So, show of hands – who here remembers KBK? Whether Steegmans got greedy, Boonen felt generous, or Quick.Step simply muffed the leadout, I can’t say. I haven’t even seen the finish yet (probably won’t for another eight hours), and Boonen’s post race comments seem to go both ways. What I can say for certain is that no one on the Q.S squad, or in the heaving, drunken mass of Belgian humanity that surrounded the finish line, seemed particularly displeased with today’s result.
Fortunately, wire service writers have the craft to weave disaster into just about anything. You’d think with like a million dudes piling up in the finale of today’s stage, writers wouldn’t feel the need to concoct their own drama. But I guess that’s why they’ve got that job, and I’m stuck in mine, no? Anyway, keep tabs on the injury updates here – I’d imagine we’ll have a handful of non-starters and non-finishers by this time tomorrow.
The UCI, meanwhile, sensing that masseurs and mechanics will be frightfully under worked in the wake of this massive pileup, has asked that team support staff add their names to the “I swear I’m not doping pledge”. It’s about time someone reigned in these wildly overpaid team employees, while rightfully leaving the sponsoring corporations, who reap millions in ad space off an “extra-terrestrial” performance, free from sanction.
I have to admit this is the first time I’ve heard someone suggest that sponsors should be sanctioned for teams offenses. Did you rant about this before and I missed it? It sounds like you’re suggesting that since they have the money, they should pay the price, even though they’re the entity in the sport furthest removed from the actual act of doping?
Which entity is the farthest removed from doping is a good question. The reason people dope is because there is money in the sport, that is due to its popularity. So teh fans are to a certain extent responsible, for turning a blind/ naive eye to it while it went on, but also the big team sponsors. If Festina wants its team to win at all costs, then it should make that clear to the team directors and athletes, by the same token, if the Discovery Channel wants its guys to race clean, it can certainly has a lot of influence over what goes on and is capable of making sure guys know they are getting paid, not only to race as fast as they can, but to race clean. Sort of like people getting tortured in US prisons and the president saying that he didn’t direct the cia to make up intelligence to get us into the war in iraq. Maybe he wasn’t directly responsible, but he certainly could have prevented it.
By the same token, I would like to see some repercussions for the big shot managers of these organizations. For example, if someone gets to keep their olympic medal because of a frozen b-sample, or a doping lab leaks information to the press, the head of the WADA should be fired.
Colin, this might actually make a good rant.
Because they do have the money, sponsors can exert tremendous influence over teams. Let’s not forget that Mapei chairman Giorgio Squinzi once made a phone call to determine the podium order at Paris-Roubaix.
As much as I’m disinclined to trust teams to effectively police themselves, I think T-Mobile’s sponsor-driven approach to clean racing is a good idea. Fining sponsors if riders come up positive would only further incentivize these programs, and create a nice little check against the aforementioned conflict of interest.
And Roger, that does sound like a novel way to get rid of Dick Pound.
The problem I see is that even though a sponsor can exert tremendous influence, there is no guarantee that they actually did when it comes to a doping offense. I realize that sometimes making someone at the top accountable is a good thing, but the flip side of that is that it’s entirely possible that someone ends up taking the fall for something they had no knowledge and no control over. If you’re going to institute a chain of accountability, it has to go from the iders, up through managers, and then to sponsors. Who is more likely to be aware of and able to influence a doping problem, team managers or sponsors?
I realize that just because you didn’t talk about punishing a team’s support/management personnel when a rider tests positive doesn’t mean you disagree with it, but it’s a point that I think needs to be part of the discussion.
I think I might actually agree with you — if the “all publicity is good publicity” adage is true, then sponsors are the only entity that actually benefits from dopers getting caught. So perhaps fines would make a worse experience for them — but on the other hand, you don’t see any Phonak logos in the peleton anymore, so maybe there is such a thing as bad publicity.