Recently in Doping Category

I've avoided poking the road rash on the rump of professional cycling that is the Floyd Landis case. Nobody has ever thanked the ninety-nine-millionth-and-one person who says "look you seem to have fallen off" while prodding the weeping flesh.

Instead I recommend you read the following articles:

"When Floyd Landis last week accused several top riders of doping, one thing was missing from the fallout: a flat-out, en masse denial of Landis's allegations." - Accusations Ring Loud, but Not the Denials - Juliet Macur, NY Times

Truth, Lies and Evidence - Joe Lindsey's Boulder Report - Bicycling.com

Floyd Landis confession emails may only be the first chapter - David Walsh - The Times

Another fine mess

I'll also avoid the Valverde case other than to highlight how long it has taken and why we have got to where we are. Podium Cafe has a very detailed timeline of the case

• The case began with the judicial investigation in Spain known as Operacion Puerto in 2004
• Operacion Puerto first came to public notice in 2006
• The UCI and WADA both ask the Spanish Federation (RFEC) to take action against Valverde either side of the Worlds in autumn 2007
• RFEC procrastinate into 2008, citing jurisdictional reasons they couldn't act, apparently unable to access the evidence
• In July 2008 Italian anti-doping authorities take a sample from Valverde when the Tour de France crosses into Italy
• In May 2009 Valverde is banned in Italy by CONI on the basis of DNA evidence linking him to bloodbag 18, indentifying him as "Valv Piti".
• Valverde does not contest that he has been correctly identified, rather that the Italians did not have the jurisdiction to sanction him
• In May 2010, after protracted appeals and foot-dragging, CAS ratifies the Italian ban and agrees with the UCI/WADA case that it should be extended worldwide
• Valverde is banned worldwide for two years, effective 01 January 2010
• CAS note that there is no direct evidence that Valverde has obtained results through doping
• Valverde continues to appeal, claiming he has been unfairly treated but still not contesting his identification by CONI as a party to Operacion Puerto

Time for cycling to find its Kerry Packer?

Instead, let's look at the third ring of this complete circus: the professional racing circuit.

Today, it was announced that the Tour of Ireland has been cancelled for 2010 joined the list of defunct races unable to find funding or favour.

Last week The Inner Ring flagged up leaked details of the revised UCI Protour which hinted at one possible future: pay-to-play where the ability to do double entry accounting for the value of your squad is more important than building a team from grassroots and moving up through the sport.

What I don't understand is why race organisers are so happy to leave the organisation of the sport to the UCI. Surely the combined weight and racebook of RCS (Giro and other Italian races) and ASO (Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix) covers almost all of the top flight events of note and has a future value which far outweigh anything the UCI holds?

The UCI has been instrumental in trying to broaden the global appeal of the sport but it strikes me that the races it has helped developed would be better served by experienced race organisers than the sport's administrator. It simply doesn't have the logistical expertise or financial imperative needed to make events in Africa or Asia as significant as their European counterparts.

In my view what cycling needs is someone with the balls of Kerry Packer. For those not familiar, Packer was the man who transformed the staid world of international cricket with his World Series Cricket (WSC).

He's quoted as having asked the Australian Cricket Board in 1976 "There is a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. What is your price?" while discussing television rights. He would have been perfectly at home in a sport as venal as cycling.

While history records that WSC didn't endure, it did force the sport to confront its failings and move forward in terms of professionalism and its appeal to the audience.

Currently professional cycling is stuck in an hopeless situation where fear of wholesale change leads to poisonous inactivity and decay as the remaining pool of assets withers. The longer it is left to those already with heavily vested interests, the less likely it becomes that cycling can change.

As has been said elsewhere what cycling needs is for someone to come in and re-invent the presentation and appeal. They'll have to think beyond the traditional at the same time as retaining the core that makes cycling so brilliant.

Here's a couple of things they could start with:

Women's racing is demented, unpredictable, attacking.

Bar the sexist pigs who can't appreciate great competition for what it is, does anyone think the sport wouldn't be better for a more richly rewarded profile for the women's scene?

Bring the crazy back

The races everyone talks about are never "sunny day, sunflowers and vineyards", it's the mud-splattered Tuscan battles, the chance escapes that beat the odds, the glorious epics.

Bring back motorpaced epics like Bordeaux-Paris with their night racing and fearsome endurance challenge. The "ultra" element of the sport has been left far too long as the preserve of the nostaligic amateur.

Find unique routes, don't always chase the smooth tarmac and mountain passes. The passing of climbs like Puy de Dome from the sport is a tragedy for that reason in the same way that the rediscovery of Tuscany's gravel roads is a joy.

So how can cycling make that move forward without someone to drive the change?

I don't usually berate road cycling adverts for getting it wrong because I think the standard is so ridiculous across the entire industry, stretching from shamefully bad to well-intended disaster.

I've never understood the obsessions with Tron pseudo-science and heritage in road cycling advertising. They are at the root of why road has failed to grow and compete with BMX and then MTB, both of which seem to have realised that fun and excitement are what the vast majority of people want and aspire to when it comes to bicycles, not vertical compliance, lateral stiffness and watts.

I digress. What made me write this was this image in the Probikekit email today.

Really Danilo? I thought your current "favourite weapon" was third generation EPO products.

Either this is one of the most ironic adverts ever, in which case I missed the funny, or it's just a rubbish and ill-judged space filler.

I'm not missing something here am I?

The most compelling reason riders dope is that they don't think they'll get caught. It's nothing to do with the winning, it's all about the perceived risk of sanction.

Joe Lindsey expounded on this in the Boulder Report: Read "Can Black Swans Stop Doping?"

Of course he was talking about Danilo Di Luca getting busted. It's notable that the noises he's been making in his defence are all about calling into question the testing.

Compared to Mikel Astarloza's defence, that's seems pretty coherent. Astarloza is saying that he came up positive for EPO because he had been training in an hyperbaric tent. You can read more on cyclingnews.com

Let's put aside that hyperbaric tents are pretty borderline and are banned in some countries as doping. I'm stuck at how an hyperbaric tent can produce exogenous EPO.

Meanwhile teams that sign dopers, have dopers on their books. Ceramica Flaminia are supposed to have signed Riccardo Ricco for his return. Anyone surprised then that one of their riders got his collar felt?

Read "Biondo suspended after positive EPO test, UCI says" - Velonews

And while we're over on Velonews, it's always nice to see that the glories of doping in national colours hasn't disappeared in the years since the Soviet Bloc dissolved and the Italians applied "can't beat them, join them" logic. Actually, the record suggests that the Italians didn't need any outside encouragement to get pricky with the needles.

Read "Ukrainians arrested at Tour de l'Avenir" - Velonews

Yes, you read that right. These guys aren't even old enough to vote in some cases but they are having to deal with the pressure to dope. It's easy to see why cycling fans anonymous quit.

Five riders named as having produced values irregular enough to warrant sanction was never going to be enough to meet expectations that had built up over months. I think my initial reaction on twitter summed it up pretty well:

"@stephenfarrand Not even enough to qualify as anti-climatic. at least Fofanov had the decency to be on a team that made it newsworthy"

Perhaps the problem lies in how the blood/biological passport has been explained and perceived. Lack of information and a the desperation of fans to see an end to the latest phase in the arms race have led to it being forced into a place it was never meant to be.

Was it ever going to bust everyone? Probably not and maybe some were wrong to hope it would.

Was it allowed to grow a reputation to be feared as the ultimate weapon against doping? Almost certainly, but who is responsible for that is more difficult to define. One person who certainly shouldn't be blamed is Anne Gripper who has resurfaced now that the first results are out and perhaps shed some light on it how it works:

"The passport software actually interprets the raw blood results and it provides information for the experts to review. It also requires the human touch and knowledge of an expert to look at the data and interpret it. Just because a profile exceeds certain limits we're looking at doesn't mean that the rider is doping. The experts then decide if the results can't be explained by anything pathological or physiological or if the rider has been doping through manipulation of his blood."

Read the Anne Gripper interview on Cyclingnews.com

I don't think these first cases will be the last but whether it becomes an effective weapon against doping remains to be seen.

We're into the first week of June and the clouds of war gather ever faster around the Tour De France. There's three stories that you should read to understand where cycling is heading between now and July.

1. Bernard Kohl's doping confession in L'Equipe and his claim "The first ten should have been positive"

via Cyclingfansanon's twitter. While we're on the subject: CFA, isn't it hypocritical to refuse to write your blog until the UCI deliver something from the blood passport scheme while berating others for their complicity in the omerta? Making a sound case isn't something you should rush into to please the gallery, just ask those who are familiar with miscarriages of justice.

Jonathan Vaughters counters Kohl on Cyclingnews

2. Antonio Colom positive for EPO being less than surprising to anyone.

Coupled with the dispute with some of their riders over what constitutes a fair and binding contract, it looks like there's trouble ahead for the Russian Katusha team. Robbie McEwen has denied there's a rift but it seems there is a sticking point. I've seen the suggestion that the management wants 5 years salary for "discrediting" the team, not necessarily testing positive. If that is the case then I fully understand where the riders are coming from.

3. Anne Gripper is alive and the blood passports are set to be tested. Conference today in Paris and the headline is "Riders face action over passport data - UCI".

We'll know names next week and then you can all start filling in your Panini sticker albums for July and marking which pages are going to have gaps in them. There are those who say it's taken too long, I am not one of them. Good investigation takes time, ask any journalist of note. People like John Ware and Peter Taylor don't come up with their work in a matter of months, it takes years of research, experience and blind alleys before they come to a conclusion.