The UCI recently announced that the points scored by riders coming back from a suspension will not count towards their team’s total for the first two years following such suspension. I think that’s a good move, as I mentioned on twitter, although some questioned whether it would make any difference and whether it was fair for the rider (you’re either allowed to participate or you’re not).

Here’s my thinking:

1. I’m all for protecting riders’ right to work, etc. See my views on that here. So once you come back from a lengthy ban (my views on that here), you should be allowed to earn a living again. It’s very difficult to avoid that anyway given the prevailing labor laws.
2. That said, it is completely reasonable that the sport protects itself from damage such a rider could cause. These riders have already screwed up the team ranking with their dirty points once, no reason why the sport should allow them to do it again. Especially now that the team ranking is so important, affecting decisions about licenses and race participation. I know that first-time offenders also mess up the ranking, but that’s a much tougher problem to solve. In the meantime, let’s do what we can instead of waiting for a miracle solution to solve everything at once.
3. Not having the points count towards the team ranking makes a rider less valuable to a team manager. So salary would be a bit further depressed (it’s already a bit depressed because the demand for such riders is restricted to certain teams). That’s a better penalty than the concept of paying back 1 year of salary, which has turned out to be virtually unenforceable.
4. Aside from the depressed salary, it would also make team managers think twice about rehiring a rider at all. Right now, managers with – let’s say this nicely – an ambivalent attitude towards doping are almost encouraged to hire ex-dopers because they are cheaper and “reliable” in all the wrong ways.

I was just writing this blog about Facts4Lance.com when I heard it had been taken down. As you may know, it was a site maintained by Mark Fabiani, Lance’s PR lawyer or whatever the official title is. And it could possibly be the worst PR I have ever seen. With friends like this, who needs enemies? So I am not surprised it was taken down.

Across the top of the site they had the headlines of articles countering the major claims currently playing in the media. But when you see “Why X doesn’t have credibility”, “Why Y doesn’t have credibility”, “Why Z is wrong”, etc, etc, etc, you get the feeling there is so much out there that it can’t all be wrong.  I am sure that wasn’t the effect they were going for.

If you proceeed and read the stories behind the headlines, you’ll notice they are all either circular logic or evading the question. It goes something like this:

• We state that Floyd is lying now because he was lying in the past
• Because we state that, Floyd has been discredited
• Because Floyd has been discredited, you can’t believe what he says
• Hamilton confirms what Floyd says
• Floyd is discredited, so Hamilton is discredited
• etc.

I guess this is textbook PR in some circles, but step back a bit and it’s just nonsense. It basically means that even if the Dalai Lama comes out and says he saw Lance take EPO, it can’t be true because he is saying the same thing as Floyd and everything Floyd says is a lie (Yes I know, I wouldn’t trust that either as I just can’t picture the Dalai Lama in Lycra sitting next to Lance).

The other theme is evading the question. Floyd and Hamilton claim that Lance and the UCI made a test go away at the Swiss lab in 2001. The response is that there is a letter from the UCI confirming that there was no positive test reported to the UCI or the IOC. On the one hand, using one of the accused to prove your innocence is a bit awkward (it’s like having Fuentes confirm to the authorities that that’s not your dog), but regardless, it doesn’t even get to the point. If the accusation is that the positive test was made to disappear at the lab, then it never made it to the UCI or IOC so of course there is no record of it there.

Now, everybody is innocent until proven guilty, and accusations are just that, accusations. There is no requirement to respond to them at all, there is not even a requirement to respond with proper arguments once you decide to respond. But if you want to win in the court of public opinion, I’m not sure this will work.

Then again, it could just be yet more proof that this simplistic approach works and that I know %$#^ all about PR.

What did you think of the site? Did you ever visit it? Did it help or hinder Lance?

Came across this article from Velonews. One piece of logic really stood out. Here it is in short.

1. We make a list where we rank our suspicions on how clean riders are from 0 to 10
2. We give most of the riders low scores (0-4)
3. When the list leaks, we point to it and say: “Look, most riders have low scores, this proves that our efforts against doping are working and most riders are clean.
4. Um, I had a point 4 that once again reiterated how crazy this logic is, but I don’t think it’s necessary.

Now that the biggest emotions have died down a bit on “the List”, what about it?

I actually agree with the existence of such a list, in the sense that it would be ludicrous to test every rider the same. Of course you would focus your scarce resources (remember that doping tests are expensive, the biological passport costs millions per year) on athletes you suspect may be doing something untoward. If someone is robbed in London, you don’t expect the police to investigate each of its 10 million inhabitants with equal vigor either.

The problem with the list is three-fold. First off, if you make such a list, it has to be based on hard facts, not innuendo and circumstance. Apparently riders “who perform better than expected” were put high on the list, not a very sound scientific consideration. So when some fans then read the list as “higher number, more suspicious”, these riders have good reason to be upset.

Secondly, if you make such a list, it can’t leak. I don’t care how difficult it is nowadays to keep things contained, I don’t care that even the US Defense department can’t keep its data secure, you simply cannot have such a document leak…. UNLESS….., and this may be the solution going forward, you flip the whole thing around. You open up the whole process to scrutiny, you explain how the list is established, you inform the world of how the list is evolving. Figure out a way to do that while respecting the riders’ rights, and the Nobel Peace Prize for Cycling is yours.

Thirdly, when you make a list aimed to clarify which riders need targeting, target those riders! It appears there are riders at or near the top of that list who were barely tested at the Tour de France. What use is such a list and the risk of leaks if it isn’t being used anyway?

Good to see my stupid remark has led to a discussion on the difficulties the good journalists face in covering our sport. The Inner Ring wrote an interesting piece (I’m sure there are more, so don’t take this as a disqualification of others). Did find any other pieces you found interesting, then please put them in the comments section of this post at www.gerard.cc.

One journo remarked to me in private that “it is so difficult to get some the biggest names to speak on controversial topics, and if you do, they’ll never talk to you again.” Well, yes, if it was easy, we could all be journalists. Richard Nixon also didn’t sit down with Bob Woodward for a nice chat. And I doubt he ever put him back on his Christmas card list.

Tomorrow I’ll go back to building my new S2.

In Friday’s blog, I wrote that the media had “shown absolutely zero critical attitude towards the misgivings of cycling”.

While I would maintain there is a lack of critical attitude in cycling (and sports) journalism in general, to say that there is none does an injustice to the journalists who have – for years – worked tirelessly to uncover the dark side of cycling.

It was particularly dumb of me to make that statement since there are a few journalists whose writing I follow closely EXACTLY BECAUSE they are not afraid of the reprisals that writing the whole truth bring.

Here is the conundrum sports reporters/journalists face:

• In order to make a living, you need to have access to the athletes.
• If you do your job properly, some of the things you write will not please the athletes.
• If you write stuff they don’t like, that access disappears.

As a result, there are few journalists (as in people who ask the tough questions and don’t mind digging for the inconvenient stuff) and lots of reporters (people who go with the flow and tell you the stuff you can already see for yourself). As of late we can witness reporters who suddenly want to look like journalists by writing about Lance Armstrong’s problematic past. But that doesn’t count, if you’re a real journalist you should have written that stuff five years ago (like Paul Kimmage for example) when it would have hurt your career, not today with Armstrong’s power in the sport waning. Of course, Kimmage’s example shows exactly why most people steered clear of writing such stories.

Therefore, I would like to offer a sincere apology to those journalists who – despite being bullied, blacklisted, and exorcised – were willing to write the ugly stories over the past decade and who hopefully will continue to do so. May eternal fame, fortune and fanbase be your reward.

OK, so the problems with race vehicles should be clear from yesterday’s post. The solution is pretty simple: Get rid of most of them. I would propose four steps:

Step 1: No more team cars.

1. It makes no sense to have 20 or in Grand Tours 40 cars drive the entire route to hand out food & drinks and the occasional rain jackets, give tactical advice and assist with mechanicals. Yep, I am wearing a bullet-proof vest while I type this.
2. Food & drinks could be done by neutral support vehicles (of which you would then need far fewer).
3. Tactics could be done either by having the riders decide it all for themselves or through radios (I’m not getting into THAT debate this time).
4. Assistance for flat tires would be given by neutral support, just as it happens today. Same for small problems and adjustments. If you break your bike, you’re out (unless you can find a local blacksmith to weld your carbon bike back together).
5. Not only does this mean we can clean up the race, it also incentivizes teams to use equipment that can take a beating, and it forces equipment suppliers to focus their efforts on reliability instead of stupidity. Imagine the technology that could be developed in that case and go straight into the market for regular consumers (who also have to survive without a team car for assistance).
6. If we decide there is some reason sports directors should talk to other sports directors or riders, why would you put them in a car with its bumpy ride and bad reception anyway? There is no advantage to being “in the race” if that means looking at a team car in front of you and a team car behind you. They rarely get close to the riders and when they do, that’s exactly when the problems occur. Put them in a central location, with good TV access, good communication tools and even the chance for the media to interview all of them during the race. THAT’s entertaining.