You may have noticed how CAS did the math in Contador’s case. They took the 24 month sentence, then deducted the roughly 12 months that he raced and for which the results now have been annulled. They also deducted the 5 months of his self-imposed leave from the sport at the end of 2010, when the positive test was first announced.

In other words, he got the exact day-for-day credit for the time he put himself on the sideline as he did for the time he was racing and screwing up results everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, he had the fullest right to screw up those results, those are the rules and when you are innocent until proven guilty, that’s the outcome. It is however odd that CAS gives the same credit for the time between the test result becoming known and the time they reach a verdict, regardless of how that time is spent.

Contador is not even the most extreme case; even while he was on his self-imposed vacation from the sport, he continued to get paid his salary. Mosqueira for example disqualified himself and didn’t even get a salary for the year he had to wait on his verdict. And somehow that year sitting idle penniless wasn’t even credited, his 2 year ban started when the verdict was rendered, effectively giving him a 3 year ban. [This last paragraph was edited as it contained an error, thanks to Dennis Josefsson for pointing it out]

Lots of comments on my last post regarding Contador. I realized in reading them that I should have started out differently, by clarifying that of course the best outcome for him would have been an acquittal and zero months banned. But the way the rules are written, that’s just not really in the cards. If a substance is in your body, you’re guilty unless you can prove it got there inadvertently. That’s difficult to do, and so the athlete is usually banned for 2 years (Mexican soccer players notwithstanding, but Spain isn’t Mexico and cycling isn’t soccer).

Therefore, if the usual outcome is a 2 year ban, being deprived of income for only 7 months is a victory relatively speaking. Just compare it to Ullrich. He got a 2 year ban this year as well, he also got a year and a half of results stricken from the books, but unlike Contador the period for which his results were stricken was not deducted from the 2 years. Instead, his ban started retroactively in August 2011, long after he had retired but it means that he still has 18 months of ban left. Of course, that’s not as bad for him as 7 months are for Contador, but it’s odd how the calculation method for these two cases can be so different. There’s a third dimension to CAS’ calculation of Contador’s ban length, which I will cover next time.

Some of you thought my post indicated I think Contador is guilty. To be honest, that question is not that interesting to me, because other than Contador himself and some of his inner circle, nobody really knows. I spoke with one of his inner circlers last year who was sure Contador was innocent (and this is not a Contador groupie), on the other side I don’t buy the beef story. That leaves the contaminated supplement option, but that’s tough too. As Cancellara commented, any top rider has their supplements tested to avoid contamination, a consumate pro like Contador would not take something willy-nilly (and athletes who are that careless can expect to eventually test positive).

So who knows, all we know is that the substance was in his body and his explanations were not sufficient to reach the level of doubt required under the rules. It’s OK to blame the rules, but it’s a lot harder to blame the judges for how they applied the rules. And the rules won’t change too quickly when the only athletes who really care are the ones who’ve been caught.

So the verdict is in after 18 months and Contador is banned for two years. Therefore the big winner of the whole procedure is Alberto Contador, with Team Saxobank and Saxobank itself a close second. Why?

Because even though his ban is for 24 months, he only has to sit out another 7 months before he can race again. That’s because the ban is effective from  more or less when the test first revealed the offense. True, Contador loses all his results and maybe the prize money for the prior 17 months, but that’s peanuts compared to his salary and his endorsement deals, all of which will have been paid out until now. So in effect he doesn’t lose 24 months, but 7 months of income and 24 months of results. Of course having the pressure of the process on your shoulders for 17 months is no laughing matter and also part of the price he pays.

Second winner is Team Saxobank. There may still be a small scare about losing their WorldTour license, but normally speaking their connections are good enough to avoid that. And even if they can’t, they still win. Without Contador, they would have lost that license a year ago, so instead they squeezed another year of revenue out of the system. And of course for Saxobank, you can’t undo the exposure Contador gave them, or the contracts signed with business relations wined and dined at the Tour de France. That’s all in the bank, so to speak.

I enjoy the responses to my recent blogs. It seems there are people who think that influencing races or teams through licenses should not be allowed. Pure market forces should dictate how races fare and a men’s race that can support itself shouldn’t be forced to use its hard-earned money to support a women’s race.

Two things:

1. Should cycling be the only sport where market forces rule?
2. These people know nothing about how men’s races operate.

“Morally reprehensible”, “morally repugnant”, “Do not use the UCI license to force teams and organizers to do something”. Just some of the responses to my suggestion that WorldTour teams and races should be required to have a women’s team resp. race as well.

In my view, these people are missing the point. The concept that UCI licenses should not be used to force certain behavior is ludicrous. In fact, adjusting behavior is the ONLY objective of licenses. If you’re against any sort of governing body, any sort of license, OK, that’s consistent. But having a governing body doling out licenses and then saying you don’t want that to influence behavior makes no sense.

Every license has certain criteria attached to them. These criteria further the UCI’s agenda. Some criteria are related to health and safety, others to the sporting level, or to giving young riders and riders from underdeveloped regions a chance to get a spot on the world stage. You fulfill those criteria, you get a license. It’s actually one of the few ways in which a federation can influence behavior.

I didn’t hear anybody complain about some Iranian dude making a salary that could support an entire women’s team, just because he scored a bunch of points on the AsianTour and those points help Lotto to get a WorldTour license. It has nothing to do with the real sporting level of that team for next year, it’s a complete distortion of the ranking, but it’s in the rules to help develop the sport in regions outside of Europe (a crude method in my view, but that’s another story).

Yet if the UCI would start counting women’s ranking points towards the WorldTour status (a great idea from @inrng) instead of AsianTour points, all hell breaks loose. And that’s really a much better idea, since unlike the Iranian rider the women don’t have to race against the men the way this Iranian guy now has to.

It’s all very simple; either you don’t want any governing body doling out licenses or you accept that there are criteria to obtain such licenses and those criteria are aligned with the governing body’s mandate.

Even if you accept that the governing body can set criteria, that still doesn’t mean race organizers or teams don’t have a choice. The Tour de France didn’t like the ProTour, so they never asked for a ProTour license. Cervelo TestTeam didn’t like the ProTour, so it didn’t ask for a ProTour license either.

I’m planning a series on the unintended side effects of the current license process. It’s quite staggering actually, so if you’re interested, you can subscribe here.

Lots of chatter on the airwaves about Hans-Michael Holczer going to Katusha. “How can a guy responsible at Gerolsteiner for Rebellin, Kohl, Schumacher and Levi (the latter according to statements in his own book at least) come back to cycling?” That sort of stuff.

I see it a little differently. Holczer has been trying to get back into the sport since Gerolsteiner collapsed at the end of 2008. Of all the ways that could happen, him going to Katusha is probably not so bad, isn’t it?

1. Sure, Holczer was asleep at the wheel at Gerolsteiner when it came to the positive tests they scored in 2008, and according to his book did nothing when he was made aware of “suspicious values” from Levi. He famously remarked that an internal testing program was not necessary because he trusted his riders. But I personally don’t think he had any bad intentions (note: this is based on absolutely nothing but gut feel).
2. At any rate, does a swap from Tchmil to Holczer really change the balance at Katusha dramatically?
3. The cycling world wasn’t relying on Katusha to solve the doping issue anyway. The most memorable anti-doping moves from the team have been a completely unenforceable 5-year-salary penalty amendment to their rider contracts and the shipping of Kolobnev to the doping goulag without any form of process. I don’t think either are a meaningful contribution.
4. It keeps things nice and tidy for fans. White helmet and black helmet teams so to speak. There was never much reason to like Katusha, now there still isn’t. I mean, has anybody every seen the words “Katusha fan” being used without them referring to the air-conditioning unit in their team bus?

Organizing a race is expensive, which is why we’ve lost beautiful independent races like the Tour de l’Aude. Road closures, safety measures, broadcast facilities, it all adds up. The solution is still as simple as it is obvious, and I have advocated it before: Make it mandatory for every WorldTour race to also organize a women’s race.

The costs would negligible as everything is already organized for the men’s race. Fleche Wallone and the Tour of Flanders shows how to do it, with the women’s race is an hour or so ahead of the men’s race.

Not only is organizing a women’s race just before the men’s cheap, it’s also smart marketing. Remember how the UCI’s job is to promote the sport? What better way to do that than to expose the fans waiting for the men’s race to the women’s race first? Think of it as an opening act at a concert, most successful bands have started out as an opening act for somebody bigger before they flourished on their own.

Since there are plenty of boring moments during a bike race, the men’s race broadcast can also be combined with the women’s race without much effort or cost.

Most of you will know that I am also an advocate of making a women’s team mandatory for any organization fielding a WorldCup team. This too can be done at no cost, while at the same time making men’s racing more exciting (huh, what? yes!) That however is a longer story, so I’ll need to find some time to write all that up.

Whenever it’s ready, you’ll get it automatically if you subscribe here.

Pat MacQuaid stated at the World Championships that  women’s cycling was “not developed enough” for a guaranteed minimum wage. Some riders (Vos, Teutenberg, Bronzini et al) saw that as a disqualification of their performance but it wasn’t. It was a disqualification of the federation’s performance.

After all, international federations have been given a mandate by the IOC to govern and promote their sport worldwide – for men and women. So if the women’s side fails to develop properly, who’s to blame? In 2006, Pat McQuaid gave an interview with womenscycling.net where he stated:

[…] since I have been involved and responsible for women, it was important to ensure that we had the development of the World Cup. This was very much the major item on the agenda a few years ago. I also wanted to make sure that it was truly a World Cup and not a European one like the men’s competition. I have always worked hard within the UCI to ensure and maintain an Australian and New Zealand connection.

Today, the World Cup has no race in New Zealand or Australia, in fact 8 of the 9 races are in Europe. Even more worrisome is the situation with stage races, where the biggest and best races are struggling or have already disappeared. The bottom line; races are really struggling to survive.

Ironically, the developments on the team side are actually quite positive. Every year sees a few new teams popping up, for 2012 GreenEdge and Rabobank mark the newest WorldTour organizations to feature a women’s team too. The biggest problem right now are the races and the exposure. Both could be solved easily with a little bit of help from the UCI, more about that tomorrow.

However, this does not absolve the riders of their personal responsibility. As I have stated before, you can’t complain about a lack of exposure if you’re not blogging and twittering yourself to promote your sport. If every rider did their bit, it would add up. I’d like to point out Carla Ryan as a good example. When I made the comment about riders not being on twitter back in March, she sent me an email saying “Saw your comment, signed up for Twitter”. Today she has more than 500 followers.

As usual, more coming soon.

Congratulations to Sky and Cavendish. While most had stopped caring about their mating dance long before Worlds, they had a few more sequals in the bag that rival Police Academy 34 and 35 for worst scripts ever.

Cav may have a new agent looking for new money based on a new rainbow jersey, the problem with threatening not to sign is that you need to have new alternatives. With all teams full or out of money, there aren’t many believable alternatives.

Furthermore, if his new agents have any brains, they will know that Cav riding for Sky is a gold mine. Cav riding for Quickstep is, well, something funny related to wood (given that Quickstep makes floorboards) – Please send in your favorite expressions with wood that could make this paragraph a lot more hilarious.

I just realized Cavendish is an anagram for “dive ‘n cash”. Actually, there are much, much worse anagrams to be made with his name, but I digress.

Cav also faces the problem I’d like to call “a mild form of cycling conflict of interest” (meaning we’ve seen much worse). The guy who wants to sign him for Sky is also the guy who has to select him for the Olympics next year. Isn’t that swell. Now before you think Sky could use that as leverage, threats of non-selection for the national team may work with the minions but of course it doesn’t work with Cav.

Punishing Cav for not signing with Sky by not selecting him for London 2012 is the sort of sports official harakiri nobody has the stomach for. The whole nation expects a Cavendish Gold, British Cycling funding is based on Olympic medals won, and now that the course has been tailor-made for Cavendish, they have no choice but to take him there and work their asses off for his victory.

So neither side has real leverage, which made the stand-off rather funny. So maybe Sky threw in a few extra bucks, everybody kissed and made up and can we please, Please, PLEASE get that friggin press release about the Cav signing now?

By the way, no need to feel sorry for Sky, after all that’s the team that made offers to riders still under contract with other teams and in general broke all the rules in the book. Without punishment of course.

I am not sure if I’ll be able to write much this week, it’s rather busy, but if not then definitely next week I will pick up the minimum wage and biological passport issues. Don’t let my erratic posting schedule fool you, subscribe here.