreditation process addresses it directly.

assuming that more testing of the current samples would provide better results is not correct.  if this was true, and easy to demonstrate, no one would support the current testing regime.  it's expensive and a hell of a lot of work and people's livelihoods are on the line.  simple statistical power analysis would be enough to show that the protocol was inadequate.  you need to know that your detection regime is robust before you start.  and the thing is that the detection regime is fine.  in other words, more testing, in statistical or probability terms, won't tell you anything you don't know already.  hence, one can expect negligible change for the better in the prevalence of type i and type ii errors based solely on increased attention to this factor.
add to all these factors, that adjudication of this process takes place in what is, obviously, a legal context.  as a result, all protocols must be followed exactly and spelled out explicitly.  one mistake in a remarkably long chain of administrative minutiae is effectively a get out of jail free card.  in addition, pitting labs against each other if they produce different test results will put any scientific credibility out the window.  labratories will be reduced to the humiliating status of dueling subject experts in a trial.

assuming that we desire "clean" sports, and this is a discussion which is emerging, we need to focus on the sources of the false negatives.

(ref: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073101997.html )

- posted by scott

 

after i say some hurtful things about people jumping on the kick-cycling-while-it's-down bandwagon and all bein' like knowin' about the dopin' and the stuff, scott c calls me out quite eloquently...

A column from the US sports press, but relegated to ESPN.com's Page 2
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill/070731&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos1

Also, I've noticed that the use of capital letters has crept into your emails recently. You must be vigilant and true to your cause.

the tour winds down.  done.  discussion lingers.  i'll bring up a few things over the next few days with regards to the '07 tour.  but for now, i simply wish to reproduce the wisest thing i have seen in years of observing cycling.  from our resident professor of cyclingology, the esteemed dr. von doctorstein:

...suddenly the people i know who wouldn't say two words about the tour have this uncanny knowledge of and desire to discuss the perceived "scandal". well, fuck off all of you. just go back to not caring about my sport. i'd much prefer it that way. remember, i don't care about your sports either so it's only fair, right...?

got that?  good.  all you espn-zone types quaffing $1.50 miller lites and batting around bits of knowledge about drugs in cycling can hit the bricks, take it on the arches.  water cooler types who want to pick your brain about it ("hey, you race bikes like lance right?  are they all doing it?  I can't imagine how hard that must be...") never stop to wonder why major league baseball and football only recently started testing and don't find the size and speed of football players to be slightest bit thought provoking. 

it's not so much hypocrisy as obliviousness.  i had a coworker for years who had a degree in philosophy.  she had what i thought was a great policy: she never debated anyone.  it wasn't because she didn't want to, but because she felt they didn't do it right.  philosophy is about constructing arguments.  arguments are not always right, but they represent a formal approach to thinking and communicating.  She felt like people were sloppy and half-assed about constructing arguments and it was more frustrating than productive.  she felt as though itwasnt'worth engaging with someone who wasn't willing to put any real time in with the basics.

when you think of someone like michael johnson or jackie joyner kersey, you know they were runners.  but they studied running.  In your foot stroke, how much should you push with the quads versus pulling with the hams and glutes?  what is a good leg angle to have before beginning the catchup?  How do you change your posture as you move down the track to maximize speed and power?  In the same way these athletes studied running, philosophers study how to think and construct arguments.  they know a lot about the history of thought, they have a solid foundation in different approaches, and critically assess all aspects of the process.  you can'tjust wander in off the streets and engage with these people.  and this is the very point the good doctor was making above.  you can't have anything approaching a rewarding discussion of drugs in cycling with someone, the extent of whose knowledge appears to be a 500 word article on espn.com or a 10 minute summary by al trautwig on abc sports.  the npr interviews with some velonews writer earlier this week were particularly egregious.  the washington post provided more factual information than that guy did, and that's saying something. 

- - - posted by scott

a few amusing odds and ends this fine morning.  i remind our loyal readers that i forecast things for a living, and though i'm not infallible, it's how i put bread on the table, and based on my girth, i'm pretty damn good at it.  so listen up!

prediction number 1: john edwards will never be president.  serious presidential candidates don't ride bikes.  witness the kerry campaign's stunning mediocrity in '04 that was way too bike focused and not enough win_the_%#$*ing_election election focused.  they show up in hybrids and jawbone endlessly about how committed they are to green alternatives and then they go somewhere else and talk about something else.  haven't the mountain biking excursions on the texas ranch ruined the nexus of cycling and politics?  we need a timeout.  note: the union makes a wide and deep exception for fenty: mr. mayor is the real deal.  he takes his pulls at hains and doesn't sit on and delegate.  he leads by example.  love and respect to the man on that count.  bonus side prediction: re-election for him with 82% of the vote.

prediction number 2: tom boonen will not be busted for drug use this year.  now note the careful use of language.  not sayin' he didn't take drugs.  just sayin' you don't talk shit like this ("Vino is a dirty cheat who they ought to suspend for his lifetime," Boonen told HLN.be. "He is causing immense damage to everyone. There are so many teams in search of a new sponsor. This case will not make it easier.")  about your peers unless you are totally certain you won't get busted.  unless you are a world class idiot with a blinding ego.  this is profesisonal sports so anything is possible.  i'd put the not busted at a 70-75% favorite and the world class idiot with a blinding ego collapse at 8:1.  that gravy train is too thick and delicious to risk ruining over an off the cuff remark delivered to a journalist from your massage table.

prediciton number 3: the economics of pro cycling are not going to change, they have changed.  from the same interview with boonen in the link above, here he is throwing vino under a bus because his own financial future is at stake: "I am a victim of people such as Vinokourov, because I am in the same circus they are. I can only hope that I will be believed when I say that I don't have anything to do with doping. I underwent five controls before the Tour: four unannounced controls and once after the Belgian championship."  translation: vino is a known badness, other cyclists may be bad but we're not sure, but i need to work and you're screwing with my livelihood.  this may seem like a vague prediciton but it lays out a general change in tone.  now, when a single rider tests positive, the whole team withdraws.  aso and societie du tour de france pressure uci as opposed ot the other way around.  fans know the deal and demand removal of the tainted and strongly suspected.  look for scarcer sponsorship, more amateur teams in high profile races, follow through on dropping cycling from olympics, restructuring of sponsorships, etc.  and check this headline: Predictor-Lotto to sue Vino and Astana.  presumably for screwing up the gravy train alluded to above.  yes, a sea change is here.

prediciton number 4: comrade peanut emerges as the bright and energetic leader of the racing union, deposing dear leader in a bloodless coup of charisma.  tender vittles for all who struggle and strive on two wheels.  viva comrade peanut!  rally to the banner!

-posted by scott

Over on Gwadzilla (http://gwadzilla.blogspot.com), my friend Joel makes an interesting comparison: that, because of his doping, Michael Rasmussen is sort of like Keith Richards, but not (different kind of dope, you see...).  

I wonder what Keef thinks about all this...

    

At any rate, here's what Comrade Peanut thinks:

But wait, there's more:  Someone else in the pro peloton has something in common with Keith Richards.  Alexandre Vinokourov and Keith Richards have both had blood transfusions (again, a different kind of dope, but still...).

 

                    

 

Comrade Peanut will now change the channel.

 

---posted by josh

from here:

"What I regret more than ever is that we didn't have this information on June 29, or on the following days before the Tour started," Prudhomme told AFP last weekend. "We would have made the Rabobank team face up to their responsibilities."

Prudhomme - who at one point had phoned UCI president Pat McQuaid to berate him over not informing organizers over Rasmussen's missed tests - said that there was not much more he and his co-directors of the race could have done.

"We did all we could do to get rid of him," Prudhomme told AFP.

"One cannot mock the Tour de France impunitively like those riders," he added, referring to Rasmussen, Cristian Moreni - who also exited on Wednesday after failing a drugs test - and Alexandre Vinokourov who was thrown out on Tuesday.

"I cannot comment on the matter now as I have not been notified by Rabobank," UCI president Pat McQuaid told Reuters over the telephone on Wednesday. "I am just a little surprised that they did not discuss it with the UCI."

emphasis mine.  that's good stuff.  can you imagine what that conversation might have been like?

prudhomme: bon jour messr.

mcquaid: what?

prudhomme: bon jour messr.

mcquaid: who is this?

prudhomme: christian prudhomme, aso, societie du tour de france

mcquaid: oh yeah.  what's up?

prudhomme: messr, we are avec many worries du messr. rasmussen

mcquaid: who?

prudhomme: michael rasmussen...rabobank....(long pause)

mcquaid: oh yeah.  chickeny lookin' guy...yellow jersey.  good stuff.

prudhomme: messr, we have heard that he has missed some controles du dopage...(long pause)

mcquaid: what?

prudhomme: he has missed some tests?

mcquaid: first i've heard of it

prudhomme: messr., you are not taking this seriously.  we are considering dropping him from the tour.

mcquaid: you can't be serious.  you don't have the authority to do that.

prudhomme: it is our race.  i have that authority

mcquaid: (muffled: get verbrugghen on the phone, i don't know what's going on here...)  you don't say

prudhomme: we have scheduled an announcement for 18:00 cest

mcquaid: now you listen to me and you listen good.  you don't mess with the riders in uci sanctioned events without consulting us first.  now this is all news to me.  and it won't go well.  not for you and not for the riders and not for us.  we need a coordinated response to whatever you decide to do.  image is important here and we need to be consistent.  let us get some people here together and talk about this and call you back.

prudhomme: non.  18:00 cest.  we will drop him from the tour.

mcquaid: oh no you don't.  we set the policies for how these things are handled.  i won't have someone like you dictating terms to me...

prudhomme: why were we not notified of the missed controls?  what are you doing about that?

mcquaid: that's not your issue to look after.  that's our domain.  you keep the roads clear and put on a good show, we take care of the rest. 

prudhomme: this call, messr, is no longer productive.  the appearances here are no longer maintainable.  thing are very poor among the media and the morale of the riders and the fans.  something must be done.

mcquaid: this is the last time i will tell you.  you don't decide what happens here.  this is a uci decision.  you should be more concerned with figuring out why that damn french laboratwar national day dep-ee-stag doo dope keeps leaking lab results to luh-keep or whatever that papers name is

prudhomme: messr, it is Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage, and that is not our concern.  this call is over.  (dial tone)

mcquaid: damn, the wheels are coming off this cart.  another double scotch and i'll figure this out.  i wonder if the ioc guys are available for lunch.  maybe they have some ideas. 

 

newton's first law doesn't get enough love.  at the time it was formally presented, it was a stunning advance in understanding the mysterious forces of the physical world around us.  bodies at rest tend to stay at rest while bodies in motion tend to stay in motion.  and this is easily extensible to vectors. 

cyling is on a vector that is not auspicious.  i'm not going to drone on about what i perceive the problems of professional cycling to be.  but i will tell you where it's headed if someone or something doesn't change it.  boxing.  once glorious and spectacular, capturing the popular imagination, the sport of the everyman.  look at it now.  rent by schism.  wracked by gambling and drugs.  plenty of solutions appear to be available but nothing happens.  it's become a shadow of it's former self.  unrecognizable.

to recap only a few of the events from today:

cyclists protest enforcement of doping rules.  ref.   to wit: 10:47 CEST  The départ fictif (neutral start) was expected for 10:40, but all the French teams along with the German squads have vowed to do a sit-in protest at the start, similar to what we have seen in 1998. So the start may get delayed. 10:58 CEST   The riders have now got moving after that protest took place. They have left the start area and are moving toward the end of the neutralised section.

cycling is no longer sporting.  ref.  to wit: "Jean-Francois Lamour, vice president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, suggested Wednesday that the sport could be withdrawn from the Olympics. "

riders who haven't tested postive are basically perceived as guilty.  ref.  to wit: "After a week full of rumours and speculation on the credibility of Michael Rasmussen, the rider and his Rabobank team tried to dissolve the dark clouds that have gathered over the Danish cyclist during a rest-day press conference in Pau. Rasmussen stepped into the press room together with his team manager, Theo De Rooy, and lawyer Harro Knijff - signaling intensions of dealing with the accusations seriously. The accusation is that Rasmussen has been careless in informing the UCI of his whereabouts in the past two years and as a result the media had doubts on the credibility of the Danish rider."

cycling is the pariah of sports.  ref.  to wit: "One of Switzerland's biggest newspapers stopped writing about the Tour because of the recent doping scandals."

it's entertainment value is high, but not in the intended way.  ref.  to wit: vino maintaining he did not dope... "I think it's a mistake in part due to my crash. I have spoken to the team doctors who had a hypothesis that there was an enormous amount of blood in my thighs, which could have led to my positive test."

consigned to the dustbin of history.  who will shed a tear for riders doped to the gills in order that they may maintain their sponsorship deals? all the while undermining the integrity of the sport and the appetite of fans for more?  hmm?  boxing it is...

- posted by scott

p.s. news flash, it's worse than you thought...

as bryan so comically put it, le shit has hit le fan.  regular readers of this blog would hardly be surprised by such a revelation.  we've known it all along.  there's no drama left to wring out of this.  any tears shed over this are wasted saline.  this is a business.  the teams treat it like a business, the riders treat it like a business and the sponsors sure as hell treat it like a business.  the riders dope because the expectation is that they will win.  riders have doped for years: for the prestige and money associated with being a winner, un grand et généreux champion. 

you can love to watch cycling but one of two things needs to happen.  either the money needs to leave the sport so it can return to something approximating it's amateur roots, or it needs to release itself from the arbitrary and puritanical standards regarding what is performance enhancing and what is not.  note that in this post, i'm not damning the doping, but rather the hypocrisy of organizers, fans, teams, and sponsors in perpetuating this ongoing myth regarding cycling.   

a special shout-out to bjarne riis who all but provided professional cycling with a road map out of htis tangle, a way or occasion to discuss this.  jeez, if any sport ever was in line for some navel gazing to figure out where they are going, this is it.  you can be passionate about cycling and love cycling, but you can't close your eyes to what is really going on out there.  the reality is that cycling now is a spectacle in the same way that the NCAA colleciate basketball tournament (march madness) is a spectacle.  it's not driven by people who love cycling.  it's driven by it's business relationships.  people aren't stupid.  it's time to face hard facts and decide what you want this sport to be.

oh, and by way, i don't understand the internets (the tubes have always been baffling to me) but i'm shrewd enough to know that when i go to cyclingnews.com to read about the public relations trainwreck that is the '07 tour day france, and the first thing i see at the top of the page is a big banner advertisement selling astana replica jerseys, well, someone who understand those tubes ought to be able to design a kill switch in cases like that.  or maybe have them flip over to selling les chemises avec antidoping écrit sur eux.  in other words, even an anti-capitalist like me can figure that the wheels are coming off the gravy train that follows the tour.

sink or swim, gentlemen, it's your choice...

- posted by scott

it is probably difficult for the people who read this blog to understand the dynamics of real sports.  we go on endlessly about the nuances of hills and rolling terrain or the tactical savvy of a bold mid-race attack or the suffering of domestiques as they attempt to tow an entire field, catch a break and maintain their team captain's lead.  and yet we can't discuss the crushing, smashmouth offense that michigan state college football plays.  when the discussion around the keg switches to who was the greatest yankee pitcher from 1986 to 2006, we sort of stare at our shoes and shuffle away after saying "yeah" a few times when it seemed appropriate. 

so rather than wait for you all to ask me about this, i'll save you the awkward social interaction you'd rather avoid anyway by just telling you that michael vick is a piece of shit and that corporate sponsorship is eroding our morality to a point where to speak of right and wrong is a farce.  we have completed the transition of sports from the grecian ideal of approaching perfection to the lowest slime in the sewer.

the sordid details are sordid and you can find them being sensationalized on pretty much any major media outlet.  heck, even npr got into the action.  but the most stunnign aspect of the story to me is here.  vick has been indicted on federal conspiracy charges.  you'd think that might make an impact on a person.  he's made no comment.  you'd think that if he wasn't guilty (and even if he was frankly) that he'd deny it.  nope.

Vick has yet to comment publicly on the charges

so no denial.  not even a non-denial-denial.  he must feel bad about it right?

The indictment hit Vick personally Thursday when shoe manufacturer Nike announced it has suspended release of its Zoom Vick V shoe after "the serious and highly disturbing allegations."

this is unintended irony.  the incident didn't hit him, personally, until there was the threat of losing a shoe sponsorship.  seeing all that damage and abuse and horror?  not so bad.  losing a lucrative sponsorship contract with a company that exploits it's workers the way vick exploits dogs?  awooga awooga, damage control, dive dive.  okay, so if he's guilty of this, he's done for right?  right?!  dogs are man's best friend.  you don't hurt animals.  ever.  so this guy will be fired and his career is over.  done.  finis....huh?

The Beaverton, Oregon, company said in a written statement, "We have not terminated our relationship" and that Vick "should be afforded the same due process as any citizen."

wow.

i'm not one to say that an indiviual can't have due process.  he may not be guilty.  the same way santi botero and tyler hamilton (who incidentally swore on his wife's life on his cherished and recently deceased dog tugboat's grave that he hadn't doped!!11!!1) may not be guilty in spite of testing positive more than once.  for receiving tranfusions of each other's blood. and exhausting multiple judicial appeals.  it's all just a funny french mix up, disney should make a movie like freaky friday. 

...damn, i drifted off real sports back to cycling.  okay, focus.  back to our topic.  sponsorship.  and real sports.  and how they totally don't corrupt your view of what's right and what's wrong.  i just want to juxtapose these last two things to make the point clear:

1. Dogs that didn't show enough fighting spirit, or lost matches, were put to death by methods that included shooting, drowning, hanging and electrocution, according to the indictment. Prosecutors allege that on one occasion earlier this year, Vick participated in killing eight dogs. (link)

2. The Beaverton, Oregon, company said in a written statement, "We have not terminated our relationship" and that Vick "should be afforded the same due process as any citizen." (link)

well there you have it.  for those hoping that we ground ourselves as a culture, and make a stand here, you're mistaken.  you have overlooked that there is now a complete interdependence between "corporate marketing" and "sports!!!" and the precious result of that relationship is dumptruck loads of money.  regrettably, models reflecting the most cutting edge thinking in understanding public acceptance of depraved behaviour all point towards this thing fizzling out to nothing.  we are rapidly accellerating down the slippery slope.  bon route.

-posted by scott