McQuaid's Last Stand ?

On Mar 7, 1:27*pm, mtb Dad wrote:
On Mar 7, 10:02*am, mtb Dad wrote:
The

premature guilty judgements are done by cycling not WADA, and I think
are just part of the scramble to re-establish credibility.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Let me edit that; Pound (vs WADA) certainly let his opinion be known
before any process was done. *But it was cycling that created the
'investigation rule' and the 'give back your money rule'. In my view,
Pound was justified because the wilfull blindness was the norm; we
needed the shock to get governments attention.

The ends justify any and all means, and screw the "collateral damage",
opinion noted.
What we really need is a Wada/UCI containment camp where the riders
and teams would have to live, for their own good, and the good of the
sport of course. There they could be monitored and controlled 24/7,
all fed the same diet, to protect the balance of competition. All
visitors would of course be controlled to make sure none of them were
allowed contact with anyone who could possibly bring disrepute on the
sport. All forms of outside contact would be totally controlled to
prevent them from receiving any possibly questionable items or
information. This also would only allow positive news, comments, and
opinions out of the camp for the world to hear of course. The riders
would also be available 24/7 for any of the sponsors whims and needs,
at a reduced rate for the rider of course because they need to, at
least, subsidize their stay at the wonderful facility, and Greg can't
support all of it.
Perfect solution.
Bill C

Keith wrote:
I think Bruyneel needs to go away too, he and his chum LA are largely
responsible for what happened to cycliing since 1999.

Bob Schwartz wrote:
Laff, is that you?

Can't you recognise your own zombie processes when they fork ?

On Mar 7, 10:39*am, Bill C wrote:
On Mar 7, 1:27*pm, mtb Dad wrote:

On Mar 7, 10:02*am, mtb Dad wrote:
The

premature guilty judgements are done by cycling not WADA, and I think
are just part of the scramble to re-establish credibility.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Let me edit that; Pound (vs WADA) certainly let his opinion be known
before any process was done. *But it was cycling that created the
'investigation rule' and the 'give back your money rule'. In my view,
Pound was justified because the wilfull blindness was the norm; we
needed the shock to get governments attention.

The ends justify any and all means, and screw the "collateral damage",
opinion noted.
* What we really need is a Wada/UCI containment camp where the riders
and teams would have to live, for their own good, and the good of the
sport of course. There they could be monitored and controlled 24/7,
all fed the same diet, to protect the balance of competition. All
visitors would of course be controlled to make sure none of them were
allowed contact with anyone who could possibly bring disrepute on the
sport. All forms of outside contact would be totally controlled to
prevent them from receiving any possibly questionable items or
information. This also would only allow positive news, comments, and
opinions out of the camp for the world to hear of course. The riders
would also be available 24/7 for any of the sponsors whims and needs,
at a reduced rate for the rider of course because they need to, at
least, subsidize their stay at the wonderful facility, and Greg can't
support all of it.
*Perfect solution.
*Bill C

C'mon Bill. You must see that we didn't even enforce the rules we
had. At least we should try that before we move to your 'Truman Show'
scenario.

On Mar 7, 4:18 am, Keith wrote:
The fact seems to be that Astana now doesn't even have any of those riders
that ASO might exclude. That's why they're denying entry to the "team".

Prudhomme explained why Astana was excluded, they just don't trust
them anymore, can't really blame them, eh after what happened in 2006
and 2007

If this the case then ASO needs to spell out what changes in Astana
they want to see.

They did, they said, if Astana can stay out of trouble in 2008 we'll
revisit in 2009. I think that at this point there is nothing else they
can do, the "proof is in the pudding".

I think Bruyneel needs to go away too, he and his chum LA are largely
responsible for what happened to cycliing since 1999.

Lance and Johan are responsible for increasing the popularity of the
cycling. The only possible aspersion with Johan is a lack of judgment
in PR terms.
On possible theory is that the ASO is tired of seeing Discovery and
now Contador dominate cycling for almost a decade. So Astana could be
a easy excuse for the ASO.

"jean-yves hervé" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:

And by the way, just so it's clear - I lost a brother to drugs so I
absolutely HATE drug users. But I'm not into making them even worse than
they really are.

I hope that you meant "I hate drug use". I may not be a good Catholic
boy much of the time but that "hate the sin, love the sinner" bit is one
of the few things that I have not deviated from over the years.

I mistyped that.

On Mar 7, 1:02 pm, mtb Dad wrote:

Re pro vs Olympic sports. I'm not convinced the object is that much
different in each.

You misinterpret my point. It's not that there's some intrinsic
difference between amateur and pro sports (vis a vis doping or
commercial interests) it's that the society of professional cyclists
has voluntarily hamstrung itself by adopting a third party's set of
standards.

it's like the owner of a filthy restaurant voluntarily agreeing to
have the health inspectors inspect his place when he knows he can't
meet the standard. he's sure to get shut down. verbruggen obviously
knew that was the situation which is why he stalled on signing on to
wada.

Re WADA, yes there are problems with it, but they have succeeded in
putting it on the agenda (eg UNESCO and Congress) and exposing the
hypocrisy in the sport leadership. Doping was rife in cycling, and
Festina showed the UCI wasn't much interested in dealing with it.

the festina affair for all intents was the same as puerto and when it
happened the implicated riders were quickly suspended for 6 months and
those that wanted to were able to reintegrate into top teams.

i'm not judging whether 6 mos. is adequate or not, but even though all
the evidence was circumstantial, it was a done deal. sentence served
and everyone goes on.

and i have reason to think that was enough to have an impact on the
community of french cycling (jv's "no needles quote", their sudden
decline in french performance, the relative lack of french doping
cases since).

that sounds like a dictatorship and virenque and a lot of others at
the time said how unjust it was, but in business that's how things get
done. this is also other pro sports deal with serious and unforeseen
problems (eg. david stern suspends ron artest for the rest of the
season).

what you have now in cycling is a pseudo-court system, and the only
acceptable evidence are test results and the defense teams of riders
have been very good about casting doubt on the system. there isn't an
effective way to deal with circumstantial evidence, and when a rider
dodges one court another one interlopes (CONI in the case of basso,
the german legal system in the case of ullrich).

so two years and how many hearings, testimonies and arbitrations down
the line puerto is still an open case and various implicated riders
are either: unpunished, punished in some concrete way or in some
limbo.

The
premature guilty judgements are done by cycling not WADA, and I think
are just part of the scramble to re-establish credibility.

what premature judgments are you talking about ?

On Mar 7, 8:43*pm, "
wrote:
On Mar 7, 1:02 pm, mtb Dad wrote:

Re pro vs Olympic sports. *I'm not convinced the object is that much
different in each.

You misinterpret my point. It's not that there's some intrinsic
difference between amateur and pro sports (vis a vis doping or
commercial interests) it's that the society of professional cyclists
has voluntarily hamstrung itself by adopting a third party's set of
standards.

it's like the owner of a filthy restaurant voluntarily agreeing to
have the health inspectors inspect his place when he knows he can't
meet the standard. he's sure to get shut down. verbruggen obviously
knew that was the situation which is why he stalled on signing on to
wada.

Re WADA, yes there are problems with it, but they have succeeded in
putting it on the agenda (eg UNESCO and Congress) and exposing the
hypocrisy in the sport leadership. *Doping was rife in cycling, and
Festina showed the UCI wasn't much interested in dealing with it.

the festina affair for all intents was the same as puerto and when it
happened the implicated riders were quickly suspended for 6 months and
those that wanted to were able to reintegrate into top teams.

i'm not judging whether 6 mos. is adequate or not, but even though all
the evidence was circumstantial, it was a done deal. sentence served
and everyone goes on.

and i have reason to think that was enough to have an impact on the
community of french cycling (jv's "no needles quote", their sudden
decline in french performance, the relative lack of french doping
cases since).

that sounds like a dictatorship and virenque and a lot of others at
the time said how unjust it was, but in business that's how things get
done. this is also other pro sports deal with serious and unforeseen
problems (eg. david stern suspends ron artest for the rest of the
season).

what you have now in cycling is a pseudo-court system, and the only
acceptable evidence are test results and the defense teams of riders
have been very good about casting doubt on the system. there isn't an
effective way to deal with circumstantial evidence, and when a rider
dodges one court another one interlopes (CONI in the case of basso,
the german legal system in the case of ullrich).

so two years and how many hearings, testimonies and arbitrations down
the line puerto is still an open case and various implicated riders
are *either: unpunished, punished in some concrete way or in some
limbo.

The
premature guilty judgements are done by cycling not WADA, and I think
are just part of the scramble to re-establish credibility.

what premature judgments are you talking about ?

I was referring to the ethics clause, and the suspension if a rider is
under investigation.

In article ,
" wrote:

On Mar 7, 1:02 pm, mtb Dad wrote:

Re pro vs Olympic sports. I'm not convinced the object is that much
different in each.

You misinterpret my point. It's not that there's some intrinsic
difference between amateur and pro sports (vis a vis doping or
commercial interests) it's that the society of professional cyclists
has voluntarily hamstrung itself by adopting a third party's set of
standards.

They've hamstrung themselves in an attempt to get into an event that really
doesn't benefit them very much, if at all. It was a pointless exercise.

--
tanx,
Howard

Whatever happened to
Leon Trotsky?
He got an icepick
That made his ears burn.

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

On Mar 7, 8:43*pm, "
wrote:
On Mar 7, 1:02 pm, mtb Dad wrote:

You misinterpret my point. It's not that there's some intrinsic
difference between amateur and pro sports (vis a vis doping or
commercial interests) it's that the society of professional cyclists
has voluntarily hamstrung itself by adopting a third party's set of
standards.

it's like the owner of a filthy restaurant voluntarily agreeing to
have the health inspectors inspect his place when he knows he can't
meet the standard. he's sure to get shut down. verbruggen obviously
knew that was the situation which is why he stalled on signing on to
wada.

Good anology. I'm still unconvinced about cycling's ability to ignore
the Olympics. While accepting WADA to get in the Olympics may have
been the immediate incentive, the scrutiny that other sports are
receiving, eg. euro pro soccer (it's U23 in the Olympics) suggests
that cycling wasn't going to escape the spotlight even if it declined
the WADA code and stepped out of the Olympics.

And that also suggests that the pros are somehow seperate from their
national federations. Evidently the majority of national federations
felt it was worth joining WADA and staying in the Olympics. Does your
scenario suggest that the main Euro pro national federations would
secede and run their own league? Or does it suggest the pro teams
would secede and form a nor-am pro league? I dunno, I think the way
Bettini highlighted his gold medal sugests he (or his agent) know that
the Olympics matter to a significant number of people. If you're a
pro, your sponsors still care about eyeballs, and the Olympics draw
eyeballs. It's also possibly a diffferent market (than the pro
cycling audience) the sponsor wouldn't mind being seen by.

On Mar 7, 12:29*am, Donald Munro wrote:
jean-yves hervé wrote:
To this day I have not yet read any good argument in favor of the Pro
Tour, anything that could make me think that maybe the Pro Tour is good
for cycling after all.

The Pro Tour isn't good for cycling, but its good for the UCI since they
get lots of money in return for doing essentially nothing. And if the UCI
bans all the Paris Nide riders on Pro Tour teams , it might be interesting
if there teams sued the UCI to get their money back.

Not to defend it, but for clarifciation, wasn't the pro tour about
making sponsorship of a team more attractive by guaranteeing entry to
the major events (boy that backfired with Unibet eh?), and teasm big
enough to guarantee a team in all the big races. In principle it
makes sense, so a sponsor doeesn't see their investment wasted in
small races and on the sidelines, and the big races get all the big
teams.

On the other hand ASO wants a promotion and relegation system like
football (soccer). So why couldn't a protour work with say 14 or 16
Div 1 licenses, and then 16 div 2 licenses, etc. Top team(s) in div
2 moves up each year, bottom team(s) moves down. Other than not
getting the guaranteed four years as now, why couldn't that work? All
but the bottom team would get at least two years before downgrading.
Still too risky for the big sponsorship $?

I can see a main difference: in soccer the teams get revenue from
tickets if they suck or not. There's no source of revenue in cycling
other than the sponsor, which needs TV exposure to make it worthwhile,
which means the big races, which have TV.