Possible Tour de France Winner Oscar Pereiro is proving my point about how screwed up this process is.
Let's look at the steps according to Oscar, and apparently the Tour organizers (not assuming that they knew Floyd tested positive before the end of the tour, because of course a doping scandal on top of a doping scandal is just fantastic publicity for the Tour . . . I mean, why not let the guy win and then take things away? Makes more sense, right?).
The World According to Oscar
1. Floyd Landis wins.
2. Floyd tests positive, is suspended. Fair enough.
3. Floyd relinquishes the jersey.
4. Oscar wins.
5. Floyd disappears forever, never to be seen again so that Oscar can be the twentieth greatest Spanish cyclist ever (he did ride off a mountain last year while eating a sandwich). If that.
This whole process according to Oscar is swift and if guilt is without any doubt, fair. Except for one thing. Guilt isn't without any doubt. Or it shouldn't be. And that damn hearing where the rider has a chance to prove innocence, or faulty testing, or a French conspiracy (which is totally true, unless you're a sissy). If there is true balance in the process, then the accused rider has a chance at innocence. Hell, if this is all done right, WADA, the UCI and ASO would be following the same rules.
So, in the World According to Oscar, since he is deserving winner of course, Floyd is guilty, guilty, guilty.
But suppose he's not. Then you have the following steps in Oscar's world.
6. Floyd proves his innocence.
7. Floyd is declared the rightful winner of the Tour. ASO, the UCI and WADA, all ashamed of how hypocritical they are in a variety of situations, giving passes to guys who have "asthma" but going after guys for butt cream or because their dog might have visited a Spanish doctor, all give Floyd a gift certificate to Cracker Barrel. Oh, and the yellow jersey.
8. Oscar is demoted back to second place.
9. The Tour, of course, doesn't look like a farce because they keep changing the results.
10. We all laugh.
Look, again, not saying that you shouldn't go after the guilty riders. All I'm saying is if there's a process, follow it. You can't execute a guy before the trial. Unless you're in a secret CIA prison.
Right? Maybe I'm just stupid, but it seems like the riders aren't the only ones who cheat the system and ignore rules. It looks like the governing bodies also take a very loose stance on said rules.
Beautifully stated. Oscar is really getting on my nerves.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm not sure I buy Floyd's defense, I do feel like the Europeans pretty much play by their own set of rules that involve an idea of justice that is very different that our own. There are a lot of reasons for that stemming from things as diverse as a justice system that is based on old Roman law to the psychological and sociological tailings of having lived under monarchical rule rule for over a millenium.
ReplyDeleteWhat chafes my hiney (even through a pair of Assos' ridiculously expensive but oh-so-wonderful bibs-not that I own a pair but boy do I wish I did) is that soccer and tennis has gotten a free pass over there while cycling gets kicked around like a bad puppy in a trailer park.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that they all dope and that they've just gotten better on figuring out how to mask it. I don't base my legal conclusions on this but I do base my assessment of their performance on it. Ullrich doped, Lance probably doped, Tyler doped, Basso was just too good in the Giro not to have doped (no one, not even Lance, wins a stage race by that much any more). You can't prosecute based on what we know and you shouldn't but that doesn't mean I accept that any of these guys are clean. I know too much about the science of the performance benefits of doping (10-15% improvement) to believe that if Ullrich and Tyler doped the way the evidence says they did to believe that everyone else who was riding at a level anywhere near theirs wasn't doping too.
I'm at the place where it's our sport again. It belongs to us grass roots guys who go out and train and suffer without a little chemical help for nothing but bar stories and friendships and I think I like it better that way.
My guess is that it may not matter anyway. The Tour may be filled with second rate riders and Continental teams next year if it doesn't figure out how to play nice with the UCI and the Pro Tour.
I were some crafty promoter in the US I'd be looking at some crazy cool three week stage race planning for something in June so that if this TdF thing doesn't work out I could invite all the great riders to America for a month. I'd get some hot podium girls and I'd put cameras on bikes and mic up the riders. I'd get a couple of crazy commentators who talked about something besides Lance who rode along with the peloton away from some dumb-ass producer and I'd really show the public what it was like to be in the race. I'd get Sam Posey to do all sorts of weird crazy historical stories with those wacked out eyebrows of his and I'd make Bob Roll read his poetry about the pain and beauty of the sport while showing pictures of riders suffering on climbs and dying on their time trial bikes. I'd make the bonus sprints worth more somehow (maybe like a miss-and-out thing from track racing) so that the flat stages are a lot more interesting. I'd make it a art film to our sport done as improvizational jazz.
I'll stop hijacking your forum now. As you were.
The Physicist
Hijack away. It's not like anyone involved in professional cycling is doing much that makes anything better. Everyone is either breaking or bending rules on all sides. That irritates me.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the riders. And what hurts me most is I love climbing stages. So, how am I supposed to watch any climbing stage without that doubt in my head?
But all the anti-doping feels like posturing. They seem like they are just doing "enough" and nothing more. Do they stop it? Sure. When they manage to find it. But they ignore well-known ways to get around the controls, like those exemptions.
Are Basso, Landis, Ulrich, etc. guilty? I'd say there's a good chance. But I don't know. As absurd as some of his arguments are (though not quite up to Hamilton levels), at least Floyd is out there beating the drums of his innocence. Basso and Ulrich? Not so much.
But you're right about the amateurs and enthusiasts taking back the sport. I think most riders I know, whether they race or not, are more serious than before this tour. Oh, sure, they want to get a few of the bucks doled out on the next lap of the local crit, but a lot of them just want to push harder. Or be better than that one guy who just pisses them off on their weekend hammerfest.
Seems to me that the guys who tend to be the most blase about cheating are the ones who have lost respect for the suffering of riding.
Speaking of suffering, I'm not speaking about Bob Roll for a while. I finally did stage 3 from the CTS Ride the Tour program. I can say that I finished that one. But my wife thought I was dying because by the time that we got to the final eight minute leg-tearing, I think I invented a few new words.