Stephen Roche gave an interview with cyclingnews that elicited strong responses. Many people dismissed them out of hand, in a way that really pisses me off. I know it would be easy to join the masses on this one, but as you may have seen on Twitter, I won’t.

You don’t have to agree or disagree with him 100% or even 1%, but why not discuss the issues? While I often disagree with Jonathan Vaughters, at least he had the decency to respond in a proper manner.

Many people were quick to point out “there are more important things to worry about in cycling”, a reference to doping. So what?

1. Does this mean that if you have several problems, you are not to talk about anything else until you have solved problem #1? Who in their right mind operates like that?
2. If there is a “much bigger problem”, what have the people criticizing Roche done about that then? I presume they didn’t want to spend time on Roche’s points because they were too busy dealing with “problem #1”, but I see little evidence of that in most cases (some exceptions notwithstanding).
3. The fact that most people refer to “much bigger problems” instead of saying “doping” already shows they are not dealing with it; if they cannot even properly name the problem, they’re still in denial.

This actually perfectly dovetails into an issue I have spoken out on frequently in the past few months. ALMOST NOBODY is talking about doping, so it’s disingenuous to say you can’t talk about other ways to improve cycling because you’re so busy discussing doping. My two main points:

1. Why is nobody talking about how well or how poorly the biological passport is working? Why do these riders have the time to comment on Roche’s thoughts, but not on the fact that there hasn’t been a biological passport case in so long? If that is such an important issue, why not use your 140 characters to speak out on that instead of commenting on something that you think is not important?
2. How many teams still have an active anti-doping program themselves? Look into that question and you’ll be shocked by the answer. Several teams have quietly stopped their independent anti-doping programs, sometimes without any type of announcement. No doubt, if you press them on it they will waffle about how the bio pass is now at a stage where you don’t need your own program anymore, but who believes that? Press them further on why they think the bio pass works so well, and you’ll likely get some version of “hey, did you see what Stephen Roche said?”

Aren’t some of the people who say Roche should focus on “the big issues” the same as those who droned on about race radios for the entire season last year? Pot, meet kettle.

I’ll discuss the actual points Roche made in a later blog. And I have a follow-up on the Frei blog coming up. To get them delivered automatically, just sign up here.

I read with interest that you want to regain our trust with openness. If you follow the mountainbike world, you’ll know that I’m all about being open. But seriously, since you would like to be open and transparent, five simple questions to prove your willingness to be open:

1. Aside from the EPO that you tested positive for, which other doping products did you use?
2. Who sold it to you and who else was involved? You want to be part of the solution, so surely helping to prevent them from continuing to sell doping products to you and others is high on your priority list.
3. Are you still in contact with the people who sold you the drugs and helped you with your doping practices?
4. Do you think we should trust you if you are still in contact with these people?
5. After you were caught doping, did you agree with certain people to stay quiet about their involvement in your doping practices? Do you think that staying quiet helps to re-enter professional cycling?

I would think these are five simple questions to answer for somebody striving for transparency. If you answer them honestly, you will have earned my trust.

Sincerely,

Gerard.

Some of you may have seen some quotes from me on cyclingnews. While Daniel Benson is a fine gentleman and the words are accurate, I think nonetheless that a bit of my intended nuance was missing. So a few points:

It looks a bit like I stepped on a soap box to make a declaration. In reality, I was at the start of the Scheldeprijs, ran into Daniel whom I hadn’t seen in a long time, he asked me “What do you think of Ashenden leaving” and I gave him my thoughts. I wasn’t “lamenting” too much, it was pretty low key.

I’m fine with a setting like that, but one disadvantage is that you’re not forumulating carefully, and I often find that my mind makes two steps while I only say one, and thus these things can look a bit incoherent. This works both ways, as Daniel also thinks faster than he talks. So now in the article it seems as if I bring up the 2 years without biological passport cases, but that was really his argument. I think it’s an accurate statement (although I haven’t counted exactly), but it wasn’t something I had in my mind at that time.

1. So my basic premise was this: When you start a huge project like the biological passport, it is impossible to get it completely perfect at once. This is nothing special about the biological passport, this goes for any project with slightly more complexity than tying shoelaces.
2. So you need to improve it over time. From my own experience, you learn more from people who criticize you than those who praise you, so it’s best to take criticism as feedback than to get defensive. At the same time, I also understand that if you’re inside a project, people running the project would appreciate if you give your criticism but do it internally, not in the media. So there is a balance to strike there between venting your criticism to improve the project and giving a realistic view to the outside world.
3. As a result, when the most vocal critic leaves a project, that is not good news.
4. I don’t think we need to dwell on the gaps in testing too much. They’re not as big as some of us thought, bigger than others care to admit. They are certainly way ahead of others sport with maybe one or two exceptions.

My final point in the interview is probably the most important one; this is not about the UCI. When you think about cleaning up the sport, you would hope that federations, races and teams are all on the same side. Maybe they disagree on how to exactly do it, but you would hope they would all agree with the principle, right? So if everybody agrees with the principle of cleaning up the sport, but don’t agree on how to do it exactly, what would you get? Discussion.

And instead we have a deafening silence. 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.

I mentioned the salary cap in my previous blog. I said:

The only way for teams to stop losing money is for them to work together, and sit down with a united front to negotiate a deal with governing bodies and riders to agree on some sort of salary cap. Not just in their own interest, but also in the interest of the riders, so that costs can be controlled and fat years provide a cushion for any lean years ahead.

I got many responses to the blog, and one came from Joe Papp:

Perhaps only someone who never tried to make a living racing a bike would suggest, with no apparent sense of irony, that the wages of those actually doing the pedaling be artificially suppressed – ostensibly so underfunded and/or poorly-managed teams can escape responsibility for their own failure to secure sufficient backing before applying for a UCI license.

Let me address that as follows:

1. I don’t think we have much of a disagreement.
2. I’m not an enormous fan of salary caps, but they can work in some cases – to the benefit of all.
3. My comment was that the only way teams will make money is if they have a salary cap. Not because they need to keep the riders under control, but because they need to keep each other under control. That’s what a cap does, it deals with the distrust and incompetence among teams. Joe seems to agree. So again I don’t care if there’s a cap, because I don’t really care if teams make money.
4. Ironically, it appears that in many sports with a salary cap, athlete salaries rise. Caps don’t tend to cap in the long run, they provide certainty which teams can use to plan long-term and as revenues grow, the athletes negotiate their part of that pie. However, in no way do I think caps are a miracle cure, and in cycling they may be no cure at all.
5. Rider salaries increase when the team landscape is stable. Salaries plummet (for example in 2008) when teams fall over and there is a glut of riders. You’re right, it won’t affect the Contadors of the world, but it does affect the levels below them. A salary cap is a way to stabilize the team landscape, although it is by no means the only action that would need to be taken to achieve that.
6. Bottom line, if you maximize your pay today and thereby stretch a few teams so that financially or athletically they are no longer competitive and they fold, then your pay comes down again. Let your pay grow a little slower and you improve the chances that it will continue to grow.

And I’ll say it one more time just in case it wasn’t clear already; I am under no illusion that a salary cap magically solves cycling’s problems, or maybe even part of it.

Another year, another discussion on how teams should have more of a say on race radios, TV revenue sharing, globalization, etc. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the 2012 opening salvo by the AIGCP.

First of all, I fully agree with the principle that the teams have a bigger say. They provide the majority of the revenue, they run (together with the races) the biggest financial risks, they should get a fair share of the revenue and have some control over how the sport is run.

But they are deluding themselves if they think getting that share will help their finances. You see, all teams have a set of pretty fixed costs (travel, race participation, car park, etc) and the big variable is salaries (mostly the riders). So a team has a budget, covers those fixed costs and then decides how much of the remainder is spent on salaries and how much will be profit (or loss, as the case may be).

For these salaries, they all fish in the same pond. The salaries are what they are because that’s what all teams combined are willing to throw into that pond. The problem is that there are enough teams with an owner who doesn’t care about losing money or at least doesn’t mind barely breaking even. As long as enough owners are willing to spend all their available money and even more on salaries, other owners will be forced to do the same to stay competitive.

The idea that additional revenue will fix this is erroneous; whether the average available money per team is 10M or 20M is not the problem; that there are enough owners willing to spend 100% or even 150% of that money is the issue. Since these team owners have shown they are willing to spend all their revenue, they will also spend this extra TV money in an attempt to get this one special rider or another. There is no philosophical difference between spending all your revenue on salaries when it is 10 million or when it is 20 million, the issue is the attitude, not the amount.

The only way for teams to stop losing money is for them to work together, and sit down with a united front to negotiate a deal with governing bodies and riders to agree on some sort of salary cap. Not just in their own interest, but also in the interest of the riders, so that costs can be controlled and fat years provide a cushion for any lean years ahead.

Of course, you would think that with so few teams, an illegal kartel would form to accomplish this. But luckily the chance to win, which is always just one overpaid rider away, remains too tempting.

Contador’s case made me think of the perfect doping crime. This is not related to his guilt or innocence, but rather to the process he went through (most of it outside of his direct control, but a clever athlete could aim for these steps on purpose). There are three main types of perfect doping crimes.

1. Don’t get caught. This is obviously the best one, clean and simple (pun intended)
2. Get the case thrown out. Whether you are a soccer/football or tennis client of Fuentes or your buddies have political cloud, if you can somehow make the case go away before it comes to trial, I’d still award you the perfect crime badge (scout’s honor)
3. “C+” (new and improved)

The C+ method is one that has been largely ignored to date but has the most potential for success for athletes who lack the skills to dope under the radar or the clout to get the case thrown out. It does however require some “local clout”, so small-fry Chinese cyclists need not apply. But there are plenty of countries where protecting the national interest is still common. Here is how the process works:

• Test positive.
• Get the federation to delay an announcement while you get your team together (the federation may even suggest some members for your defense team).
• Get convicted or at least a recommendation to convict by your national federation when the pressure to come up with something becomes unbearable (make sure this happens in the off-season).
• Appeal the conviction or get somebody else to question the process or whatever, but keep it at the local level (getting the national federation of your sport into a procedural dance with your NADA is the preferred route here).
• Get the suspension overturned or the recommendation ignored when you want to race again in the early part of the season following season (for good measure, get your Prime Minister to chime in with a senseless comment).
• Get WADA to introduce lots of experts, this allows you to study their arguments (which legitimately takes time) and introduce your own to to force WADA to study their opinions.
• Go on a training camp to the country from which one of the CAS judges hails. If you can, do three training camps to cover all three judges.
• Get some idiot to question the independence of the CAS tribunal based on your training camp choices, forcing CAS to delay the procedures further while they prove their independence.

If you can stretch this entire process to 24 months, you can be convicted for 24 months served retroactively in its entirety, meaning you will lose 24 months of results but you will not lose any salary, endorsements, etc. And you’re free to move on immediately. For those who think the salary claw back clause in your contract poses a problem, not to worry. Most of your income is in image contracts and endorsements which are hard to figure out, and the claw-back is likely unenforcible anyway.

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.