Don't worry, Bertie. We're still friends / DancingOnThePedals.net, cc-by-nd

It’s a welcome change each February to watch the lead stories in cycling move from the minutia of law and bio-pharmacology to the nuance and verve of actual bicycle racing. The wild line-changing leading into a bunch sprint, fading desperation of the second echelon, and poker-playing as a break pulls itself appart before the finish are the sort of nuanced, dynamic things that make bike racing an interesting sport.

You’d think that an organization entrusted with the management of such a sport would strive to cultivate an appreciation of these things. But the UCI seems to see the situation differently. In even holding court over whether or not Saxo Bank should retain its World Tour license, the UCI is essentially saying that only the winner of a WorldTour bike race should receive credit for the victory.

I don’t think the UCI needs it explained that no matter how doped up the winner might be, his triumph is but the closing movement in a complex choreography of wind-dodging, gap-closing, tactics, and tribulation. Mere dope doesn’t win bike races—the peloton of ’90s and early ’00s was arguably the most chemically well-prepared group of athletes in the history of mankind, and plenty of those guys never made the podium.

Arnaud Demare’s Stage 6 victory at Qatar provides further insight of how just how many factors beyond peak wattage and astronomical VO2 max can come into play in a win. I’d hardly call the rising French star and reigning U23 World Champ a scrub, but fact is that his campaign at Qatar had, up to the final stage, been a good-not-great mix of missed splits and steps-off-the-podium sprints. It was tactics (Tom Boonen securely in the GC lead) and fortune (an unlucky a touch of wheels for Cav) that finally put him in a position to win.

I’m not so naive as to think the UCI’s decision would be based purely on logic. Governing bodies like to send a message with their decisions, regardless of how little sense they might make. But I think there’s an equitable solution that will allow the UCI (if it is indeed hell-bent on taking a chunk out of Saxo’s hide) to proceed without implying that bike races might just as well be contested by a weigh-in and 60 minute threshold session on the trainer.

Returning to the example of Demare, note the the Frenchman is quick to praise his teammates. And with good cause—sprinters can’t lay down a minute at 670 watts 3k before launching a stage-winning burst. Nor, for that matter, can climbers lead themselves to the front group before paring the field down to heads of state, and still expect to gain places on GC.

Even the seemingly mundane tasks of providing a safe, steady wheel in an ever-shifting peloton so a leader never has to accelerate, or crushing fat kid watts at the front of field of 5 hours constitute unquestionably remarkable efforts. And while they may never cross the line first, I—and the portions of prize money parceled out after the race—would make an unequivocal claim these less glamorous players have a more than equal stake in the win.

So, if the argument is that 68% of Saxo Bank’s points came from Contador (471 of 696), let’s keep with that, but assign those points a weight equal to Contador’s contribution. Split ten ways—nine riders and the director—and doubling Contador’s share (a nod the marketing value of the win), the banned Spaniard’s points contribution drops to 13.53%. While the resulting points total (601) knocks Saxo back a few places, at 13th of 18, and with solid 25% margin on the next squad, it’s hardly a relegation-worthy performance.

Aside from actually reflecting the realities of how races are won, taking this tack would also provide some much-needed hand-holding for wary sponsors, who could bank on a squad not being barred from cycling’s largest events for the wayward actions of a single star rider. Likewise, it would provide an incentive for teams to keep their worker bees from doping—each rider that turned up positive, regardless of palmares, would take the team that much closer to exclusion from the top tier.

Of course, I maintain that the ideal outcome is to not have this reassessment process in the first place. I don’t seem to recall teams’ statuses at the highest level of the sport questioned after season-ending injuries or retirements. While a roster change due to doping is unfortunate, the impact on the team’s competitiveness is essentially the same. In fact, in the case of Contador, the comparison is far less apt, since he’ll be back racing again before the end of the season.

And, of course, one less step in the legal repercussions from his doping conviction is one less headline taken away from actual racing.

Related posts:

1. Maybe We Should Test For Accountability
2. The Piti of an Unrepentant Valverde
3. TD Bank Could Use Some Help

I was on Vuelta podium...for like a week. / Rafael Uñach, cc-nd-nc

20% unemployment. Massive cutbacks in public funding. A looming credit downgrade. There’s no question that “La Crisis” marks a major threat to the fortunes of the Spanish peloton. But if recent history is any indication, the increasing internationalization of cycling will force a near-total collapse of the Spanish peloton in the next few years, if the nation can’t take the management of its doping cases more seriously.

Let’s start in Germany in 2010: after some 14 years at the forefront of the sport—reference Erik Zabel’s 6 green jerseys, Team Telekom’s two Tour wins, and the perpetual candidacy of Jan Ullrich—the most powerful nation in Europe found itself without a single top-level squad. There are plenty of fingers to point, but the German economy, having recovered smartly from the Crisis of ’08, seems an unlikely culprit.

Let’s go back a few years further, across the Atlantic to the United States, where an inflated housing sector and over-leveraged credit markets were plunging the nation into the worst financial crisis in 80 years. Surrounded by this economic wailing and gnashing of teeth, Bob Stapleton reinvented the old T-Mobile squad, bringing it to the US with new objectives and sponsors, while Jon Vaughters floated an even more improbable proposition—an American-based, American-populated team dedicated to the idea that bike races could be won without the aid of performance enhancing drugs.

Returning to 2012, we find a Germany economically strong enough to essentially carry a continent, yet that still lacks a single top-tier squad. Meanwhile, while recovery has continued to be frustratingly slow in the US, the nation’s collection of international cycling teams continues to blossom, refuting the notion that economic conditions are a reliable predictor of ProTour presence. Indeed, the management of high-profile doping cases seems a much more reliable bellwether of a country’s ability to support WorldTour cycling squads.

The collapse of Germany’s cycling teams was brought about by a two-fold crunch—the bubble initially opened by Ullrich’s win in 1997 began to deflate just as a new generation of German cyclists and teams came up and found themselves immersed in doping scandals, while promising new talents like Gerard Ciolek and Linus Gerdemann failed to deliver big wins. Compounding the issue, those caught up in doping either admitted their charges outright by saying that cycling was impossible without doping, or dodged prosecution by dancing between national federations or paying a simple fine.

In the US, anti-doping authorities have proven far less ham-handed. While the White Whale still eludes them, they’ve been sensationally effective at putting a harpoon through nearly any drug cheat unfortunate enough to drift their way. Forget Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis—cereal box names like Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, and Barry Bonds are now notches on the USADA bedpost. Meanwhile, neither USATF nor MLB have put together anything close to the “it’s ok not to win so long as we don’t cheat” operation run by Slipstream Sports.

While I’ve found the specific efforts at transparency occasionally disappointing, there’s a general air of openness with the post-Lance generation of American cyclists. Fully illustrated, long-form blog posts, occasionally embarrassing honesty on Twitter, and a generally open stance toward fans and the press are all refreshing changes from the boilerplate patter proffered by the pharmaceutically-prepared generation. Combine this with the stubborn (if wrong-headed) meme that Lance Armstrong has “never failed a drug test”—and you’ve got an atmosphere in which American companies take some cautious comfort in the cleanliness of the riders they sponsor.

To sum it up, German cycling came out of the 00′s on a deflating bubble, with good riders that were dirty, clean riders that couldn’t win, and supporting infrastructure that utterly failed to convince fans and sponsors that they could wait out the trend. At the same time, the sport in the US had a boom of interest generated by Lance, a slew of successful, high-profile dope prosecutions, and new teams and riders willing to cater to the concerns of dope-weary fans and supporters. It’s the salability of the product, not the prevailing economic winds, that are the biggest factor in getting sponsors to sign.

So where does that put Spain in 2012? Nationally, there’s no shortage of success—in the past five years, Spanish riders have notched nine Grand Tour wins. The audience and homefront support is certainly there as well—the Contador Saga has given a podium for every even remotely significant Spaniard to pronounce him either completely innocent, or getting a raw deal.

But there’s a saying that when your cousin and your brother-in-law start climbing onto the bandwagon, it’s time for you to hop off. I have no doubt that the vast majority of Spanish fans (if not Spanish teams and governing bodies) would be happy to glibly play along as dosed-up Spaniards roll to victory after victory. But Spanish companies, I feel, have already realized that a Spanish cycling jersey is a very dangerous place to print a logo.

As cycling’s focus becomes more and more international—and as Spain’s public funding crisis makes Spanish races fewer and farther between—much of the advertising reward reaped from cycling Spanish teams will have to come from outside of Spain. And, call me cynical, but in the shoes of an event organizer, I just couldn’t get exciting about tossing a Spanish wildcard or two into my event knowing how business gets done on the Iberian peninsula.

Indeed, Team Geox’s sponsorship failure this past winter may have been pre-ordained in large part by its inability to land invites to major international events—the Tour and Giro, most notably—despite a star studded roster. Is it any wonder then that Oscar Freire and Juan-Antonio Flecha—two of the most “credible” Spaniards in recent memory—have raced on foreign teams for the bulk of their careers?

While the (hopefully) final outcome of the Contador case may provide the nation with some much-needed motivation later this month, if Spain can’t create at least a facade of transparency and enforcement, its squads will slowly find themselves going the way of Gerolsteiner and Milram, with their rides and staff unable to find work.

Related posts:

1. Pro Cycling News – Rogers Takes World TT Title
2. Pro Cycling News – Ullrich takes Stage, Ferrar takes USPRO
3. The Brad Wiggins Bubble

“[T]hey wouldn’t even do that to a criminal. None of what they did was legal”
-Alejandro Valverde

It’s tough to imagine a doping scandal more fraught with irony than Operacion Puerto. Even before it had a name, the fantastic contradictions were there; Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes ran a doping ring where he saw his job as ensuring “that riders could put up with the physical demands being made of them”, but a client alleging his health had been ruined by the treatments was what finally blew the lid.

Two years later, when the scandal finally broke, the investigation proved itself an embarrassment to nearly everyone involved—Fuentes, who could have better concealed his clients’ names with a cereal box decoder ring; the Guardia Civil, who revealed their investigative skills outstripped in ineptitude only by their inability to prevent leaks; the riders themselves, caught red-handed; and the Spanish courts and anti-doping officials, for being unable to drive home a slam-dunk case.

Is that 50,000 EUR in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? / pd, wikimedia commons

Most embarrassed of all were the ASO, organizers of the Tour de France, who now had to host a race where everyone even remotely considered a favorite had run on the front page of every sport daily from Lisbon to Kiev in a photo collage of blood bags and syringes.

The Tour’s response to Operacion Puerto was blunt and idiotic: cajole any TdF teams with riders implicated in the scandal to voluntarily withdraw them before the race. I’ve scattered ample pixels already on the inequity of this—let’s just say I found it wonderfully poetic when Floyd Landis’ late-race urine sample came up positive a few days after the Tour finish, giving the ASO the very “Tour Winner Was Actually On Drugs” headlines their pre-race purges had been conducted to avoid.

Strangely enough, Valverde could have saved the Tour organization from this embarrassment. While no one can say for certain what would have happend if the Spaniard hadn’t broken his collarbone in a mundane crash on Stage 3, Valverde had long gotten the better of Landis in the mountains, and his 5th place finish in the dead flat ’06 prologue was as brilliant as it was suspicious. It’s the opinion of this humble commentator that the 2006 Tour was Valverde’s race to lose.

Still, I hesitate to call Valverde’s crash “bad luck”. While Puerto left entire teams fluttering in the wind, Valverde healed up and battled gamely for the Vuelta title—holding the leaders jersey and taking a stage win in the process—before making the podium at the World Championships later that year. Puerto fallout continued into 2007, as investigations pinned Ullrich to hijo rudico and retirement, while Basso, accorded no other option by investigations in Italy, made the ludicrous claim that he didn’t inhale—but Valverde kept right on riding.

In fact, from the day some Spanish cop found a bag labelled “val.(piti)” to 2009, Valverde’s right-to-ride encountered only one major challenge: the Germans attempting to keep him from riding at the ’07 Worlds in Stuttgart, a prohibition summarily overturned by the CAS. When you’re riding dirty, it sure doesn’t hurt to have your national cycling federation, and indeed, your country’s entire judicial system willing to bend the rules on your behalf

For all of McQuaid’s flack about “mafia nations” it was the Italians who finally clipped Valverde’s wings, matching DNA taken from a rest day sample at the 2008 Tour to DNA in the EPO-laced Bag 18 seized at Operation Puerto. After another year of trial and appeal, the CAS concurred with the Italians, and slapped a two year ban on Valverde, backdated to the beginning of 2010.

To recap: Valverde, for a bag of blood that showed he’d been cheating in 2006, got 18 months off racing, a few results scratched from the records books, and four years of otherwise unencumbered competition, during which he amassed palmares including—but hardly limited to—a Vuelta, a Liege-Bastogne-Liege, a San Sebastien, and two Tour stages. And somehow, this is his idea of rough justice.

There have been a few interesting reactions to Valverde’s unrepentant stance. Joe Lindsey respects the blunt, twisted honesty of it, while @inrng sees holding the Armstrong line as a media management mistake and a bad example. But for me, the biggest problem of Valverde’s response is the delusional excoriation of the very system whose assumptions of innocence let him continue to ride.

Valverde’s sanction wasn’t the result of nefarious forces arrayed against him—it was the product of being extended the benefit of every doubt available. For anyone who missed Tyler Hamilton’s appearance on 60 Minutes, Valverde’s continued sense of persecution might be the best example of the insidious self-deception that is so often the byproduct of an artificially high hematocrit.

Related posts:

1. Pro Cycling News – Boonen Loses at Qatar, Valverde Quicker, Bode Cheats?
2. Not Earning His Billables
3. Basso “Confessed”, Valverde Accused, Dekker Victorious

Don't worry, Nibs—plenty of bubbly left / Jacinto Vidarte, nc-by-sa

Seventeen months after testing positive for clenbuterol during the 2010 Tour de France, Alberto Contador—or rather, those who seek to have him punished—will finally have their day in court. After a provisional suspension, a one-year suspension recommendation, a surprising clearing of all charges, and more delays than I care to Google, the sport will get a final answer on whether or not all the wins Contador has collected since last July will actually count.

Previous CAS decisions strongly suggest the outcome will not be favorable for Contador. Alessandro Petacchi had been cleared to compete by his national federation when the CAS restored a one-year sentence agaisnt him for turning up too much of a substance for which he already had a TUE. Even more forebodingly, the panel actually extended a suspension against Danilo Hondo when he appealed a one-year national federation sentence.

Despite the looming gallows, fan opinion and professional punditry seems to be that regardless of the outcome, the case has been a mess, and a black eye for the sport. “Cycling has already lost” Cycling Weekly’s Nigel Wynn declared last week. Even the generally cool-headed John Leicester admits that “A satisfying ending that ties up the loose ends looks unlikely”.

I hate to speak for the establishment here, but “satisfying endings” are not and should not be the end goal of the anti-doping efforts. The system exists to create an environment where athletes can compete fairly; by definition, such a system should protect against capricious enforcers as readily as unscrupulous competitors.

Sadly, drug testing in cycling has a long history of being inconsistent and outright unfair. In 1977, Joop Zoetemelk received a 10 minute penalty for a positive dope test; the next year, Michael Pollentier was ejected and suspended for 2 months trying to evade a similar control. In the 1979 edition, Zoetemelk tested positive again and indeed, admitted the offense—but was still allowed to keep his stage win and second place overall finish.

In more recent memory, the 2006 Tour saw riders “voluntarily” withdrawn from the TDF on rumors of involvement in a drug scandal. This extrajudicial exclusion had the deliciously poetic conclusion of seeing Floyd Landis become only the second rider in a century of Tours to be stripped of his title post-race. While Michael Rasmussen’s expulsion the following year for whereabouts violations was at least in passing accord with previously-agreed-upon rules, its sudden, rumor-fueled emergence two weeks into the event smacked of a witch hunt.

Contador’s case, on the other hand, has proceeded with the mind-numbing plod of bureaucratic pedantry. This isn’t to say that the sport’s governing bodies have been meticulous in discharging their duties—the UCI was woefully slow in reporting the test results to Contador, and it allegedly took the threat of reporters breaking the (not-legally-relevant) plasticizers case to put the story public.

But the layers of appeal and recourse laid about before both Contador and his accusers like so many red carpets is a refreshing sight in contrast with that autocracy of years past. This otherwise even-handed treatment of the case highlights the current system’s more ludicrous elements—foremost among them, leaving nation sport federations (as opposed to nation anti-doping organizations) with final responsibility over athlete sanctions.

It may be frustrating to watch suspected riders continue to tear up the opposition as their cases progress, but it’s a lot easier to strike a name out of the record books than to pencil one back in. Returning to the example of 2006, Oscar Pereiro did eventually receive his trophy, but I still don’t see any mention of Allan Davis contending for wins on that year’s sprint stages. And while Alejandro Valverde’s denials may have won him a few seasons of freedom following Operacion Puerto, he found out last year that the sport has developed a rather long memory both for sanctioning dopers and annulling their results.

Indeed, for all the past (and current) ineptitude of those running it, cycling should be credited for allowing its false champions to be unmasked (and unpaid) in the lab. While parallels to professional baseball’s steroid era have abounded over the past decade, most of the discussion in MLB now revolves around asterisks in record books, not vacating World Series titles.

There was a time not so long ago when this impressive judicial leeway sent clean riders into panic attacks at the mere appearance of mail from the UCI. If 18 months of appeal and proper deference to preceding judgements is what it takes to make due process as important as punishing the offenders, then it’s a wait that I’m more than willing to endure.

Related posts:

1. Contador, Criteriums, and Clenbuterol
2. World Overlooks Oscar as Landis Case Rolls On
3. Maybe We Should Test For Accountability

That Guy, way back when he was news
/ by Ciclismoaldia, pd

Dear Internet,

Let’s all stop talking about That Guy.

While the phrase “that guy” has a coloquial meaning (and That Guy has most certainly gone out of his way to be “that guy”) I’m actually referring to a specific person, here. A former cyclist. You know the one I’m talking about, probably because Cyclingnews ran an article about him yesterday. That Guy is a polarizing figure, and once that article was published, the Twitters (self included), and a few notable blogs rose up, with disappointing predictability and fervor, to take the bait.

Regardless of your opinion on That Guy, that was the wrong response.

The simple fact is that That Guy does not deserve mention at present. Not on Cyclingnews, not on your blog, not on Twitter, not anywhere. He has done nothing—good or bad—of any relevance in years. Whether to crucify him or to facilitate his redemption, any mention of That Guy as things currently stand is unwarranted, and you undermine your own efforts by bringing him up.

If you do not like That Guy and would like to see him “in a ditch” (in the colorful and I hope figurative words of one Twitterer), I suggest you email Cyclingnews‘ Daniel Benson directly, saying that you do not feel That Guy is a newsworthy topic right now. I would be polite, well-reasoned, and succinct in your email, and I would avoid linking to the piece or clicking on any ads or paid offsite links on the article page. I would also avoid addressing or defaming That Guy on any of your online presences.

If you do like That Guy, I would email him directly, or leave a comment on one of his blogs, expressing your support. He has a track record of emotional fragility, a dark past to atone for, and could likely use some support. That said, I would still avoid mentioning That Guy directly on Twitter, or linking to his blog, web sites, or any news articles on him. He has shown many times that his thirst for the spotlight outstrips his desire to do good, and if he can have the first without the second, he’ll do it in a heartbeat.

If That Guy is—as he claims to be—truly interested in reform and advocacy, he will, of his own volition and without incentives from law enforcement or attention from the press, begin taking steps to advance that goal. Conversely, if he is—as many others seem to think—pure, unmitigated evil, he will turn to darker means to regain notoriety. If and when he’s done something noteworthy, we should once again feel free to voice our opinions; until then, let’s see if we can’t avoid feeding this particular troll any more than we already have.

Thanks for hearing me out on this, Internet.

Sincerely,

-Cosmo

Related posts:

1. An Open Letter to the ASO
2. Early Seasons and Open Championships
3. Worlds And An Open Vuleta

But with decent footage of every ascent to Plateau de Beille, including two by a yellow-clad Tommy Voeckler, and with the second big mountain-top finish of the year bringing another unexpected result, the opening to take an incisive look at the times is just too tempting.

The “start” at Plateau de Beille is kind of a hard thing to nail down. While the finishes on each of the videos I used looked the same, the heads-up KM-to-go displays varied pretty widely. Even Phil and Paul were inconsistent between years, citing both a sharp left-hand bend in the town of Les Cabannes and a 16km to go KOM banner as official climb starts—of course, as Ted King will tell you, trust the roadside banners at your own peril.

There also seems to be some dispute about the length of the thing. VS coverage seemed to suggest 15k, Strava says 15.2km, The Sport Scientists say 15.8km, and honestly, with the switchbacks, they all might be right. Considering how much climbing there seems to be within Les Cabannes itself—and the fact that there are hundreds of kilometers of racing beforehand—the ambiguity is understandable.

But if we want to maintain some semblance of precision in all this, we have to draw a line somewhere. If were Emperor of Bike Racing, I would declare this intersection the start, since it seems to mark a transition between village roads an unmistakeable, Euro-style climbing. But alas, that quaint sign is almost impossible to pick out behind the fans, on video filmed from the back of a motorbike, and this prominent 150m sign next to a caravans advertisement a few hundred meters earlier will have to suffice. Screenshots for the incredulous:

You’ll note that there are only four years represented here. Unfortunately, I can’t find uncut video of Pantani’s apparently record-setting ascent from 1998. It’s a great watch if you do get the chance, with Ullrich sprinting back on au bloc after a puncture in Les Cabannes, before Pantani storms away in the drops, but the performance would have required some correction factor anyway, since the ’98 course is reported to have finished at a lower elevation than later ascents.

Because I set my own line for the start, I also had to pin down my own elevation and length numbers. Ideally, I’d be able to head out there and ride it on a sunny day with a barometric altimeter, holding a path roughly equidistant between the center line and shoulder. Sadly, that’s not an option for me, so I’ll have to trust that Strava user Alex Palmer didn’t do too much Paper Boy on his way up. Here’s the “official” segment I’ll be using, from the aforementioned sign to the final curve of the ski-area turnaround: 15.6km, 1214m, 7.8%.

So, numbers-wise, what does that give us? Here are the PdB Stage Winner and “Tommy Voeckler group” (he finished alone in ’04) figures, ordered fastest-to-slowest, measured against the best performance (excluding Pantani for reasons noted above):

The first thing I notice is that, compared to Luz Ardiden, the difference between this year’s times and historical performances isn’t nearly as sharp, especially if you’re looking at Armstrong (’02, ’04). Of course, considering the GC situation in ’03, its no stretch to imagine that the ’03 Luz climb represented a removal of all the stops, both in terms of tactics and in terms of biochemical enhancement. Still, while the gaps weren’t as large, a significant, across-the-board decline for the 2011 numbers remained.

The second thing that catches my eye is Voeckler’s improvement between 2004 and last Saturday (he did race PdB in ’07, but having no GC position to consider, finished 42 minutes down in the autobus). I’d noted that on Thursday, the winner was as far behind Armstrong’s time as Voeckler used to be, but now that we’ve got some direct comparisons, you can see that his presence at the head of affairs isn’t merely the top end of the field slowing down.

There’s always the spectre of doping, I guess, but one likes to think that a rider who revels in his aggressive, opportunistic style wouldn’t feel compelled to dose up in pursuit of a title he doesn’t think he can win. Voeckler is slimmer—he’s lost some of the round-faced, cherubic appeal he had in 2004, he won a very hilly “classic” last fall, and was a presence on the bergs this spring. He’s also got team support, something Brioche la Boulangere just couldn’t offer. In ’04, Voeckler had also been dropped at least once before even arriving the foot of Plateau de Beille, suggesting he might have been having a rougher day—or suffering from a more intense pace.

Which brings me to one last note—the speeds leading up to the foot of Plateau de Beille on Saturday were uncharacteristically slow, and the peloton experienced minimal breakup over the previous climbs. That’s a pretty sharp contrast to 2004, when a group of just 22 (including 7 Posties) crested the penultimate climb, or to 2007, when Contador brought home the 200km, 3-climb stage in 22.5 mph. That’s all the more noteworthy when you consider that Saturday’s stage was over 30km shorter than the previous two ascents.

Related posts:

1. A Tale of Two Luz Ardidens – 2003 and 2011
2. Danes Ban Suspects, The LA Times Pounds Pound
3. The Enigma of Damiano Cunego

So I obtained digital copies of WCP’s ostensibly unedited DVD from 2003′s Stage 15, and a screencap of yesterday’s live, commercial-free finale on VS, and rolled them each back to a recognizable start point—the moment each heads of state group exits the Pont Napoleon. Since it’s where the riders removed their helmets back in 2003, I think it’s a solid choice for the official climb start.

I realize there are conspiracy theorists among you who will seize on the different angles and road surfaces, but I assure you, it’s the same bridge. You can see the same monument in the approach to it each year.

I likewise stopped the tape as each stage winner and heads of state group crossed the line at the top of the hill, put both figures into a spreadsheet, and began calculating elapsed times. The twisting approach and short finishing straight appear to be identical between the two ascents, so assuming that nothing funky happened in encoding either of the videos, the numbers are about as accurate and verifiable as any you’ll find.

However, Sammy Sanchez, as he is wont to do, decided to make things complicated. He escaped on the descent leading into Luz Ardiden, and crossed the bridge just ahead of the other leaders. You can’t really see him as he exits, because the camera cuts back to the chase, so I used the moment of the cut as the timestamp for his crossing.

So, what did the numbers look like?

Before I begin drawing any conclusions, let me just say that I’m well aware yesterday’s finish (despite a very similar profile) came at the end of 212km, compared to 160km in 2003. I also know that the lead group was much smaller in ’03, and that today’s finish had a decent tailwind, and that Armstrong’s 2003 time includes a number of historic mishaps. These, and the innumerable other things that make each new bike race interesting, are the reasons I generally think comparing times between ascents is stupid.

But the differences here are enormous, to the point that they negate almost any imaginable interference. The 10% drop in VAM (calculated, along with watts-per-kilo, from Strava’s figures of 982m and 7.5%) is insane. It basically says that after 5.5 hours in the saddle, a Cat 1 climb, and the Tourmalet, the top pros slowed down enough that even I can (very briefly and while fresh) reach a similar ascent speed.

Because Sammy Sanchez started ahead of the rest, it’s possible that Frank Schleck had a faster time it was actually Frank Schleck who had the fastest climb on the day—38:39, VAM of 1524, W/Kg of 5.54. But the fact that there aren’t any glaring differences in performance between the winner and the other heads of state is another striking change. In 2003, Carlos Sastre finished three minutes down on Armstrong and was 11th. That same margin on today’s stage barely put you in the top 25.

So what’s the cause? I’m sure many of you will go on in the comments section about people marking a sub-par Contador, or fewer GC riders around to kick up the tempo, or an overall race un-impacted by time-trials, or the flogging Leopard-Trek doled out over the Tourmalet, or any other of the innumerable, pleasant reasons why yesterday’s finish cannot possibly be compared to anything, and that I’m a fool for even trying.

So I’ll just direct you to this fact: the difference between Lance Armstrong’s ’03 time and Sanchez’ mark yesterday is almost identical to the amount of time one Thomas Voeckler lost to Armstrong in the Frenchman’s first day of high mountain maillot jaune defense, way back in 2004.

A peloton at two speeds? C’est possible.

Related posts:

1. It’s Good Not To Be The King
2. A Tale of Two Podiums
3. A Tale Of The Tune-Ups

Had that been the case, you wouldn’t be reading this. The bike racing and riding public in America would be a mere shadow of its current self, and millions of cancer sufferers would still view their disease as a crippling, unrecoverable plague. If, through some luck, you did still follow cycling, you’d probably consider yourself an Armstrong fan; he’d be a lone, underachieving American hero in your obscure, European sport.

Objectively speaking, there’s no way to say that the end result of the cancer, the stepped-up “preparation”, the work with Ferrari, the personality cult, and the Livestrong brand were bad things—for the sport or for the world. So why, then, is there such a groundswell in the cycling community to see Armstrong fall? Why do the haters hate?

I don’t claim to have the same motivations as everyone, but the fact is I don’t really care that Armstrong cheated. I don’t have a problem with him being a complex character, at once guilty and an inspiration. On occasion, I even think he did a pretty good job racing the bike.

But what I find a constant source of consternation and embarrassment, is that despite all the Tour wins, and millions of dollars for cancer, and other accomplishments, under it all, Armstrong still comports himself as the gel-haired bro-caricature captured in this video.

The legal battles, the past-prime comeback, nobodies on Twitter, the heckler battling, the Chair You’re Sitting In, the increasingly transparent denials, trying to “win” assembling a legal team the way he tries to “win” collecting art—for a man who should have nothing to prove, Armstrong’s inability to gracefully accept even the tiniest of slights and compulsion to continually pad his legacy is pathetic.

Had Armstrong been a lesser rider, it could be overlooked—we all have flaws. But he isn’t a lesser rider. He is the public face of cycling, and has a far larger pull than the sport itself ever will. By all accounts, Armstrong dominated almost a decade of unsustainable rule-breaking, and as the pre-eminent rider of that era, the onus is on him to simply admit what the rest of the world already knows.

The sad part is that because Lance has so fortified himself in the myth of his performance, the consequences of a confession now will likely be harsh. His legacy will be tarnished. Cancer research may suffer. He might even go to jail. And that’s not entirely fair. But celebrity is a double-edged sword, and for the hundreds of millions he’s raised on his reputation, he owes the world the courtesy of owning up to his transgressions.

So until that moment comes, I’m viewing the Fall of Fortress Armstrong with a certain satisfaction. Not with any particular malice toward the man, or for the heady glee of watching a tyrant hang, but as an audience member at an Elizabethan play. Armstrong is our tragic hero, and his fatal flaw is the monomaniacal focus that had until now served him so well. Unable to account for it, he’ll continue stacking denial upon denial, until the whole house of cards tumbles in a familiar, inescapable denoument.

Related posts:

1. UCI, USCF Hate Tyler Hamilton, Charity – Rant
2. Not Earning His Billables
3. T-Mobile Folds, No Cyclingnews Links

But the UCI’s Index of Suspicion leaked a few days ago is especially curious because all we have is metadata—scores that the UCI has made up ostensibly based on actual measurements. But L’Equipe’s intrepid journalists failed both in nailing down the specific criteria used by the UCI, or the data that were fed into these criteria to arrive at a given doping suspicion index score.

Strangely, we do have a fairly extensive set of data on what an index score of 4 might look like —and we have Lance Armstrong to thank for it. There are some hopeful assumptions in this assessment (namely, that the UCI even has an objective set of criteria, and that Lance’s ’09 data informed his ’10 score), but it’s still the best (only?) set of actual numbers we have.

And to my layman’s eyes, 4 doesn’t seem like such a bad spot to put Armstrong’s numbers. They are not especially high, but do show a stubborn consistency—perhaps even the “too normal” values that prompted the bio passport experts to propose hiding values from riders for a few months. There was also the mid-Tour hematocrit increase, much-trumpeted by amateur Internet hematologists as evidence of a transfusion.

But in many other ways, the list makes the UCI (and some teams and national governing bodies) look bad. There’s the obvious criticisms: how could this list get out in the first place, and why weren’t the highest-rated riders the most heavily tested? But more damning is efficacy of enforcement. If Popovych was the most suspicious rider at the 2010 Tour, and he’s been tied up in at least one investigation since then, how is he still riding?

As someone pointed out on Twitter (my apologies for losing the link), Alessandro Ballan has been suspended twice for investigations, is now pretty solidly linked to several transfusions, but still only rated a 5 on the UCI’s list. As more-successful-than-not Ballan likely had money to burn on medical assistance, I’m inclined the chalk this up to the skills of a good doctor, though it could just as easily be cast as a judgement on the ineffectiveness of the bio passport system.

The riders, who seemed to react the most negatively and immediately to the list, will likely be the least affected in the end. Cycling may indeed be all politics, but for the vast majority of riders—those that block the wind, carry bottles, and mark breaks—the difference between a suspicion level of zero and four, in data over a year old, will have far less impact than a reliable record of performance and a few big names willing to vouch for you .

The higher levels of suspicion—a total of 20 riders ranked 7 and above—are populated almost exclusively by almost-there contenders, and super-domestiques with a few major wins to their credit. While I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the older names had trouble landing a job in the future, the continued re-emergence of convicted dopers is a pretty straightforward indication that suspicion will never trump results.

So as pretty much everyone else has already pointed out, the damage from this list will fall most heavily on its creator, the UCI—just in time for them to decide that nah, one of the most historically effective national anti-doping agencies shouldn’t be allowed to operate independent testing at the Tour of California after all.

No related posts.

You’d think taking a pay cut to drive two hours a day at $4.05/gallon would find me doing something more productive than wrestling one of the more infuriating pieces of software I’ve ever used into submission. But the Panglossian infallibility of market economics being what it is, I remain certain my time could not be better spent doing anything else.

Nor could Johan Bruyneel’s, for that matter, as he heads off with to the Giro d’Italia with a fat wad of RadioShack’s money and the strongest team since Disney brought us The Big Green. In all honestly, if they called themselves “rag-tag”, it would rouse righteous indignation in Keystone Cop precincts from Bari to Bergamo—that is, assuming the continued presence of Yaroslav Popovych hasn’t done so already.

One has to wonder if this is what RadioShack executives had in mind when they ponied up for the final inflation of the Armstrong Bubble. Do they gaze enviously toward the Garmin megaplex in Olathe, Kansas, and see a company that can’t get its name out of press no matter what the results sheets say? In implosion, in victory, and above all, in intrigue, drama, and speculation, the mutton chops are ever-present.

Yes, it seems only when handily outfoxed and overpowered by a continental squad at a smaller event—as they were by Team Type 1 at the Tour of Turkey—has Garmin managed to keep out of the headlines. Press that selective makes it seem like having a name on a WorldTour jersey might just be worth $90 million dollars after all.

I suppose it all comes down to how you value the “straight to the headlines” exposure that comes from doping—with BMC’s Alessandro Ballan being the latest example. While they didn’t seem thrilled with it at the time, I can’t imagine Festina is suffering from a lasting affiliation with the events of July 1998; indeed, they still market heavily on their affiliation with the sport.

Perhaps a little criminality is a good thing—could what finally created a sales niche for Delorean return a similar reward for BMC?

Related posts:

1. Contador’s Clouds Gather, Germans Love Cycling
2. Tour of Flanders 2008 – A Study in Intimidation
3. The New Professional Team Model