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WADA Fiddles While Rome Burns

Posted on 19 November 2007 by cosmo

“World Turns Attention to Doping.” As if the what little attention the world paid to cycling ever involved anything but. Ingenuous headline aside, it proved a prophetic forward for what could only be summed up as a revealing week. Barry Bonds was indicted for lying about being on drugs. And, because all the good stories about being on drugs were burned off during the Landis Affair, the good people of Canada have decided this is a racial issue. With the USD trading for a mere 98 Canadian cents who would I be to tell them otherwise?

Jan Ullrich is unliky to find a similarly effective smokescreen. Swirling rumors last week (scroll down) held that Rudy Pevenage, former Svengali to the purple-lipped Rostockian, all but proved the one-time Tour winner took EPO and used blood doping. Now a respectable print publication has come to the same conclusion, having heard secretly-recorded tapes of conversations between Pevenage and snitchin’ ex-soignuer Jef d’Hont. WADA, however, continuing its long-standing policy pursuing cases with the most tenuous evidence possible (search “dogs”), remains focused on Alejandro Valverde.

Speaking of WADA, it seems there was a bit of a snafu in the naming of their new president. Not that I’ve ever held the organization a paragon of fairness, but you might think the organization charged with restoring an aura of integrity to the world of sport would be able to elect a leader without controversy, right? Sure, and denial is just a river in Africa. But I guess I ought to be psyched that reigning president Dick Pound didn’t go all Musharraf by purging the board of directors, declaring a state of emergency, and reinstalling himself on the ballot.

Finally, against this backdrop of squabbling bureaucrats, we have Johann Bruyneel, the man who orchestrated the seven consecutive victories of Lance Armstrong against all manner of doped-to-the-gills opposition, and who helped develop such disgraced names as Tyler Hamilton, Roberto Heras, and Floyd Landis, massing his forces in the East with the remnants of the most infamously doped cycling team since Festina. Included in this cabal is Alberto Contador – the 07 Tour winner, and only man able to hang with mid-race ejectee Michael Rasmussen on the climbs. With much of Jerry Bruckheimer’s creative team on strike, it’s hard to imagine a stage more perfectly set . . . for disaster!

thoughts on “WADA Fiddles While Rome Burns”

  1. sebastian says:
    21 November 2007 at 10:43 pm

    i for one am glad that wada has chosen recently deceased post-rock legend john fahey to be their president. blind joe death lives!

    Reply
  2. Barrie M says:
    27 November 2007 at 1:14 pm

    Wait a minute. You said “..the good people of Canada have decided that this is a racial issue”. The article you quote appeared in the Canadian Press site of Google, but all of the opinions and stats in the article are from American scholars and researchers. We don’t even know if the writer of the article was Canadian.

    Reply
  3. cosmo says:
    28 November 2007 at 9:53 am

    That sounds like Canadian Talk to me…

    Reply
  4. cycling jerseys says:
    8 September 2011 at 9:40 pm

    Not that I’ve ever held the organization a paragon of fairness, but you might think the organization charged with restoring an aura of integrity to the world of sport would be able to elect a leader without controversy, right?

    Reply

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About the Author

a headshot of Cosmo Catalano

Best known for his How The Race Was Won® video series, Cosmo Catalano began blogging about pro cycling from a bike shop in 2005. Between then and now, he's designed cycling infographics, built cycling web apps, and supplied cycling content to print and broadcast media, all in the name of backing up his near-endless criticism with proof that it can be done better. He complains about cycling on Twitter at @Cyclocosm.

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