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:

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

take a long hard look at this:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2007/tour07/tech/?id=/tech/2007/features/tour_tech_607

there is an obvious message here (riders seek the very best materials that they can) and a more subtle message.  the more subtle message is that the wheels are coming off the cart of traditional sponsorship arrangements, proving once again the vast wisdom, scope and insight of the racing union philosophy.

sponsorhsip deals are (generally) mutually adventageous.  high level teams get free product which reduces their operating costs.  (yes, we understand the principles of western economic thought - ed)  simultaneously, the mantra goes, manufacturers get valuable exposure among those who obsessively follow the sport and can market the team and it's image to consumers with more money than common sense.

what this article makes clear is the drift towards an equipment based meritocracy.  racers need to use effective, durable, lightweight and solid components and parts.  they are less concerned with appeasing sponsors and more concerned about getting good results.  so they go with what works.  the re-branding is a charade, designed to keep up appearances.  but the writing is on the wall.  the days of massive entanglement between corporate money and cycling are on the wane and a meritocracy is on the rise.

-sg

the racing union patriotism portal, dim for a period too long, is now afire with the message of the glorious revolution in cycling and the social order.  as with the enlightened europeans, we have taken a prolonged vacation through the hot summer months and return, committed to our work, tanned, rested and revolutionary.

we return,this fine morning, with something for the younger revolutionaries.  and end to the subtle tyranny and mind control that most of the pablum that passes for children's literature has become. 

http://buyo.blogspot.com/2006/09/really-revolutionary-engine.html

it's got it all.  rabble rousing, solidarnosc and social unrest.  what child, worth their salt as a revolutionary could deny the stirring message and gripping plot.  those who espouse maoist-unionist thought may feel that the failure of the engines to make a show of the execution of the fat controller is weak, and the rationale for excluding this sort of thing from children's literature weaker still.  the majority of you who avow marxist-leninist-unionist thought should find the end appealing and suitable.

hasta la victoria siempre, venceremos!  union!  union!

-sg