Malcolm Elliott and Stephen Roche having a chat. No I didn't ask for an autograph, although I swear Roche thought I was a nutter because I kept on going past them and muttering as I got a bit lost and was going round in circles.
I've got real problem with this retroactive testing. Exactly where does it stop and who does it benefit? You're the guy who has been cheated out of a gold medal earning opportunities, are you going to put your career on hold to go through the hell of court proceedings just because the IOC/UCI/ASO and the testing authorities were too damned pre-occupied with milking their cash cow to get this stuff in order before the games?
Y'know what? It's two months after the games, when all the homecomings are done and every sponsorship deal has made guys able to stop worrying about the overdraft and get on with enjoying their moment of glory. The IOC/WADA/ASO/UCI/whoever tells me actually I got beaten by a guy who cheated is about as worthwhile as being told "sorry I didn't see you" after you've become a hood ornament.
It's absolutely pathetic and by cheering "another cheat caught" it diverts from the fact that those sporting bodies are doing the sqaure of naff all to deliver on their end of the deal while the athletes are jumping through more hoops that a circus tiger just to avoid losing their livelihood.
Stefan Schumacher and Leonardo Piepoli coming up positive has barely registered a raised eyebrow of surprise in the cycling world. Ghoulish Leo had already confessed so it was just a matter of waiting for that box to be ticked while Schumi's time-trial performances at Le Tour proved to be too good to be true.
For one a career as a Marty Feldman impersonator beckons. That remake of young Frankenstein can't be far off.
For the other there'll always be work at comic fairs as a live action Mekon.
Neither is a rider I'll miss particularly.
Much as Piepoli was a fabulous climber to watch I could never get past his bars being at a ridiculous angle, the mismatched shifters and his apparent fear of a flat road. Schumacher, well the fact that his helmet always looked like a saucer perched on a boiled egg cast more than enough of a shadow over his riding for me.
As ever the press are having a field day with the usual mix of opinion. Page impressions must be through the roof for online sources.
"What's great is that this latest batch of positives has come from a test that wasn't fully implemented during the event itself. The anti-doping agencies are now going back to old samples and re-testing them when new test techniques are developed."
"No longer are the dopers one step ahead - the message is clear. You may think you're getting away with it now, but what will happen in a few months' time?" - Cycling Weekly
As far as I'm concerned the dopers are still one step ahead. That's why the tests are being done retroactively and why the cynics will tell you a whole list of other products out there that are still going through unchecked.
Let's look at this a little more. MIRCERA - Roche Pharmaceuticals' third generation EPO product, a continuous erythropoietin receptor activator (C.E.R.A.) - came to market in mid-to-early 2007 in Europe and was in the later clinical trial stages in 2006.
If we know anything about professional cycling it's that when there's a new drug being talked up, it almost always finds a way into the peloton quickly. I'd say it is fairly safe to assume that CERA-type products were being passed round before they got signed off for public consumption.
Which means that the testers were still behind the game by at best six months and at worst two years. The fact that these samples are being retro-actively tested sets what I believe is a dangerous precedent.
If we're going down this road, there's not a lot of cycling history left. Well not a lot left from the period since testing started to be standardised and doping was seen as the ultimate evil in an increasingly professional sporting world.
Until the dopers know they're guaranteed to be caught if they use a product, they will continue to use those products, regardless of whether they appear on a prohibited substances list. The only reason these guys are being caught now is the co-incidence between a product become widely-used and a test becoming available before it was known to the users.
Which is why I find it so hard to get worked up in condemning the dopers and continue to argue for substantiated proof of guilt rather than the sort of gossipy hearsay that I used to write about for a living.
Now Alexandre Vinokourov wants back in on the top flight of cycling. Is there anyone, apart from Jan Ullrich, who hasn't served a ban or banishment from the pro peloton who doesn't want to seek redemption on the road?
You've got Lance Armstrong, Ivan Basso and Floyd Landis all confirmed as returning to the elite somewhere or other, bringing with them the clamour of the arguments on both side as to the rights and wrongs of their being allow back into the sport. It's an empty noise but one which I can't help but add to.
Cycling tends to mythologise its great characters, as heroes and other archetypes found in epic tales. Myth, and in particular epic mythology, has as part of its paradigm the notion of redemption.
Yet, if you believe the hardline opponents of these returns there should be no redemption in the sport - life bans and eternal condemnation are all these riders should face. I totally disagree with this view. What point is there in a world without the possibility of redemption?
The trite cliché is that "to err is human, to forgive divine". People fuck up, or as Jack Lemmon would have it "nobody's perfect".
I'm entirely in favour of riders being allowed redemption after a ban. David Millar has walked that path as have others. We've long since redeemed the reputations of Mexckx, Anquetil and Coppi by inventing relativism in doping,
This is fundamentally where my problem lies with the movement against the modern generation. The credos runs that "EPO/modern doping is so much more effective" and therefore deserving of greater disgust because of the way in which it distorts the sport.
I don't buy this for one minute. You cannot simply reduce the sport down to a bunch of physical symptoms such as haemocrit or power output because there is so much more to it. More often than not it's still the smartest rider who wins the race, not the strongest.
Is the effect of EPO or blood doping any worse than that of the Palfium taken by Roger Rivière which first took away his sensation of pain, allowing him to ride on beyond what his mind and body would otherwise allow, before robbing him of the sensations needed to control his bike on the descent of the Col Du Perjuret? All those riders driven into the blackness and beyond reason by barbiturates, cocaine, opiates, strychnine, a never ending list of medications and madness.
Incidentally, when he crashed, Rivière was chasing Gastone Nencini, a rider who was caught trying to indulge in autologous blood doping back in the 1960s. Hardly a new technique then is it?
I can't accept that the "old-fashioned" doping is any less effective in deciding the course of cycling history than modern pharmaceutical invention. Both allow riders to go beyond the limits of what their being would otherwise sustain.
When it's doing dope (spliff/herb/ganga/weed) in Downhill Mountain Bike racing. Or when you're a footballer.
For no particular reason (other than reading up on statute of limitations) I was browsing the UK Sport site and came across their list of closed cases for doping. Skipping to the bit that I found curious: apparently until 2006 Cannabis was only classed as a prohibited substance for Downhill racing. This is from a written decision on a mountainbiker caught for doing a bit of spliff:
"This is the first occasion on which the Federation has had to deal with a cannabis case, since cannabis became a prohibited substance for all types of event in 2006. It was previously a prohibited substance for Downhill Mountain Biking only. I have been provided with a list of the sanctions imposed by the International Cycling Union (UCI) which shows that reprimands, with no period of
ineligibility, have been given in the three cases relating to cannabis dealt with by the union in 2007 and 2008, although in one case a fine was also imposed."
Poor lad got a 4 month ban for it, yet had he been a footballer he would have got a formal warning and a reprimand and that's yer lot - there's a similar case there for a footballer. Actually, going on preceding cases he would have just got a reprimand.
I'm not sure why it caught my eye, but I guess with all the absurd doping related haboobley going on at the moment this actually restored my faith in the whole lunacy of taking this stuff too seriously.
