Granted, it seems like Cervelo delivered news of the break-up to riders with all the grace and delicacy of a 14-year-old, but I’d rather have a ProTour stocked with the discourteous than once again listen to the banal, amplified “vengas” of the man whose CV is a veritable Cliffs Notes on doping cases in the decade leading up to his arrest: the tutelage of a pre-Festina Alex Zulle, the sudden arrival and equally sudden collapse of Izidro Nozal, the fall of Roberto Heras, and finally, Operacion Puerto.

You’d think, with unemployment running at 20% in the country, the Spanish media—specifically El Diario Montanes, which conducted the interview—might be able to find a reporter with the ability to ask more pressing questions; namely “why the hell would anyone let you near the sport again?”. I’ll gladly advocate for the rights of dopers to return after two years, but a second offense is a lifetime ban; by my highly unofficial count, Saiz is on his 7th or 8th, depending on your feelings on salbutamol. Perhaps someone ought to get on translating these journalism labels into Spanish.

Not that the English media has proven any more effective of late. When Cervelo blamed its dissolution on “subtle” UCI rule changes that would have increased operating expenses, either no one asked—or no one bothered to repeat—exactly what those rule changes were. You’d think, now that the savagely funny flamewars inspired by pieces like this have moved off of USENET and into the comments section, a more incisive approach might be forthcoming from the Journal of Competitive Cycling.

Perhaps they’re content to leave that to The Onion.

Kloedi encouraged his fellow riders to “stop arguing on Internet” and earn more points through the rest of the season, before going on to trash the management of the German cycling federation over Twitter; unfortunately, at last check, the UCI did not award points for irony.

In all seriousness, though, if Kloeden’s looking for someone to blame for this predicament, the mirror would be a good place to start. Dismiss the field trip to Freiburg as mere allegation and you’ll still have to explain the Lost Generation of caught and convicted countrymen and teammates that came up under his tutelage—restarting a career on some second-tier outfit is no way to rack up UCI points for your national squad.

Maybe if he and the still-delusional Ullrich had made some effort to instill some ethical foundation in up-and-coming riders, there wouldn’t be this pallid miasma hovering over the world of German cycling. Even riders who are almost certainly clean endure daily the scourge of a skeptical fanbase and reluctant sponsors—is it any wonder the most consistently successful German rider of this generation has been riding for non-German teams the entirety of his professional carrer?

Voigt himself has expressed sadness that the last German ProTour team is disbanding, but I think he’s too quick to forget the crowds on l’Alpe in ‘04. Nationalism, even of the benign sort, isn’t good business practice. Cycling’s a business, and international teams and sponsorships bring the sport more money and greater exposure; I have no doubt that more reliable paychecks and happier teammates will see both Gerald Ciolek and Linus Gerdemann will perform better on foreign registered squads next season.

With the continued inexorable progression of the Armstrong investigation, it might be suggested that German cycling is undergoing a dry run of what the sport in America will experience when the curtain is finally pulled back on the Bruyneel Era. But I think otherwise; along with the proliferation of top-level American teams has come an attitude, most prominently proselytized by Garmin’s Jon Vaughters that commitment to clean competition trumps results.

A welcoming environment for “the guys who said no” and a longer-term definition of success have already begun paying dividends, both for the squad—consider Dan Martin’s recent wins at Poland and Varesine—and for American cycling, whose Worlds team boasts a full roster, despite what was essentially a non-season for the US’ historic UCI points winner.

So when Bernhard Kohl, one of Kloeden’s former understudies at T-Mobile, insists it’s impossible to win without doping, his assessment is—perhaps in reflection of the environment he came up in—woefully shortsighted. One only need gaze upon the disasterous state of the cycling in Germany to see how much more successful Slipstream’s winless ‘08 Tour was than the dope-riddled campaign waged by Kohl’s Gerolsteiner squad that same year.

After citing a lack of “scientific evidence” (there’s actually a bit here and there, if you’re truly curious) presented in the press thus far, Daly attempted to play up the “witch hunt” aspect of the case, saying:

“If Lance Armstrong came in second in those Tour de France races, there’s no way that Lance Armstrong would be involved in these cases,” Daly said. “I think that the concern is that they are caught up in the pursuit of a celebrity to catch him in a lie.”

Bryan, that is a terrible point and you’ve brought shame to your law firm and alma mater. Let’s take a look at the legal histories of the second-place finishers in Lance Armstrong’s TdF wins:

• 1999 – Alex Zulle: Caught in Festina Affair in 1998, admitted to EPO use; found to have 52.3% hematocrit months afterwards.
• 2000, 2001, 2003 – Jan Ullrich: Implicated in Operacion Puerto in 2006; DNA matched to nine Operacion Puerto blood bags in 2007; paid 250,000 EUR fine to avoid prosecution on doping charges in 2008; former manager admitted his and Ullrich’s role in Operacion Puerto in 2010.
• 2002 – Joseba Beloki: Implicated in Operacion Puerto in 2006; “cleared” by Spanish courts (just like Alejandro Valverde, currently serving a suspension for his role in the scandal); further investigation likely stymied by end of career.
• 2004 – Andreas Kloeden: Implicated in 2006 pre-Tour doping trip to Freiburg with then-teammates and convicted dopers Patrick Sinkewitz and Mattias Kessler in 2009; additional positive tests/DNA links from teammates include Ullrich, Sergei Gonchar, Alexandre Vinokourov, Andrey Kashechkin; later Bernhard Kohl.
• 2005 – Ivan Basso: Implicated in Operacion Puerto scandal in 2006, confessed to preparing to dope later that year.

While I will readily admit that there’s a positive correlation between depth of investigation and rider celebrity, when only a single second-placed rider has dodged either serving a suspension or retiring under a massive cloud of doubt, I hardly think you can slap the “witch hunt” tag on the investigation.

If anything, it’s the near-universal guilt [cached version] of the riders Lance vanquished that should should raise the biggest questions in the rational mind over whether or not Armstrong raced clean.

Most of the race—certainly its chaotic opening—still seem compelling; Chatreau and Pineau trading off breakaways and battling for KOMs was good fun while waiting for the GC riders to open hostilities. And seeing the aggression pay off for so many breakaways was a nice change—something many have taken as the sign of a cleaner race, though others are not so convinced.

Cav did make the sprints something of a foregone conclusion toward the end of the race, but his early struggles and the drama surrounding the Renshaw ejection certainly had me looking forward to the final three kilometers on nearly every flat stage. Petacchi might not have been the sentimental favorite for Green—even without the whole perfluorocarbon investigation, Cav was flat out faster, and Thor made a more concerted effort at chasing the points crown—but Ale-Jet brought enough to the competition that I wasn’t sad to see him win it.

Looking back today, though, I’m really wondering at all the excitement I felt for the GC race. Sure, the narrow time margin between Schleck and Contador for much of the race kept the tension high, but really, where were the differences made? A slipped chain? Holding Cancellara’s wheel across a section of pavé? A ham-fisted, bobbling attack on a Third Category climb?

While the time gaps were smaller this time around, what made the 2003 Tour an awesome spectacle was the way the GC favorites seemed to just trade haymakers. On Alpe du Huez, Armstrong claimed yellow, but lost two minutes to Iban Mayo. Vino’s eff-you attack on the descent into Gap the next day lead took Beloki out of the race, and led to the now-famous shortcut. Then there was Jan Ullrich’s leg-shattering TT effort on Stage 12, Armstrong slowly bleeding time over the following days, break pads, Ullrich’s attack over the Tourmalet, Luz-Ardiden, fog, musette bags, the final TT, the rain…

I’m not saying the 2010 event wasn’t a great race, full of all the right kinds of intrigue and polemics. I’m not even saying that the battle between Schleck and Contador wasn’t a good contest—they worked together to distance their rivals, then took their shots against each other. I don’ think either left anything out on the course—and in the case of Contador, some are still arguing he tried a little bit too hard.

But for me, the greatest GC battles are back-and-forth affairs—rivals constantly trying to leverage their strength against their opponents weakness, and struggling to limit their losses when the tide turns the other way. Maybe Schleck’s and Contador’s abilities were just too closely aligned this July, or maybe this is just how most Grand Tours will be contested until the memory of “the refills” has slipped from the peloton’s collective memory.

Hopefully next year, another closely- and cleanly-fought Tour will shed some more light on the subject.

But the main event among the stat-heads, as it always seems to be these days, was the battle over how to interpret the latest batch of power and performance data from this year’s Tour de France.

Science of Sport posted SRM numbers from Chris Horner and Chris Anker Sorenson over several climbs at this year’s Tour. The wattage information seemed to reveal both that increasing duration of effort on mountaintop finishes corresponded to a lower power output, and that after the pacesetters fall off their tempo on the climbs, the GC favorites actually slow down and regroup a bit before the attacks begin.

You’d think these two nuggets of information (or at least the first) would be fairly obvious, but in the past, the performance dip has been smaller or curiously absent in the world’s biggest bike race. While I’m cautiously optimistic that reduced doping has a hand in this, I’m similarly cautious of interpolating drug use—or the lack thereof—from performance data.

I’m especially disheartened in Dr. Tucker’s note, comparing the Tourmalet times from Stage 16 with those from 2003, that “the race situation was different, but 12 minutes? That’s too big to be accounted for by strategy alone, even weather conditions”. It shows a pretty serious lack of appreciation for the differences in those two days, and indeed, for the way bike racing works in general.

Stage 16 prior to the this year’s first Tourmalet ascent featured the hardest action of this years Tour de France in its vicious first hour, followed by the pack absolutely tossing out the anchor once Armstrong’s group was clear. A group that varied in size from two to nine riders—not all great climbers, and none going full-out, I might add—put some six-and-a-half minutes into the peloton over the hors categorie climb.

Behind them, the pack crested at a pace so relaxed (4.7 w/kg for C-A Sorenson, and he was in the wind setting tempo) that Norwegian flank steak Thor Hushovd was able to ride up a ways, attack, give up, get caught, and hang in with the peloton over the summit. Compare this to ‘03, when T-Mobile set a full-gas pace up the Tourmalet, before Jan Ullrich made a bold, if short-sighted attack some 8km from the summit that managed to temporarily displace even Armstrong.

The the impacts of tactics on performance in cycling, especially in stage races, are simply unlike like any other sport—there’s no bottom to performance when the race situation becomes static and the peloton calls off a chase. As I said before, I’m hopeful a more human approach to race preparation creates more incentive for the peloton to relax like this, but I think comparing a performance on a stage that is de facto neutralized to one where the entire Tour hangs in the balance is tremendously misleading. Be it twelve minutes or two hours, data from tactically-dead kilometers are essentially useless.

Conventional wisdom holds that Oscar Pereiro won the 2006 Tour de France because Floyd Landis tested positive for drugs. But the only reason Pereiro—a second-tier GC rider—was there to catch the crown is because he and Jens Voigt decided to go out and crank watts on a day when the rest of the field sat up; the folly of inferring doping from Pereiro’s time gain, or cleanliness from the peloton’s pedestrian tempo, is patently obvious.

Don’t get me wrong: I think the Science of Sport blog is fantastic, and that statistical analysis of hard data is one of the few reliable windows we have into a world characterized by secrecy, silence, and misdirection. I also think there’s tremendous merit to many of the inferences they draw.

But in this quest for fact, I think that many analysts ignore or underutilize fairly obvious data—the night/day difference between the ‘03 and 2010 Tourmalet ascents, for example, or the fact that Carlos Sastre, who started the climb well behind the GC favorites, may have equaled or exceded Contador’s widely-criticized performance on Verbier.

It’s good that the statisticians offer disclaimers for uncontrolled variables, but in some cases the impact of these variables precludes the analysis entirely.

In the rain, many contenders couldn’t take risks. With no time bonuses in the coming days, sprinters couldn’t really justify a run for yellow. Over a pancake-flat parcours, climbers couldn’t make any statements. And with all the variables in the equation, a suddenly fourth-placed Lance Armstrong couldn’t make any assessments of the day’s implications for the rest of the Tour.

In many ways, this race of couldnts was the perfect follow-up for a dope story that wasn’t. The rumors flew—some said Lance might not start, or would drop out before France proper—but in the end, the latest salvo of Land Grenades were little more than a fluffy fleshing-out of the initial allegations made by Landis at the Tour of California.

Don’t get me wrong—I think there’s merit to what Landis has said. The Dexter-esq preparation of the transfusion room would be fantastic physical manifestation of the Bruyneelian, no-holds-barred approach to TdF preparation, and certainly reckless driving, strip clubs, and recreational drug use are no strangers to the lives of world class athletes during their downtimes.

No, the real failing of Landis’ expanded accusations was not in content but presentation. WSJ, I guess because they still make money selling dead trees, tried to build up some hype for a forthcoming weekend edition. Cycling fans and reporters, perhaps out of habit, seem to think that every dark cloud on the horizon portends a hurricane.

The prologue, for all the drama and build-up, seldom settles anything (apologies to @chris_boardman). Sure, we foamed at the mouth for the familiar electronic chirps of the starthouse clock, but at the end of a the day—even one with more than a few missteps—nothing has been decided.

When a Tour-making ride happens, everyone knows it—no prognostication required. With the immediate and infinitely repeatable delivery of information, I think the same unambiguous significance applies to the stories that fill space between the finishes and starts and finishes as well. No question in my mind that were Willy Voet intercepted by gendarmes this afternoon, we’d see exclusions and expulsion by the start of the next day’s stage.

But no. Now you’ve got your rumors and your blogs and people just up and posting it and suggestive no-details Tweets that blossom out into a variety of @-replies and “what’s-that-supposed-to-means” until absolutely everyone already knows and the NYT has to print a story early.

Which, viewed big-picture, isn’t all that bad a thing. The Times‘ intention was clearly to siphon eyeballs during the #tdf’s swing as trending topic on Twitter, and thanks to the premature release, short-memoried Americans will have a few days to forget that, in the mainstream media’s tired composition on cycling, the saccharine obligato of curing cancer is constantly underscored by the dull throb of drug abuse.

If the story had any real juice to it—and since the Times has nothing, I’m content in my assumption that tomorrow’s sister piece in the WSJ (and possible circus-mirroring at Deadspin and the New York Ledger) will be similarly devoid of new developments—I might feel less cynical about its timing. Back when, the pre-Tour dope story used to come with a kill, and people were pleased with the sacrifice, however obvious it may have been.

While I agree with Jon Vaughters’ sentiment that “[w]hen there’s a scandal, that’s actually when things are being solved”, I think attempting to manufacture one for the sake of readership on the eve of cycling’s biggest stage goes a long way toward undermining that connection.

Didn’t we already decide that whipping the cranks above 90 rpm (I count 19 pedal strokes in the first 10 seconds of Cancellara’s race-winning Roubaix attack—that’s 114 rpm) removed any assist value?

Wasn’t it clear that that seat tube is too narrow, and the wrong material, and shows no signs of the screws required to secure the motor? Or that the cranks and bottom bracket aren’t compatible with the alleged doping mechanism? And does it bother anyone else that the video resolution is too poor to clearly see the KM to go display, let alone what finger Cance uses to shift?

But hey—if you’re convinced, you’re convinced. Don’t let logic get in the way of a perfectly invalid opinion. Like the UCI, actually, whose official response was to say that motorized doping couldn’t be happening because “the risk is simply too big”. Less than a decade removed from young riders dropping like BP’s stock price from pumping their veins too full of blood cells, and the risk of putting an engine in your bike is too big? How did these people get to be in charge of this sport?

Logic also failed at the Tour of Luxemburg yesterday, where, after three minutes and fifty-one seconds of losing to Jimmy Engoulvent, Lance Armstrong declared his season back on track. Yes, crashes, lack of race days, doping investigations, and another 365 days of wear and tear aside, everything’s A-OK at Camp Armstrong. Why? Because Armstrong says so.

Call me unconvinced. Even if Armstrong finishes well at the five-day event, I don’t think the parcours is sufficient for him to make a decent assessment of his fitness for a race as rigorous as the TdF. Take some lackluster fitness and additional pressure for a good result and Armstrong may be forced to cut some corners in what, in past years, has been impeccable Tour prep.

And with some potentially stepped-up enforcement, cutting corners could be pretty costly this time around. Just ask Alejandro Valverde—these things can have a way of catching up with you.

It’s a strange situation the race finds itself in now. Arroyo’s defense of the maglia rosa has been both spirited and intelligent, and the Spaniard, if he does manage to hold on through the two hellacious remaining mountain stages, plus a final “eff-you” time trial, will have proven himself a worthy winner.

That said, he’s being pursued full-gas by Basso and Evans, who seem pretty deadlocked in terms of fitness and performance. I’ll even mention Carlos Sastre, who, while he’s lost time in every major mountain stage, has pulled off unlikelier GC wins, and showed tremendous last-week form in ‘09.

The thing is, there hasn’t been a real effort that’s set any one rider apart; no audacious stamp of authority. Basso made a compelling argument on Zoncolan, but that climb isn’t really typical of the mayhem to come. Plus, after only a day’s rest, Evans managed to pull back 30 seconds in an uphill TT. After 18 stages, there’s still a power vacuum atop the Giro GC.

Figuratively speaking, I think a week after its detonation the parties involved in the “Land Grenade” drama finds themselves in a similar position. Sure, Lance has fired off his usual denials and attacks, but they haven’t been especially effective in silencing or even reducing the questions Landis’ confessions raised.

Floyd’s recent detailing of how EPO is used to mask blood transfusions went a long way toward deflecting the notion, propagated by Armstrong, that Landis is on a destructive mission of revenge. Certainly, those tasked with doing the actual monitoring of test data have appreciated it.

That said, the Landis revelations haven’t been a slam dunk, either. They’re devoid of any proof, and even after the organization’s initial response was roundly rejected as limp and ineffectual, the UCI is still mopping its brow about appearances—regardless of whether Floyd can substantiate his allegations. I think it’s pretty clear the cycling authorities won’t be the ones to make this particular race.

It might be easy to just write Floyd off as the next Jesus Manzano at this point, but consider the reponses of Jonathan Vaughters and Michael Berry. Vaughters, who is alleged to have done some IMing on the subject with Frankie Andreu, and who is a top contender for the anonymous “other Postal rider” who confessed with Frankie Andreu, didn’t exactly pull one off the denial wheel in his official statement defending Dave Zabriskie:

“I’m going to stay focused on keeping this team, and its tradition, and doing what we’ve always said we’re doing, standing for fair competition and clean racing…I think Dave is going to focus on winning this race clean, along with the rest of our team.” [source]

Not exactly, “Dave has always been clean, and Floyd is bitter and steals from innocents and wants to destroy cycling”, is it? Similarly, Michael Barry’s reply was a bit of a one-off. While he does seem to characterize Landis’ allegations in general as “completely untrue”, this part absolutely blew me away:

“I did not share or use any banned substances such as EPO when I was riding with him and am dismayed at his allegations. Landis is either lying or has mistaken me with another rider.” [source, emphasis mine]

I readily admit this is my own interpretation, but if I were looking for a way to say “yeah, there was doping during my time at Postal, but I was able to do my job without it”, that’s the sort of delivery I’d use. Treading further out onto the plank of opinion, I think these “open” denials indicate there’s something Vaughters and Barry would like to see made public, but—likely due to the hyper-political environment of cycling—they’re unwilling to do it themselves.

So who’s going to make the big move to seize the proverbial Landisgate crown? Sure, any attack comes with risks—Armstrong is a herd of 600-pound gorillas outside cycling, and a veritable Berlusconi within it—but to belabor the metaphor, Armstrong comes into the closing stages with a GC lead. If someone else wants to win this, they’ll need to attack.

The media, traditional dispatcher of tyrants, may or may not make the move. VeloNews and Cyclingnews, whose pages cannot be refreshed without triggering another animated advertisement featuring the Texan, seem unlikely candidates. However, Lionel Bernie of Cycling Weekly has been putting his time since quitting Twitter to exceptionally effective use, amassing a pile of facts, and following the various threads surrounding the case until they end, with increasingly suspicious regularity, in “no comment”.

Ultimately, it may be the United States Government who decides this one. And if past experiences is any indication, those final stages will take a long, long time to play out. I’m just thankful that whatever happens in the Giro, it will be decided by lunchtime (EDT) on Sunday.