Bye Lance

[Domestique]

Another here.

I like that 

[Hot Flatus]

Sean Yates going...going...

[sg37409]

He's talked the talk, now he's walking the walk. Good. Whether its ultimately good for Sky remains to be seen: I think its a good move/

[Veloman]

So, with many posts appearing to support the actions of USADA and the apparent demise of Lance Armstrong, where do we stand on those associated with him?  Surely LA was not alone and if he is guilty of doping over such a prolonged period, then others must have been involved.  I would find it hard to accept a “I saw him do it but I never got involved” approach.

Interesting to note the LA – Sean Yates link via Team Discovery and the fact that SY is now involved with Sky who are providing some remarkable results.

I was wondering how long it would be before Sean Yates would come under the spotlight.

This is a great pity as all the achievements of Sky associated with Yates will be questioned and the efforts of Wiggins and Froome will also questioned.  I have no questions about their performance, but fingers will no doubt be pointed.

Time for peace and reconcilliation; was it really possible for Giro, TDF and Worlds all in one season and then nothing?  Also, if TDF was so tainted by drugs that no winner can be nominated over such a long period, why not just wipe all results from those years as who can honestly believe the other grand tours or stage races were won clean.

[citoyen]

@nyvelocity: Zero tolerance fast becoming a zero staff policy.

We still haven't seen anyone who wasn't already suspected make an admission though.

d.

[Biff]

If de Jongh has gone I wonder how Servais Knaven will fare? They both rode for the TVM squad.

[Exit Stage Left]

I was wondering how long it would be before Sean Yates would come under the spotlight.

This is a great pity as all the achievements of Sky associated with Yates will be questioned and the efforts of Wiggins and Froome will also questioned.  I have no questions about their performance, but fingers will no doubt be pointed.

Time for peace and reconcilliation; was it really possible for Giro, TDF and Worlds all in one season and then nothing?  Also, if TDF was so tainted by drugs that no winner can be nominated over such a long period, why not just wipe all results from those years as who can honestly believe the other grand tours or stage races were won clean.

I was at the National Hedgelaying Competition today, there's a South of England class, and a lot of them are from places much like Forest Row, where Yates comes from. They're ordinary working people with a job that some do as a hobby, but they do it to make money, and they also do competitions to maintain standards or just to win. Health and Safety standards have become more stringent over the years, about a third of them wear the gear, a third some of the gear when they're being watched, and a third wear a flat cap and smoke a fag while using a chainsaw. Most of my generation are aching all over from the graft of what is a hard way to make a living, with bad weather, vibration, the danger of an accident, that sort of thing.
Most would like to get a nice little job in a training college somewhere, passing on their expertise. Their core skills would be useful to students, but they'd need to toe the line on health and safety. The principal would need to monitor them in case they started telling their charges about the hairier scrapes they'd got into.
It would arguably be safer to get someone straight out of training college, who's untainted by the old culture. That's how I'd see Yates, he's probably dispensable, and someone who's 22 and fresh out of college would see him as a dinosaur, but I'm a dinosaur too, and it's about time we bit back.

[Ewan Houzami]

Perhaps I'm not getting the irony or satire in your post ESL, but I'm sure Yatesy did a spot of hedgetrimming (and worked as a builder's labourer) between his cycling director contracts? So maybe there could be a place for him at the FE college if all else fails!

[Exit Stage Left]

Perhaps I'm not getting the irony or satire in your post ESL, but I'm sure Yatesy did a spot of hedgetrimming (and worked as a builder's labourer) between his cycling director contracts? So there could be a place for him at the FE college if all else fails.

It's a generational thing, controversies rage in all leisure activities with a professional manifestation.
 I can see the logic of ASO not re-awarding the places from 1999 to 2005, otherwise they'd encourage disputes back to 1903.
There's a big difference between people who are competitive at the level of champions and the rest of us. My own efforts in Cycle Sport are extremely feeble, a couple of entries in Cycling Weekly in obscure long distance competitions in 10th place. However that magazine was sustained by the sales of its TdF issue. The current generation sees no value in Cycling Weekly, or any print media. It's the past. Instead they post endless links to their modern equivalents on the net. However I've got a downer on those, because they wouldn't have been interested in my 10th places in obscure long distance competitions. Instead we should focus on Arivee, where obscure long distance competitions are the stock in trade.
 Audax riders don't need the Tour as inspiration. After all, it was invented as a device to sell papers which was easier than PBP.

[Justin(e)]

I was at the National Hedgelaying Competition today,  ...

ESL, I always enjoy your thoughtful posts - there is an accumulation of wisdom that is evident when you speak.  For the first time I disagree with you.

To continue your analogy, cycling is not made up of reconstructed bad ol' types who are harmless.  We have the whole infrastructure (UCI) who are complicit in the many years of cheating.  They fought tooth and nail to have jurisdiction over the Lance case - with the almost absolute certainty that they would have exonerated him.  This is scandalous.

We have ex riders like Matt White who send young impressionable riders off to be 'tested' by the doping doctors.

Commentators like Liggit who are financially in bed with dopers, creating huge incentives to be blind to the obvious.

We have people who have lied through their teeth for years and years who now profess to be anti-doping champions.  It is all too convenient a story.

The problem is that the harmless old dinosaurs who know racing lore, are the ones that took short cuts during their careers and cheated the honest riders of their place in the sun.  I simply don't trust them to change, especially as the incentives are still the same.  It is possible to still autologously blood dope and be undetectable.  There must be a step change away from the rotten putrid past.  This is not about some old timers who operated in a different age with different health and safety standards.  This is about an endemic cheating culture that has pervaded the sport I love for too long.

Bravo Sky.  Chapeau l'Equipe.   

We must rid the sport of those who were complicit, willfully blind or incompetent in their oversight of cycling.  Being Australian I have a natural antipathy for British sporting achievements - but from now on, Sky are the team I support.  I trust them as custodians for the future health of the sport. 

[Exit Stage Left]

I wasn't competing yesterday, as I don't know what caused by recent detached retina, and I don't want to go back to my consultant and say.' It was going fine until'. So I was in the role of someone like Phil Ligget, but in a truly minority activity.
The event itself is costly to stage, and requires a lot of organisation. The competition is within different styles of hedgelaying and the winners of each class are judged against each other. The different classes have slightly different ethics on putting dead material back into the hedge, and how much use is made of power tools. The final overall result usually upsets half the field. Beyond those technical concerns there is a difference between those who are 'Match Hedgers', and those who are 'Jobbing Hedgers'.
I made a couple of films which explored the issue of Chainsaws, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZN2DcW0LwWQ&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/ZN2DcW0LwWQ&rel=1</a>
and of Dead Wood.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/75EPBCFb4H4&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/75EPBCFb4H4&rel=1</a>
I'm keen to preserve what is a component of British landscape culture, which needs to conform to current conceptions of health and safety, and is moving towards compliance. But underneath there are debates about what constitutes cheating within the specific culture, which is a working culture with real people making a living. The aesthetics within the culture are different from the ones you might see looking in from the outside.
The ideal for us workers is for our craft to be growing, so we all get work, and to control standards, so we don't end up being exploited, or exploiting our own health by working ourselves into the ground.

I've been banging on about the publication 'I wish I was 21 now'. That's about the experiences in the Australian peloton. It's all interesting, but the sections between pages 142 and 162 are interesting for anyone who has to deal with the sort of transition I'm describing in my own work.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CCcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newcyclingpathway.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F09%2F21-NOW-FINAL-.pdf&ei=fueMUNWOM9C10QXL64D4CA&usg=AFQjCNG7FS0-X_cX8kyy_n6CBxLPmc6H-w

I wouldn't reach back and change results from 13 years ago, based on today's standards in the hope of moving things on to conform with my own personal aesthetic, especially without a detailed knowledge of the culture, which can't really come from outside it.
 However, the activities I take part in don't have the commercial knock-ons that cycling does, or the big money. In truth my real heroes in cycle sport are amateurs, it's what Boardman did as an amateur that's interesting, the demise of the amateur UCI in the early 90s was a bad thing in my opinion.

[giropaul]

I start from a position where I have never been a fan of Armstrong, and I have always believed that he was fundamentally dodgy. This was reinforced by knowing some people who worked for Postal - they never said anything - and I mean anything, even what he ate for breakfast, as they were in fear for their jobs, houses, futures etc. No-one needs to tie people up so tightly unless there is an issue to keep quiet.

BUT - I think we've now drifted into a McCarthyist reaction, and it's just as vindictive and lacking in judgement as the McCarthy investigations.

There's a huge difference in my mind between forcing and implementing a Pharmaceutical programme in a team and in being somewhere near when it was going on.

PS - I know a bit about hedgelaying - and I know that there are some iffy moves there as well!!

[Hot Flatus]

With Yates, I'm assuming that he was asked to sign Brailsfords 'no doping' pledge, and felt he couldn't, not as a result of his connections with Armstrong, but of his own riding career.

Either way, he's pretty toxic in the current environment... I don't buy for one second that as DS on Discovery he didn't know exactly who had done what. How else could he make an effective judgement on the day's tactics?

[Justin(e)]

BUT - I think we've now drifted into a McCarthyist reaction, and it's just as vindictive and lacking in judgement as the McCarthy investigations.

I agree, it is very easy to have your illusions shattered and to then over-react.  It hurts to have a hero shown up as a cheat.  My first experience of this was Hansie Cronje.

Which is why a comment made by Mike Ashenden about remembering that we are talking about cheating in SPORT.  This is not the equivalent of a dodgy engineer cheating on a building in earthquake prone Christchurch, or of a surgeon taking short cuts - it is just sport.

Those at the bottom end (ie the domestiques) should be shown the exit door and asked to kindly leave.  It is only the big fish who should have their actions criminalised with convicted guilty parties spending time in gaol.  I am convinced that if we made the doctors subject to criminal action, most of the problems would go away.  Those who push drugs onto others (complicit DS's and team physicians) are the same type of scum who push drugs in other walks of life.  I am more than happy to have society over-react when dealing with these shadey types.  I wont be shedding any tears if they end up like Mr Cronje.

[Hot Flatus]

The only people to have their illusions shattered are fans. Nobody inside cycling is, certainly not Brailsford.

Are we shocked and stunned to discover that Armstrong doped? No, I don't think so. The shock comes from finding that somebody has had the will to break through the conspiracy of silence, pretty ruthlessly, and also finding out the ruthlessness with which the conspiracy was enforced.

Brailsford may have mixed motives for what he is doing, and the good of the sport may not be one of them, but that does not mean that his actions won't be good for the sport.

[citoyen]

It's worth noting that Yates is getting a decent pay-off by playing along now rather than waiting to be caught later. He won't suffer too much financially.

Interesting that Brailsford appeared to be softening his stance for pragmatic reasons with the hiring of Leinders (never mind what he already knew about Yates and Julich) but in the wake of Lancegate is actually toughening his stance. Admirable.

So, Brailsford for UCI president, anyone?

d.

[citoyen]

Brailsford may have mixed motives for what he is doing, and the good of the sport may not be one of them, but that does not mean that his actions won't be good for the sport.

Well said.

I think he has the good of the sport in mind as far as it's in his own interests. I believe he genuinely wants the sport to he clean.

d.

[Hot Flatus]

Ultimately, he is trying to avoid a Rabobank situation. After all, he has a team full of employees who's livelihoods may depend on this.

It's all down to PR ultimately, at every level.

Disagree?

Ask yourself who pays the bills and why.

[TimC]

Brailsford's first responsibility is his team, as his employer and the employer of those who work for him. He has a responsibility to work within the rules of the sport, but he has gone beyond that - there is no requirement in the rules of the sport for those who may be tainted by previous doping contact to be made redundant and ejected completely from the sport. That is the, probably inevitable, McCarthyist fallout from the Armstrong revelations. It is obviously in Brailsford's team's short-term best interests for him to embrace the general elimination of anyone touched by that era, but I do wonder if the snowball hasn't already gotten too large. I do hope that at some point the sport starts to look forward rather than backwards, and reconstructs its governing bodies to make that possible. Too much introspection and witch-hunting risks alienating the spectators, and they are the ones who, after all, pay the bills.

[Biff]

Lance makes his penultimate public appearance:



"Before the rooster crows twice you will disown me more than ten times":

[her_welshness]

From BBC Sport

Sean Yates decides to retire from all cycling and Team Sky principlal Dave Brailsford says it is for "for purely personal reasons

We believe you Mr Brailsford!

[Exit Stage Left]

Sky have to be cleaner than clean because it's now Murdoch policy following the News of the World scandal.
Why they haven't beaten a path to Jens Voigt's door I don't know.
http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/10/news/jens-voigt-says-johan-bruyneels-departure-was-the-right-move_261295
He's ex Credit Agricole, a TT partner of Boardman, and he's been the Peloton's shop steward. I liked his take on the radio scandal as well.
http://www.cyclesportmag.com/news-and-comment/an-open-letter-from-jens-voigt/

[rafletcher]

From BBC Sport

Sean Yates decides to retire from all cycling and Team Sky principlal Dave Brailsford says it is for "for purely personal reasons

We believe you Mr Brailsford!

Also  "Sky said Yates's decision was not related to doping allegations"

Hmmm, really? 

[Biff]

Permanent gardening leave. Those hedges don't cut themselves you know.

[Exit Stage Left]

The morality of peasants is often a disappointment to those on salaries. I've always been surprised that the Tour de France attracts interest from the middle class British cyclist. The Times and the Telegraph publish the results of amateur events in the UK, and there's web coverage. There's plenty of opportunity to follow and participate in clean cycle sport.
What is it about the Tour that the  middle classes get out of the Tour, and what makes them feel they have the right to impose their moral template onto it? The Tour is the private property of a newspaper company at the end of the day.