Cycling crime & punishment

On Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 1:28:09 AM UTC, John B. wrote:
t it would be pretty hard to stand up
there in the Olympics if you didn't positively believe that you were
the best.

I think that this must be an attribute of all top athletes and the
"nice guys" just cover it up better.

Slow Johnny is on to something here. In the US general populace one person in a hundred is a fully-fledged psychopath, in the UK one in two hundred. In US jails the overwhelming majority of inmates are psychopaths, rising to one hundred per cent on death row. Among the contenders for top honours in any sport, a finding of one hundred per cent psychopaths does not disturb any well-educated sports psychologist, and psychiatrists routinely expect that level of psychopathology to extend a long, long way downwards through the ranks; the more dangerous the sport the further down the ranks of competitors you have to go before the side of the bell curve starts looking less like a cliff over which the normal distribution suffered a terminal fall. The key thing is not being a psychopath, but that so many of them are high-functioning psychopaths, or as Slow Johnny has it, "nice guys", a factor further reinforced by the sponsors of various sports.

Andre Jute
See, the money spent on my education wasn't wasted.

On 11/17/2020 2:43 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 11/17/2020 12:49 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/17/2020 1:33 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 11/17/2020 12:27 PM, Lou Holtman wrote:
Op dinsdag 17 november 2020 om 17:42:48 UTC+1 schreef
:
On Monday, November 16, 2020 at 4:48:00 PM UTC-8, Andre
Jute wrote:
On Sunday, November 15, 2020 at 7:48:52 PM UTC, Sepp
Ruf wrote:
Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/15/2020 12:28 PM, AMuzi wrote:
Nine months suspension for causing the crash at the
Tour of Poland:

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/l...-poland-475516




Some of you may recall the crash video linked here
earlier. Anyone
else see this as a tragic error rather than a
punishable intentional
act? Nine months of a short cycling career is a long
time.

I agree.

If Groenewegen had been in a car, it would be
"SMIDSY" and no punishment.
Want to show us the relevant sections in the UCI
contract signed by
Groenewagon, the closet motor-racer? Andrew's link was
lacking in
substance, but here is the key:

"The UCI’s disciplinary commission has ruled that
Groenewegen deviated from
his sprinting line in the final, committing a
violation of the UCI regulations."

If you don't like PGA rules or their seemingly random
enforcement, get
things changed before violating them -- or play baseball.
There's a regrettable tendency in several sports
towards outrageous punishments for routine,
forecastable sporting incidents, no malice, never mind
preplanning by a perpetrator. Someone (Lou?) elsewhere
in this thread thinks their motive is political
correctness*, and that clearly plays a part, but it is
also worth saying that the UCI is as incompetent,
hypocritical and inconsistent a bunch of blazers as
I've ever seen. Here it seems that their inadequate
policing of the race route left an obvious hazard in
place, and that they're punishing a rider for the
predictable disaster that followed from that failure.

All the way up the the mouthfoaming fanatics of WADA
demanding that athletes prove themselves innocent of
drug abuse -- because they're too incompetent to catch
anybody. Too demand that someone proves himself
innocent, or prove a negative, is an assault on a basic
human right to be considered innocent until proven
otherwise, no exception, especially no exception for
incompetent bureaucrats.
All of the racers from the Lance Armstrong Era consider
him the winner. Drugs helped recovery and could wake you
up when you were too low on sleep, but they didn't make
you any faster than your body was capable of doing. I do
not like athletes using drugs because of the effects it
can have after their careers are over. Pantani was a
good example.


LA was an ass to many people including his colleages .
When the when the opportunity arose it was pay back time.

Lou


True, but as in so many fields, personality aside, he won.
Repeatedly. You can't take that away.

Um... they did take that away, IIRC.



Which loops back to the topic. UCI are a bunch of putzes with unclear
motivation and arbitrarily applied authority.

That's one of the reasons for the IHPVA. Geek out!

http://www.ihpva.org/rules.htm

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 11/18/2020 2:49 PM, AMuzi wrote:

Say what you will about GHWB (and I have plenty of other criticism,) he
defined a finite attainable goal, marshaled enough force to achieve it
promptly, declared victory and left.Â* What could have been any better
than that?

I agree with you. I never said a word against Gulf War #1. But Gulf War
#2 was blatantly stupid and corrupt.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at 4:10:24 PM UTC-8, Mark J. wrote:

While I mostly agree with you, there does remain the question - was he
better on the bike and using equal doping or was he just superior at
doping? I'm not talking about differences in the specific drugs
involved - they appear to be pretty much in common - but about the whole
doping / blood boosting protocols. Postal's system seemed very detailed
and carefully thought out, and could possibly have been
different/superior enough to make a difference.

Again, I mostly tend to agree with you, but... (and I have to admit
I've mostly stopped caring, except to agree that LA is personally
objectionable.)
Lance was driven his entire life. He started racing Tri at 12 if memory serves. He didn't have access to any drugs then and was the run away winner. It wasn't his physical capabilities because that German was stronger in the hills, the sprints and breakaways. But when the chips were down Lance could pull out more while everyone else gave up He carried this attitude to everyone on his team. Why would he have hired an old has-been Bob Roll? Because Roll had exactly the same attitude. When he had pulled Andy Hampsten to the point that he was absolutely dead and started falling back the team car came up and said that there was snow on the top of Gavia and Andy didn't have any warm clothing. Roll took the HEAVY clothing and actually ran down Hampsten just as he got to the top. This never-say-die attitude of Armstrong is what won races and not drugs.