Today is 119 days (or exactly 17 weeks) since the USADA vs. Floyd Landis hearings adjourned. During this time, the official transcripts were produced (with at least one typo that I’ve seen … on one page, the testimony shows the witness talking about “raises” when it should have been “races”), both sides presented their proposed findings of fact, and the arbitrators have deliberated … and deliberated … and deliberated. Sometime in the next few days we will find out what the arbitrators have decided. And, as TBV noted last night, so far there have been no leaks about what the decision will be.
Exactly when the decision will be announced is uncertain. Over at Endless Cycle, Peloton Jim keeps a close tab on what color smoke can be seen wafting from the chimney. So far, black. But someday soon, that smoke will change to white and we’ll learn what’s been decided: Guilty or innocent?
The world of cycling hasn’t come to a stop as we wait, however. The Vuelta a Espana rolls on. The RFEC, Spain’s cycling federation, is poking the UCI in the eye over their treatment of Alejandro Valverde, and the UCI has put up a new section on it’s web site to make finding information about its anti-doping fight easier and more accessible.
RFEC vs. UCI, Coming To An Arena Near You
Over at VeloNews, is an article saying that the RFEC has officially listed Alejandro Valverde on their team of cyclists for the World Championships starting in Stuttgart on the 26th. Paco Antequera, Spain’s national cycling coach, is quoted as saying:
“This isn’t good for anyone, especially not for Alejandro. Now we have him on the official list. We’ll see what happens after the Vuelta finishes on Sunday and we’ll see if we can count on him.”
The Spanish federation is prepared to take the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, to uphold Valverde’s right to compete at the World’s. However, according to cyclingnews.com, they have a rider waiting in the wings in case Valverde is not allowed to race.
Antequera has said that José Iván Gutiérrez (Caisse d’Epargne) would be drafted in as a replacement for both the road race and time trial, should the UCI have its way. “I would like Alejandro [Valverde] to be with us,” Antequera told Marca. “But if it is not possible, Iván [Gutiérrez] will be a good rider to work for the team.”
According to cyclingnews.com, the RFEC may also resort to the Swiss courts if it doesn’t get satisfaction from the CAS. The next week or so promises to bring some interesting developments on this front, too.
The UCI’s Usual Suspects …
Late last week, the UCI revamped their web site to make it easier to find information about their anti-doping efforts. Among the items available is their list of just over 300 targeted riders, er, I mean, “registered testing pool” (alphabetically and by country) — both men and women. The list reads like a veritable Who’s Who In Cycling.
Pick a well-known name in cycling, and you’re likely to find that person on the list. If a rider has done really well in international competition, there’s a good chance you’ll find his or her name amongst the 300+ riders listed. Of course, there are a number of unfamiliar names, too (unless you’re a walking encyclopaedia of all things cycling).
One name you won’t see on the list (I’ve checked) is Bradley Wiggins. Must be because he’s clean — just ask him. Or maybe it’s because he hasn’t caused enough of a sensation, yet. Having been on a team with admitted doper Christian Moreni, however, I’m surprised the UCI hasn’t targeted him. Really. Their whole approach to Operacion Puerto reminds me of the phrase, “guilt by association.”
Here’s a novel idea for the UCI: Targeting the top riders may give them a reason to ride clean, but it doesn’t really address what all the other riders are up to – and it doesn’t really address the problem (however much there is one) of doping in cycling. It merely makes it look like they’re going after the bad guys and gals.
It would be a better idea, rather than wasting time targeting one group of individuals, to make sure that all riders are tested at random throughout the year. No matter whether it’s the top dog in each of the Grand Tours or the lanterne rouge at a local pro race. If the idea of an anti-doping program is detection and deterrence, then the most effective way to do both is to test everyone, without those tests being announced. In competition and out of competition.
As it stands right now, riders at a certain level can afford to gamble on not being caught, because they know that the chances of being tested are slim. Make the tests accurate (which I realize is a tall order), and ensure that everyone gets tested. Then we’ll begin to get a real handle on just how big a problem doping is in professional cycling. Beyond the cyclists, however, the UCI and others need to address how to confront those who assist and enable doping, and hold those people accountable, too.
Setting up programs to detect and deter cyclists from doping is part of the solution. But the complete solution will ultimately have to deal with the doctors, officials and assorted shady characters who are part and parcel of the whole problem.
Meanwhile, waiting on the Landis announcement continues. One source, usually reliable, tells me that Friday may be the day. We’ll see.
Hey Rant, Bradley Wiggins, who I find to be a pompous pain in the arse, will never make that UCI list. He’s just not good enough. 🙂
str
Regarding a broader scheme of testing, rather than simply targeting “top” riders: this is a good idea. I think that applying a statistical approach in designing such a scheme would reap a lot of benefits.
This would work kind of like many quality assurance programs. Now in QA, it is often the case that QA testing cannot be done on an entire population, either because of the trouble and expense, or because the nature of the testing is destructive. In these cases, a procedure is devised to select a sufficiently random sample and having tested that sample, apply the results to the entire population. The margin of error can be varied by varying the size of the sample you test.
Let us stipulate that the total “population” under consideration would be the total number of registered pro riders times 365, i.e., 100% testing would result when every rider is tested every day, and obviously unreachable standard. We can however establish some subset of that, based perhaps on budgetary considerations, then design a procedure to randomly select riders for testing. As part of this, I would require that every rider who starts a race be required to submit a sample on race day. Not all of these would be tested, but any rider would not know in advance if his sample would be tested. Hence, at any race, every rider would have equal chance of being tested. Any testing of top-placing riders would be on top of this random testing. In addition, riders would be randomly selected for OoC testing. Again here it might be an idea to have several riders submit samples for OoC testing, with only some of them being tested.
If a rider knows that he is as likely to be tested as any other, even those whose aspirations do not include a trip to the podium will have as much incentive to not dope as the best riders. If you are required to regularly submit samples which might be tested, there is incentive to not dope. As it stands now, only about 40 tests during the Tour are “random”, so unless you either win a stage or wear the Yellow Jersey, odds are you won’t be tested. And if the “random” tests are at least in part used to target “riders of interest” the odds are quite low that Joe Domestique will not get tested. Heck, even some of those who finished in the top 10 or 20 in the Tour never won a stage or even topped the GC table for a day. So unless they were a “rider of interest”, chances they never were tested. If my goal was say to finish top 10, and I wanted to dope to ensure such placing, I could easily avoid winning a stage or topping the GC, and so avoid testing.
In addition to doing a better job of spreading the incentive around, such a statistical approach would do a better job of indicating the extent of the problem. Of course, it is alway possible that riders devise ways of doping that avoid detection, or that sloppy lab work produces false negatives as well as false positives, but at least we would have a better idea of the extent of doping, and over time could also have an idea of how well anti-doping programs are working. Consider that when conducting a national survey, say to determine which presidential candidates are most favored, a sample of only 1500 is necesary (assuming it is sufficiently random) to achieve the lowest statistical error possible. Does the UCI or WADA have the budget necessary to test 1500 riders a year?
I second Strbuk’s comment.
Rant, I went back to your Timing is Everything post, to see what you thought about a Friday announcement. Is that a good time to bury news, because it’s the weekend? Or is it going to be a time advantageous to widely publicize a decision of guilt?
I am thinking that maybe FL already knows, or will know (for once) ahead of the rest of us what the decision will be, so he’ll have time to get used to the result either way. That would be the humane thing to do, no matter what the arbitrators decide.
Debby,
Depends on what time of day the announcement occurs. If it happens in the late afternoon or early evening, then the news is likely to get buried. If it happens in the morning or early afternoon, it could still make the major news cycles Friday evening, and appear in either the Saturday or Sunday papers (or perhaps both). I have no info that either side already knows what the decision will be, but the comment that Reuters ran on Monday could certainly be interpreted that way. I think if one or both of the sides knew, then a leak could very easily happen before the announcement. So far, none have. I’m all in favor of giving Floyd the time to prepare for the announcement — whichever way it goes. That seems fair to me. Don’t know if the arbs will (or have) done such a thing, however.
This is an exchange in the journal Nature. It is probably protected by copyright, but what the hell.
Editorial
Nature 448, 512 (2 August 2007) | doi:10.1038/448512a; Published online 1 August 2007
A sporting chance
Bans on drug enhancement in sport may go the way of earlier prohibitions on women and remuneration.
Whether you have been following the just-finished Tour de France or waiting for Barry Bonds to break the all-time record for major-league home runs in baseball, the topic of drugs in sport has been hard to avoid of late.
To cheat in a sporting event is a loathsome thing. For as long as the rules of the Tour de France or any sporting event ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs, those who break the rules must be punished whenever possible. But this does not preclude the idea that it may, in time, be necessary to readdress the rules themselves.
As more is learned about how our bodies work, more options become available for altering those workings. To date, most of this alteration has sought to restore function to some sort of baseline. But it is also possible to enhance various functions into the supernormal realm, and the options for this are set to grow ever greater.
The fact that such endeavours will carry risks should not be trivialized. But adults should be allowed to take risks, and experience suggests that they will do so when the benefits on offer are enticing enough. By the end of this century the unenhanced body or mind may well be vanishingly rare.
As this change takes place, we will have to re-examine what we expect of athletes. If spectators are seeking to reset their body mass index through pharmacology, or taking pills that enhance their memory, is it really reasonable that athletes should make do with bodies that have not seen such benefits? The more the public comes to live with the mixed and risk-related benefits of enhancement, the more it will appreciate that allowing such changes need not rob sport of its drama, nor athletes of their need for skill, training, character and dedication.
Is it really reasonable that athletes should make do with bodies that have not been enhanced?
To change the rules on pharmacological enhancement would not be without precedent. It was once thought that a woman could not epitomize the athletic ideal as a man could, and so should be stopped from trying. Similarly, it was thought proper to keep all payments from some athletes, thus privileging the already wealthy. These prejudices have been left behind, and the rules have changed. As pharmacological enhancement becomes everyday, views of bodily enhancement may evolve sufficiently for sporting rules to change on that, too.
This transition will not be painless. Some people will undoubtedly harm themselves through the use of enhancements, and there would need to be special protection for children. That said, athletes harm themselves in other forms of training, too. They may harm themselves less with drugs when doctors can be openly involved and masking agents dispensed with.
There is also the problem of who goes first. The first sport to change its rules to allow players to use performance-enhancing drugs will be attacked as a freak show or worse. The same may be true of the second. This may well have the effect “” may already be having the effect “” of delaying the inevitable.
Perhaps the Tour de France could show the way ahead here. In terms of public respect, endurance cycling has the least to lose and perhaps the most to gain. To be sure, a change in the rules would lead to the claim that ‘the cheats have won’. But as no one can convincingly claim that cheats are not winning now, or have not been winning in the past, that claim is not quite the showstopper it might seem to be.
A leadership ready to ride out the outrage might be better for the sport in the long run. If some viewers and advertisers were lost along the way, the Tour could console itself with the thought that it got by with far less commercial interest in days gone by “” and that it is more likely to re-establish itself through excellence and honesty than in the penumbra of doubt and cynicism that surrounds it now.
Two responses:
Doping: drugs misused for sports put athletes at risk
Piero Dolara1
1. Department of Pharmacology, University of Florence, Viale Pieraccini 6, 50139 Firenze, Italy
Sir
While suggesting that we allow the use of performance-enhancing drugs in competition sports, your Editorial ‘A sporting chance’ (Nature 448, 512; 2007) assumes that by the end of this century the unenhanced body and mind may be “vanishingly rare” in the general population. As a pharmacologist I disagree. Most pharmaceutical compounds in current use are, or have been, developed to correct pathological processes and not to enhance body functions.
There is no accepted drug treatment to improve superior intellectual activities. Most drugs that increase physical performance in sports do so with serious side effects. For example, liver and heart damage can result from chronic use of anabolic steroids to build muscle, erythropoietin (manufactured to treat anaemia but misused to increase endurance) can cause thrombosis, and the use of stimulants or fatigue retardants can lead to cardiovascular problems.
Given the economic and societal pressure pushing athletes to victory at all costs, introducing leniency towards drug treatment would create wild drug experimentation in all sports, exposing athletes (and possibly young people involved in non-competitive sports) to unknown and potentially severe health risks. To my knowledge, the rule primum non nocere “” first, do no harm “” has not yet been abolished for the medical professions.
Doping destroys the story at the heart of cycling
Steven Riley1
1. Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of China
Sir
Suggesting that the Tour de France should lead the way for other sports by permitting drug enhancement, as your recent Editorial ‘A sporting chance’ (Nature 448, 512; 2007) does, misses an important point. You fail to recognize the reason why people drive 10 hours to watch the regional final of college basketball, wake up in the middle of the night to watch the inevitable penalty shoot-out at the end of an England World Cup football match or even hop on the fast train to see the yellow jersey lead the Tour de France on to the Champs-Élysées. Genuine fans of sport don’t just follow their teams to see sportsmen and sportswomen make great plays; they do so to see stories unfold.
To understand why pharmacological enhancements should never be allowed in cycling, you need to understand that all spectator sports thrive by selling simple stories to their fans. The cycling story is that, with great talent and after years of training, the best riders ride faster than the others at the very limits of natural human endurance. In the Tour de France, this story has been told and retold for 100 years “” over stages, tours and careers. It describes the overall winner, the best hill climber and even the failed solo breakaway.
How could cycling’s story survive if pharmacological enhancements were allowed? Even if the time comes when botulinum toxin injections are available from vending machines, doping should never be allowed in cycling.
Nice contribution JBSMP – we do live in very interesting times. Don’t we.
several points I’d like to make.
1. For Professional cyclists who didn’t make the “list”, wouldn’t this give them more incentive to cheat? Now they know they are not on the “list” therefor less likely to be “randomly” tested. tempting very tempting…..
2. William Schart, First I think they already take blood and urine from all cyclist prior to TDF. No? isn’t that why we see the pics come out a few days prior of the Skiny, pasty guys with their shirts off with dr’s all around? I could be wrong. Also what do you do when said cheater’s goal isn’t to finish in the top ten? What if he “cheats” to help him recover from the previous days effort to survive? Ex: Sprinter trying to make it through 3 days in the mountains. He has no goal to win or finish top 10 on the days he “cheats” Rather the goal is to make it through the race within the cut off so that he can sprint “clean” in a few days. Or the domestique cheating, for the good of the team so he can hand up bottles and pull for the “Don” all day only to lose 20 min on the last mountain. I think we are a long way from having the capability to accurately process as many tests as you are talking about in a short amount of time, LNDD has proven this. Particularly when one Floyds sample is unaccounted for over night per testimony. I’d hate to see what happens when they have 1500 samples to chose from.
3. Speaking of statistics, sample groups etc. I haven’t run the numbers but is it coincidence the countries with the largest “targeted” population of riders comes from SPAIN and ITALY? HMMM. Where are the notorious “Docs” from that help people dope? Oh yea Spain and Italy. wow it must be the Italians and Spanish that dope. In the TDF, Statistically, I find it curious that 13 of 33 Spanish riders that finished, finished in the top 25 GC. Just over 1/2 of the cream of the crop at TDF from Spain. Curious. Also, ALL Americans that finished made top 25 GC. Not that 4 Americans a statistical sample set you make. But curious still. How many French in top 25? ZERO, GOOSE EGG, NADA, NIET, NONE. How many Italians top 25 GC? 0 And I haven’t done a search but I’d bet a 6 pack of Dr. Pepper (my drug of choice) that all top 25 riders at TDF are on the USUAL SUSPECT list. Yeah, UCI’s really working for their money pulling names from here. I’m gonna laugh when none of the “usual suspects” pan out, but yet keep winning.
3. “It merely makes it look like they’re going after the bad guys and gals.”
I could not agree more with that statement Rant. I think under the current system the authority is set up to give the appearance of doing something while in reality doing nothing but waving their arms and yelling WITCH! WITCH!
Atown:
I guess I didn’t explain myself well enough. At present, in the TdF, unless you win the stage or are 1st GC, odds are you don’t get tested, so even a rider with somewhat lofty intentions, but not either version of #1 stands a pretty good chance of getting away with doping. A broader reaching program could cut into it. What the costs would be, I don’t know. Maybe they could levy a “tax” on all teams, or even each rider.
If they already require every rider to submit samples every day, I wasn’t aware of this. But if this was the case, why were only the B samples for Landis from days an A sample was tested put into play during the hearing? Wouldn’t they have wanted to test them all. Maybe, if it would be too expensive to test enough to achieve a statistically valid sample, they still could maybe spread the testing out more. Maybe make all 4 tests truly random, with maybe the stipulation that at the end, jersey winners samples would also be tested..
Slap:
I would hate to see cycling, or for that matter, any sport legalize doping. One thing I have always liked about cycling is the rather Walter Middy aspect that exists for us who rider, but never will see the inside of a pro peleton. We can, without too major an outlay, ride a bike very similar to what the pros use; equipt with the samne tires, etc. I can, without much problem, ride the same roads that the pros recently road in the ToM, and even when riding the Tourmalet wasn’t an option, I could ride in nearby mountains and imagine I was battling Anquetil and Bahamontes. I am kind of glad that UCI is clamping down on some of the more extreme bikes for that reason. Kind of hard to play WM when you have a standard road bike and you see some of the bikes they use. Then, there is always the idea, half hidden in the back of my mind, that if I had the opportuntiy in the early 1960s to go to Europe, join one of the top clubs over there, and really get some good coaching, I just might have made it as a pro. Yeah right, but then, maybe . . . If the peloton is doped to the gills, this all changes.
Rant I am not sure if you are aware that the Valverde “case” now ongoing is due to a “technicality”. From what I have pieced together is that the Spanish federation is making their stance because of the technical finding of the Judge handling the OP case. In essence this judge threw out any litigation against all the implicated riders because in Spain, at the time, there were no laws against doping. He did not say that any of the riders were guilty or not guilty of doping, only that the point of litigation against them is mute since they had not broken Spanish law.
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I happen not to be a fan of the UCI or WADA or the IOC – but in this instance I can see where they are coming from. If they “win” and get the Spanish Federation to “investigate” Valverde, they will have succeeded in foisting the UCI/WADA code on them, which would then set a precedent – in essence giving them a door in to any place on the globe – holding riders accountable to keeping to their rules.
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I think the riders should be held responsible for keeping to the rules – I just cringe at the manipulations that this whole situation is bringing about. I also don’t want to give the UCI or WADA such power to wield, not in their present form I don’t. Since they prove themselves willing to run over anyone who dares to stand in their way.
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Like William, I also would not like to see doping going on in the peleton – for whatever reason. I don’t want to see pro racing turn into a freak show like pro body building has turned into. At the same time – I do not accept the rationell that we go on witch hunts and media accusation junkets as a means of controlling the sport.
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Since the UCI and WADA and the IOC seem to be turning their “war on drugs” into an “us against them” game – I do not think that it is right for them to be holding on to urine and blood samples for indefinite periods of time to be tested when “new” tests are available. NO, I do not like it when someone wins by doping – but – by taking and accepting a course of action that is now being spun on this subject in the media – benefits no one, except the “governing bodies”, certainly not the sport.
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Whether we like it or not – we have to all accept that we are at a major turning point in cycling. Let us not completely screw it up with short sighted thinking.
If the UCI has GOOD evidence that Valverde doped, then they should have at least made the evidence known before banning him. If he has indeed doped, should not he be totally suspended, not just held out of the World’s? As it stands, it looks like, simply because his name was in OP, UCI doesn’t want him in one event, but doesn’t care if he rides in other races. And it also looks like they don’t really have any good evidence of doping.
One’s name might appear in the OP documents for a variety of reasons. Maybe some riders from a given team availed themselves of the good doctor’s services, and he was proposing they should have teammates come in too. I have even speculated Fuentes might “salt” his records with false records of certain athletes to confuse possible investigations. If rider A is in his records, and was able to prove he didn’t go to the doctor, then the records that rider B doped might be seen as less reliable.
This raises the question: at what point is the evidence against a rider deemed sufficient to implement a suspension? At present, at least it is well known that a positive A sample will rate a suspension, at least until the B sample is tested. So what about the so-called “non-analytic” case? UCI seems to be making the rules on the fly here; and deny Valverde the chance to defend himself, by making a unilateral ban simply on their say-so. If a rider is to be suspended because his name is in doctor’s records, what about those riders who have had allegations lodged against them by other riders, or team employees, or even writer? If a one-time teammates says that rider A doped, should he be banned on that basis? If so, what about the possibility that a former teammate might lodge allegations against a rider to get that rider out of a race and allow a current teammate a better chance?
What I would propose that, if there is some evidence that a rider might have doped, either in the form of written records or witness testimony, then the UCI/WADA should inform the rider of the evidence. The rider then would have to opportunity to either defend himself or admit to the charges. Unless the UCI/WADA has sufficient evidence to proceed against a rider for a total ban, nothing should be done against the rider, but he should be informed that there is an investigation under way, and be advised of the evidence so far against him, so that he could prepare a possible defense.
It’s impossible to know for sure exactly who or what is being pursued in good faith because of UCI corruption and hypocrisy. However it does appear that catching guys like Vino, Kasheckhin, Rasmussen, etc. was only possible because they were suspected and subsequently targeted. Critics don’t often recognize that the blood testing necessary to nab dopers takes money. That said there’s plenty of reason to be critical. Di Luca was missing from the list for some reason, and yes, Bradley Wiggins should be tested.
(LOL notice how the Strbks of cycling fandom hate every cyclist who speaks out against doping. Wiggens must be one of those whiners who don’t eat enough power bars!).
All that said McQuaid deserves credit for publicly insisting that Valverde take a DNA test if he wishes to clear his name. No more bullshit please.
Rant, dealing with the doctors and their effect on cycling is necessary if you really want to stop doping. They (and the dirty DSes) destroy the sport. The only way to cripple them to import business managers and some kind of regulation agency to weed them out–and this is the last thing you will ever see if the omerta wins the day.