[one day late, I didn't have a connection yesterday]

Another Tour, another doping case. Or rather, several of them. After Di Gregorio (who looks like he is about to scream a la Edward Munch in the photo accompanying this article about the case) and the USADA five upheaval, we now have Frank Schleck.

Will it ever change? Here is the problem:

1. There is no doubt the peloton has gotten cleaner in the past five years.
2. There is equally no doubt that there are still some who have missed the memo and some new problems have been cropping up (training on far-away islands, micro-dosing, etc).
3. To solve it, the sport needs decisive action.

But who will act decisively? As I have mentioned before, the deafening silence from teams and federations is chilling. In April I said this:

Why aren’t teams speaking up about what they want in the anti-doping fight? They pay the most for the biological passport, and the program doesn’t seem to catch too many people anymore. So I would expect teams to say one of two things. Either they say “we’ve done it, we’ve solved the problem, we spent a ton of money on it and we’re proud of the result” or they say “hang on, we’re paying all this money but not catching the cheats”. Instead they say nothing, giving the impression they don’t have a vested interest in the success of the program. Or that they define success differently.

Nobody stands up to say “this is where we stand, these are the problems, these are the tough steps we’re taking to solve them, and off we go”. I fear there are three main reasons:

1. Too many people have too “colorful” a past to take charge on this issue.
2. Too many people in cycling know about too many skeletons in other people’s closets, and so everybody keeps everybody else in check through fear of mutual annihilation.
3. There are so many connections in cycling that getting on your soap box here will burn you elsewhere, even if you have nothing to hide.

This Schleck case is a perfect example. I will examine that tomorrow so if you don’t want to miss that, subscribe here!

Two comments seem to pop up regularly when it comes to the Lance case:

1. “Lance is hounded so much more than his contemporaries.”
2. “What does it matter, it’s in the past” sometimes combined with “If not Lance, then who are we giving the wins to, Ullrich?”

As for #1, I don’t think that’s really the case. Of course the Novitsky investigation involved heavy artillery, but a lot of that was not about “Lance the rider” doping. Rather it was about fraud, trafficking, suspicions of that nature. Furthermore, his contemporaries can largely be separated into two camps, those who admitted guilt fairly quickly and those who did not. Obviously the first group wasn’t hounded as much, but plenty of riders in the latter group have been hunted down with a vigor not dissimilar to what Lance is experiencing.

Take Ullrich, who has had Spanish, Swiss and German authorities (both sporting and regular) chase him for six years. Valverde was tag-teamed by an army of entities until the puzzle was complete and his suspension globally enforced. Not even the Spanish king could save him. I’m not suggesting they all get together to sing Kumbayah and start a self-help group, but there is definitely no reason for any of them to feel singled out.

As for #2, I don’t think “cleaning up” the results from the past would be a worthwhile benefit. Showing athletes that no matter how sophisticated you are, in the end the cheating will catch up with you and therefore it’s not worth it, that would be a bit more worthwhile. But I think the real benefit would have little to do with Lance, and rather would be to keep certain other individuals (mostly doctors) away from sports in the future. THAT could be the real benefit of sorting out the past.

To me, that would be worth the costs of these investigations. It seems yesterday a first step was made in this regard, with life-long bans for three doctors. Not that these bans will stop these individuals, but at least it will make it much easier to go after the athletes who continue to use their services.

So on Thursday we had the news about “the USADA five“, and what struck me most was not the article but the response. Here’s Levi Leipheimer, on velonation:

“I really don’t have anything to say. All I can say is that I am here at the Tour de France, I am 100 percent focussed on this race. So far I am still in the hunt for the classification. That is all I have to say,”

Here’s a snippet of Hincapie on velonation:

“Right now I am here to do my job and I am just going to try to focus on that. Cadel obviously is focussed on winning the Tour and I am here to try to help him do that. I am going to continue to do that and to try not to let anything get in my mind beside that.”

Here’s Slipstream’s statement (I left out the generic mission statement part):

“We expect that anyone in our organization who is contacted by any anti-doping or government authority will be open and honest with that authority but at this moment, we – our organization, our riders and our staff – are focused on the Tour de France. We won our first Grand Tour in May and to achieve similar success here, we need to focus on that.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, these are HORRIBLE statements. “Oh, I love to talk to the press and tweet about trivial stuff, I really liked it when you asked me about my favorite TV show the other day. And that bit about my pets, good stuff. But if you have a tough question, then I must say that I am very focused on this race so, aw shucks, I can’t really give a response right now. Focus, focus, focus. What’s that? Can’t hear you, lalalalalalalalalala. But we’re doing well on GC, how about that, can’t you focus on that? Please?”

I understand the Tour is the biggest race of the year, but if you have time for two meaningless sentences, you also have time for two with substance. And to introduce completely irrelevant elements into the discussion (“we won our first Grand Tour in May” or “Cadel is focused on winning the Tour”) is just cringeworthy.

I don’t believe in “selective transparency”; the more open you are the less you have to worry. Maybe there are conditions agreed to with USADA, but you can always say something (even if it is “The whole thing is a lie” or “We’re not allowed to say anything from USADA”. People would understand that).

Coming up next is a 100% USADA-free post, so don’t forget to subscribe if you’re in the mood for a change.

Dutch newspaper “de Telegraaf” published a spectacular story, claiming to have identified at least five witnesses for the USADA in the Lance case (aside from the already obvious Floyd, Tyler and Frankie).

Of course none of these five (Hincapie, Leipheimer, Zabriskie, Vandevelde and Vaughters) are confirmed by USADA or themselves, but it can’t be too big a shock. If the charge is that Lance, Bruyneel et al set up a doping program and forced their teammates to participate, you would expect supporting witness statements to come from those teammates, not from the local butcher or a Miss World contestant.

I suspect the story is not 100% accurate, in particular the claim that those who admitted to doping have been given a 6 month sentence to be served in the off-season. If that were to be true, it would be a travesty. I can imagine cases where people receive a reduced sentence in exchange for their cooperation, I can even imagine situations where people receive full immunity. But I cannot imagine that an anti-doping agency would pretend to sentence an athlete, yet do it in a way that it doesn’t affect him. That would be so cynical and an insult to the public’s intelligence.

Additionally, I would find it hard to believe that USADA would give Leipheimer (for whom this would be his second doping violation) the same penalty as the others for whom it would be their first offense. So all in all, I find that part of the story hard to believe.

Anyway, as those involved deny they got suspensions but don’t deny they gave testimony, maybe that tells us something. Nothing “beyond reasonable doubt”, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that if the whole story were false, they would deny everything. Now that they deny only a detail, it’s likely that detail is in fact incorrect and the rest is not. Frankly, the “miraculously delayed suspensions” sound a bit Fabianesque.

But of course, all of this is speculation.

To be continued Monday, you can subscribe to this blog if you don’t want to miss it.

1. If there is new evidence in the form of doping test or biological passport data, the witness statements could also be substantiated and become a lot stronger. If you wonder why no action would have been taken on such evidence before, the answer may be less conspiracy and more to do with the simple math of #2. It’s one thing to take on Bertogliati or even Contador, but quite another to take on Lance, a German soccer player or an NFL quarterback.
2. Most of the focus is on Lance, but the people who should probably really be worried are Bruyneel and especially the doctors. After all, if the ten witness statements include not only “I saw Lance and doctor X do …” (which could be easily discarded) but also “doctor X and I did …”, well, then doctor X is probably screwed. Same with Bruyneel, if it comes out that riders were pressured to “follow this regime or you won’t ride”. However, we don’t know officially if such statements even exist.
3. What to make of these ten witnesses? If they’re telling the truth about what happened and the extent of the program, they have been witness to one of the biggest sporting frauds in history. Yet only some of them spoke out before the federal prosecutors came knocking, the rest were content to let it be (or even participate). That doesn’t make them liars or bad people necessarily (doesn’t make them honest either), but at the very least it would show how messed up your world view can become when you live in a bubble.
4. The legal setting is one thing, the court of public opinion quite another. It seems the pro- and anti-Lance camps are pretty dug in, and I don’t think too many people will change their opinion either way. It would take a truly shocking event (such as Lance’s big buddy Hincapie testifying against him or Paul Kimmage coming out saying Lance was always clean) to make a dent into those positions, otherwise any legal outcome will be seen as vindication by one group and a cover-up/framing by the other.
5. Right now, the only certainty is that the conspiracy theorists – for once – are right. Maybe  there it’s a conspiracy of prosecutors, USADA and the French (every good conspiracy needs a foreign villain, if not extra-terrestrial) to nail an innocent Armstrong. Maybe it’s a conspiracy of Armstrong Inc to win 7 Tours and then use his political cloud to fend off prosecution. Either way it’s a conspiracy, the question is if we’ll ever know which one it is and if anybody is still going to be swayed from their current position on Lance.

Much has been said already about the latest action against Lance Armstrong, this time by USADA. My 10 thoughts are split in two parts, the second part follows Monday:

1. USADA is aiming very high with statements about data “fully consistent with EPO and/or blood doping”. I think data is rarely that clear-cut.
2. Lance’s people are aiming quite high too, going for the “same liars telling the same lies” defense when it is clear there must be new people and new stories to the USADA approach – assuming there are indeed ten witness statements.
3. I would think any case against Lance will be difficult. Having ten witness statements of the type that “Lance told me …” or “I saw Lance and doctor X do …” isn’t really that strong, without corroborating evidence.
4. On top of that, Lance could bankrupt any agency that takes him on. That’s the irony of modern pro sports, the top athletes are a lot wealthier than the organizations policing them. Think about it, WADA’s excess of income over expenses, cummulative, is about 22M USD. Some athletes make that in a year.
5. On the other side, any statements by the anti-doping laboratory that they were pressured to suppress a positive test by Lance in the Tour de Suisse would potentially be a lot more damaging – this person would have been directly involved in the exchanges. But of course right now it’s only hearsay that such statements even exist.