Did I not mention a little something about there being plenty of room for forthcoming drama at the head of my last post? Good gravy, it’s been a busy week—and it’s only Thursday. Leadoff: Alberto Contador gets a one-year suspension from the Spanish Federation, or RFEC for those of us who don’t like typing. The…
Tag: Dopage
Floyd Landis Never Was A Master Of Timing
Whatever else you might think of Floyd Landis, you’ve gotta give him this—the dude does not hedge. In 2006, he was totally and completely innocent—a clean rider from a pair of clean teams, mistakenly charged. “Positively False” was his now-smirkingly-appropriate campaign mantra. Then last year, his confessed his unequivocal guilt, and went on to catalogue…
Shattering the Media Complacency
Ah—what a day. Floyd Landis retires, and immediately thereafter, a boatload of not-entirely-unfamiliar looking allegations against Lance Armstrong drop. Looks like the real sporting press scooped their cycling-specific counterparts once again on today’s headlines (with one exception), but at least we’ve got BikeRadar, hard at work bringing us “Profile: Ben Coates“. My journo slang’s a…
Forget Doping—Cycling's Media Problems Are Worse
It’s strange, really—crafting a race strategy and timing that perfect attack doesn’t seem so different from devising a policy for dealing with the media and scheduling your tidbits to the press for maximum impact. And yet, cyclists and those involved in cycling seem to have a near-bottomless penchant for screwing it up. Take Floyd Landis…
Contador, Criteriums, and Clenbuterol
Let’s see…suspended rider to participate in unsanctioned criterium. Why does that sound familiar? Ah yes—the Tyler Hamilton case. I wish I could tell you more about it, but the massive number of dead links from this otherwise excellent summary article is clouding my memory. Am I the only cycling site on the Internet that knows…
Why Cycling Really Is Making Progress
David Walsh, author of the infamous LA Confidentiel and one of the most notable contemporary voices against doping, was quoted in Cyclingnews a few days ago, commenting on the high-profile positives of the past month. “You’ve now got Contador and Mosquera both in trouble” sighed the Irishman, “and you have to think that this sport…
Maybe We Should Test For Accountability
What is it about this sport that cultivates such an aversion to accountability? It must be drafting or something. Let’s start with the UCI, who flatly denied a Contador positive to ARD after they were aware of it, and before the story broke. Ignore the fact that most third-graders know to spit back “neither-confirm-nor-deny” boilerplate…
The Story of Some Spanish Positives
Jeez, why can’t people get caught doping with anything normal anymore? I don’t particularly trust Joe Papp, but as far as assessing the effects of performance-enhancing substances go, I’m more than willing to defer to his expertise. Despite my own initial response, Contador’s statement that his Clenbuterol positive was the result of contaminated food certainly…
Looking Better Every Second
Oh yes. This is totally the direction I want to see the sport going in. Take the sponsor who’s pleased enough with a gutsy third-place finish to put the bike in their museum, then dissolve their team. Follow that up by reintroducing the guy who was caught in a police sting at an illicit blood…
Deutschland Reaps the Doping Dividend
For riders not invited to the Vuelta and unlikely to fare well at Lombardy, the World Championships are now the primary concern, and, stuck with a comparatively runty team at the event, Andreas Kloeden has gone online to voice his crankiness. Kloedi encouraged his fellow riders to “stop arguing on Internet” and earn more points…