Six Figures

Jan Ullrich has elected to pay a fine to the Bonn Prosecutor’s office, thus ending the investigation into his possible sporting fraud through doping. Ullrich is reported to have paid six-figures to make the investigation go away. Most of us wouldn't voluntarily write a check that large unless real estate was involved.

Naturally, the out-of-court settlement allows Ullrich to admit no guilt. That works fine for major corporations, but in this instance it has the feel of closing the gate after the horse has left the barn.

The case began after allegations arose that Ullrich was one of the athletes who had used the services of Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes’s Spanish clinic. An alias for Ullrich had been found in the doctor’s records. That was enough to send German authorities into action.

German authorities launched a criminal inquiry that allowed them to request blood and plasma from Spanish officials. The basis of the criminal complaint was sporting fraud, that by winning the Tour de France while using banned substances and forbidden doping techniques, Ullrich had defrauded his employer of millions of Euro, thus illegally increasing his income.

The authorities tested both blood and plasma found at Fuentes’s clinic. Prosecutors, in a turn that wouldn’t fly in the U.S., announced that they had confirmed a DNA match between the seized blood and plasma and Ullrich. As trials by public go, the announcement was effective enough that Ullrich retired from the sport almost immediately after the announcement.

In a gentler time, the world might have let Ullrich go quietly. But there has been a widespread desire to know the truth, to find out just how prevalent doping was, if only one rider at a time.

Ullrich’s settlement lacks the finality of a conviction in court and while he insists he has done nothing wrong—that he has never used performance enhancing drugs or used illicit means to boost his performance—there is ample credible evidence that he all but had Fuentes on a retainer. Even though the criminal investigation has ended, there is more than enough damning evidence to have tarnished the athlete’s career

So the chapter on doping titled “Jan Ullrich” is at an end, right? Wrong. Ullrich’s settlement seems to be an effort into stopping any further inquiry into his alleged (or confirmed) doping. Unfortunately, Ullrich has a history of underestimating his opposition. First it was Marco Pantani. Then Lance Armstrong. Then the German Cycling Federation when he moved to Switzerland and registered as a Swiss pro; that didn’t stop the investigation into his activity as he was employed by a German team. It could just be that Ullrich hasn’t taken into account the next phase of “The Persecution of Jan Ullrich.”

T-Mobile has ample evidence to file a civil claim against him.

To the degree that his settlement was meant to end investigation into doping activities by the Olympic Gold Medalist, Ullrich was successful, but to the degree that the settlement was meant to protect his legacy, and ultimately his Yellow Jersey from the 1997 Tour de France, the settlement might prove to be fuel for a civil claim by T-Mobile. If they do file suit and prevail in court, ASO is guaranteed to come calling for that yellow shirt.

For the PROs of the '90s, riding in a doped peloton was a classic double-bind. The riders were damned if they rode clean and damned if they abandoned their values to be competitive. And now it is our turn.

As fans of cycling, there is no satisfactory outcome for us. If we choose to endorse the retroactive rewriting of the record books, we find ourselves on a slippery slope that would eventually see not only Bjarne Riis’ and Ullrich’s Yellow Jerseys seized, but also that of Marco Pantani and the Polka-Dot Jerseys of Richard Virenque on our way to record books filled with names we don’t recognize as greats.

If, instead, we dismiss the doping of the '90s as being an unfortunate footnote to cycling’s past, we turn our backs on those honest athletes who suffered at the hands of a supercharged peloton, suffered as only Prometheus could appreciate. Who says Ullrich shouldn't pay for his part?


Photo courtesy of John Pierce, Photosport International

Raw Deal

I read Paul Kimmage’s Rough Ride in the spring of 1991. Why? I’m not sure to this day. I didn’t believe there was a drug problem in professional cycling and am not by nature a suspicious sort. Yet, for some reason, I decided to pick it up.

The picture Kimmage painted was so alien to what I thought I knew of professional cycling as to be practically science fiction. His was a dystopian world where the dreams of hard working innocents are dashed in a daily regimen. Worse than the tribulations mortals suffered at the hands of the gods in Greek Mythology, to race a Grand Tour among the PROs was clearly preferable to having your liver pecked out by an eagle on a nightly basis. Especially if you raced clean.

I hadn’t thought much of the book for some seventeen years. Then one day in a blaze of discretionary spending, I went nuts on Amazon and picked up a half dozen volumes without which my life seemed incomplete.

As I read the revised introduction I began to see all that I had missed in my first reading. In 1991, I knew the players, but not in the way I do now. The intervening years have given me time to read more about each of the protagonists and to become familiar with others whose names were little more than a footnote to me then. A line from the James Tate poem “The Lost Pilot” came to me as I read: He was more wronged than Job.

The stunner in this isn’t how Kimmage suffered as a pro trying to race clean. No, he was really just incidental damage in a system gone awry. There was nothing particularly malicious in his treatment as he got chewed up racing on bread and water. No, the outrage is how he was treated for, as the French call it, craché dans la soupe—spitting in the soup.

Rider after rider disputed the truth he told, and his hero and team leader Stephen Roche betrayed him and insulted him in a way that might make Roger Clemens smile. And while what was done to Kimmage was unfair and tragic, his personal tragedy was nothing compared to what the sport itself suffered as a result of hanging him out to dry.

Shakespeare himself would appreciate the cruel turn of events that occurred in 1990. As Kimmage was working on Rough Ride, the peloton was familiarizing itself with EPO. And by familiarizing itself, I mean the first Dutch cyclists were having heart attacks in their sleep.

Kimmage showed how the lack of testing allowed the cancer of doping to grow unchecked from the beginning of cycling through to the 1980s. The late 1980s ushered in a new age thanks to few tests, lax testing protocols, a culture that actively encouraged doping as a coping mechanism and three Italian doctors who saw EPO as something of a real-time eugenics program—a way to help the athlete to reach his full potential. It’s fair to wonder if Greg LeMond’s 1990 win at the Tour de France was the last clean win at the Tour.

In reading about Kimmage’s relationship with Irish journalist David Walsh—yes, that David Walsh—a different portrait of Walsh appears. Rather than the single-minded writer known for pursuing any rumor about Lance Armstrong, one sees a knowledgeable sports journalist mentoring a cyclist disillusioned with his sport because of his inability to get on board with doping. One can see how Walsh might have adopted Kimmage’s disillusionment as his own and how he may have grown outraged at those who victimized Kimmage for speaking the truth.

The cautionary tale here isn’t that in pro cycling you will face drug use. No, the cautionary tale is that by ignoring the doping problem when it was relatively simple and unsophisticated, the UCI missed the opportunity to get on top of the problem before it entered the realm of systematic practice. No longer was it the game of the farm boys.

Once doping became the province of doctors who introduced the athletes to the new drugs and team managers who instructed the doctors who peaked when, pro cyclists lost their dream. Kimmage’s story is not uncommon; on the contrary, his is the story of most cyclists of the modern era. It is the destruction of one cyclist's dignity after another.

Coercion

Astana’s exclusion from ASO events has resulted in an unsurprising backlash in opinion against ASO’s policies, or perhaps more accurately, it’s lack of them. It has also resulted in one rather surprising reaction. Levi Leipheimer’s www.letleviride.com is taking a novel approach to race selection: coercion.

Based on the theory that public support for the top American rider in the pro peloton can sway the organizers of the Tour de France into changing its team selections, Let Levi Ride supposes that support for one rider can overcome the disdain ASO feels for an entire team.

Coercion, of course, isn’t new to the pro peloton. David Walsh theorized that among dopers there are the draggers and the dragged. His need to find a culprit, a bad guy, on which to pin blame for the evil of doping is simpleminded. Not a single interview with a rider who has confessed to doping has ever turned up a bully who said, “Take this, or else.” However, many riders have copped to the belief that doping was so rampant that unless they took EPO, they would wind up unemployed.

It was this fear of unemployment that moved the majority of the peloton from occasional steroid, amphetamine and caffeine usage to rampant EPO use. The coercion riders felt was powerful enough to overcome the resistance of even some of the most ardently anti-drug cyclists.

Is it possible that Levi’s ploy could work? Could an outpouring of support from Americans for one American rider cause ASO—an organization pathologically opposed to further embarrassment—to rethink its exclusion of the architect of the last eight Tour de France victories? It doesn’t seem likely and any attempt to force the French hand seems likely to result in further outrage on the part of Tour organizers, let alone the French national psyche.

Americans’ outrage over Astana’s exclusion seems myopic to Europeans. Mistrust for Bryneel and Contador is so widespread as to be the starting point for all attitudes toward the pair. And in a land where a sacrifice of the rights of an individual in the quest for the greater good is seen as both fair and logical, the loss of one over-the-hill rider’s shot at not winning the Tour de France yet again isn’t considered tragic.

Coercion will change things in cycling once more. Each clean rider who misses a ride in an important race, or is sent home following a teammate’s non-negative result (as the riders from Cofidis were in last year’s Tour) is going to get pissed off. Is there an anger greater than that of the unjustly persecuted man?

And so the threat has changed for the pro peloton. With sponsors departing the sport, the threat now is that a rider could wind up unemployed not because he wasn’t fast enough, but because of his teammate’s misdeeds. The need for a real brotherhood among riders has never been higher. Men may go crazy one by one, but the road back to salvation can only be found in a community.

A Stain on Yellow

Astana is out of the Tour de France. No sooner than High Road was refused entry to the Giro, RCS reconsidered and gave the team a spot. And Operation Puerto has been reopened. Even Hollywood blockbusters don’t have this many twists of plot.

There can be little doubt that ASO and RCS want drugs out of cycling. And frankly, if it’s what ASO and RCS wants, then that is where the sport will go; the small race organizers don’t have much influence for good or ill.

Here’s what’s so fascinating about Europe: The complete lack of rationality in the administration of justice. Last year at the Tour (as if you don’t remember) Astana wasn’t the only embarrassment. Certainly Cofidis and T-Mobile brought some amount of embarrassment to the event courtesy Christian Moreni and Patrick Sinkewitz. But can anything in the entire 2007 season compare to Michael Rasmussen being fired from Rabobank?

So how is it that Rabobank will be at Paris-Nice and, ergo, the Tour de France? ASO clearly deserves the right to restrict invitations to only those teams that meet its standards. When asked about Rabobank, Patrice Clerc responded that the problems with Rabobank were limited to one rider and a director: Michael Rasmussen and Theo de Rooy, respectively, and not with the sponsor. Similarly, the problems at Astana could be said to be limited to a director, Mark Biver, and two riders, Alexander Vinokourov and Andrei Kashechkin. Umm, so how are they different again?

To be fair, the French are suspicious of Johan Bruyneel the way cats are suspicious of dogs. He’s the only team director with more than five victories to his name and the fact that he replicated his previous success with Armstrong with the second youngest Tour winner ever give them ample reason to worry that Contador could stand on the podium until his 33rd birthday—another nine years. ASO’s exclusion of Astana is as much about Bruyneel as it is Vinokourov et al.

Is refusing entry to Astana supportable? Maybe. But the only way it can seem a remotely just decision is if Rabobank is refused entry as well.

The problem with ASO’s inconsistent selection process is that it makes their choices seem arbitrary. If we were discussing rock musicians or starlets, irrational would be a selling point, but when it’s a corporation organizing the largest annual sporting event it’s a little scary.

The worst part is the irony. The stain on cycling caused by doping has tarnished the Tour, though not irreparably. However, if ASO uses arbitrary criteria to exclude teams, or applies objective criteria inconsistently, their disrespect for clean riders will cause a new problem that doping control can’t solve. There is no stain like crazy.

Photo courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International.

Positively Positive?

When Basque rider Iban Mayo of the Saunier Duval team tested positive during the Tour de France for EPO, hardly anyone was surprised. Those who follow professional cycling took the single non-negative test result of Mayo’s A sample as yet another example of how cycling had distinguished itself as the most corrupt of sports.

According to a release by the Spanish Cycling Federation issued Monday, Mayo has been cleared, thanks to a negative test result of Mayo’s B sample. Testing was performed on his B sample at a laboratory in Belgium and the results reviewed in Australia, neither of which confirmed the initial positive test.

WADA’s own rules indicate that should have been the end of the story, more or less. BKW spoke to a doping expert who requested anonymity for this story; he said it was curious the lab in Gent, Belgium, was chosen to test the B sample. According to the expert, the lab in Belgium isn’t particularly competent to perform EPO testing. On the other hand, he said that while the Paris lab’s IRMS group is “atrocious,” their EPO and blood group is “quite good.” Remember, the doctor who helped to formulate the EPO urine test is based at this lab.

According to our source, any result from testing the B sample that does not confirm the non-negative A sample is ordinarily considered a negative test, and the end of the case. It is not unheard of to test the sample further, but the case is closed once any result other than positive is returned, and we are told that judging an EPO test is very simple, that the results are very “cut and dry.” So when the UCI’s Anne Gripper said that “Mayo’s B sample wasn’t negative, it was inconclusive,” the testing community would ordinarily judge such an outcome negative, the end of the case. For further testing to take place, the UCI must allege something extraordinary took place, say, incompetence at the Gent lab. Gripper has indicated a willingness to appeal the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Mayo’s situation is exactly the converse of the Landis case. If all lab work was performed properly, Mayo is innocent of doping. If, however, the A test was properly administered and the B test alone botched, Mayo could conceivably have doped and still be acquitted. Gripper has indicated she believes the case is worth pursuing. But for this case to go forward, it appears that the UCI will have to accuse a WADA lab of shoddy work.

The question is: Why would they be willing to risk such a self-indictment? Pursuing such a case seems a lose-lose for the UCI. If they won the case against Mayo, it would undermine the case against Landis by demonstrating faulty lab work. And if the UCI lost the case against Mayo, their professed doubt of a WADA lab would certainly fuel the Landis defense team’s contention that the labs do not perform without flaw.

Photo courtesy: Saunier Duval-Prodir Pro Cycling Team

The Fix Is In

Had Floyd Landis’ arbitration been handled by the American judicial system, the 2006 winner of the Tour de France would have red hair. Put another way, were logic the overriding principle used for deciding the arbitration outcome, the matter would be settled once and for all. Unfortunately, the arbitrators managed to set aside their own concerns and find in favor of USADA.

In the American court system, material found in an illegal search is disallowed in court proceedings. So if the basis of a search is found to be logically flawed, the search is thrown out. The arbitrators struck down the initial adverse T/E result, saying it DID NOT meet the requirement for a positive test.

That bears repeating. In the initial test that started this process, the arbitrators found that Floyd Landis did not test positive. Logically, if the initial test was not positive, there should not be grounds for the flawed IRMS test that USADA claims shows Landis used exogenous testosterone.

Equally disturbing is the arbitrators’ threat that if similar procedural errors such as those that were demonstrated during the Landis hearing were to continue, they might dismiss such a case. “The Panel finds that the practises of the Lab in training its employees appears to lack the vigor the Panel would expect in the circumstances given the enormous consequences to athletes.” That is the most serious indictment of the testing process ever offered by a sympathetic party. And yet, the majority wrote, “If such practices continue, it may well be that in the future, an error like this could result in the dismissal” of the case against the athlete.

Hello? How could errors dismissed in this case be considered substantive enough to derail a case in the future? The fix is in. The arbitrators have effectively said, “Okay, we’ll let you slide this time, but don’t embarrass us or yourselves again.” It is further demonstration that this process has been a kangaroo court meant to satisfy a political agenda rather than a judicial process meant to uncover the truth. No reasonable person can come to the conclusion that justice has been served if substandard lab work can result in two different findings on two different days. That’s not justice, that’s mercy; only mercy isn’t generally granted to the prosecution.

If LNDD’s (Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage / National Anti-doping Laboratory) work ethic will be deemed unacceptable in the future, then it is unacceptable today. And if it is unacceptable today, then a miscarriage of justice has been served.

One cannot be surprised that the arbitrator chosen by Landis’ team, Christopher Campbell, found in favor of Landis. He was supposed to be sympathetic. However, strenuous dissent deserves the light of day. Campbell wrote: "The documents supplied by LNDD are so filled with errors that they do not support an Adverse Analytical Finding. Mr. Landis should be found innocent." He went on to point out a larger problem of competence: "If the LNDD couldn't get the T-E ratio test right, how can a person have any confidence that LNDD got the much more complicated IRMS test correct?"

Here’s the scary part. This process shows that labs are allowed to execute the shoddiest of work in order to get some sort of positive test. Once they achieve that result, they can then begin a fishing expedition employing all means necessary (including character assassination) in order to prove their case.

One last question: Would you want to be a pro cyclist right now?

Photo courtesy: msnbc

Catching the Criminals

At the Landis hearings the testimonies by Drs. Don Catlin, John Amory and Wolfram Meier-Augenstein add up in a surprising way. It never seemed possible—let alone likely—that the average public would follow the science involved in the IRMS testing, but the transcripts are comprehensible. Near real-time access to the proceedings has been possible thanks to Trust But Verify. Surprisingly, Catlin, Amory and Meier-Augenstein were able to paint a coherent picture of issues that seem to give any reasonable person pause to consider the contents of Mr. Landis’ urine last July.

Catlin has essentially testified that to be a WADA-accredited lab, one of the most important responsibilities a lab shoulders is not bearing witness against another lab. The distinction is significant in that it defines a lab’s duty not as fact-finding instrument but enforcement apparatus.

Amory provided testimony on the only peer-reviewed study of testosterone gel use as a recovery aid. This is exactly what WADA alleges Landis did. The study says it doesn’t work. Now, athletes have been known to be terminally stupid, stupid enough to believe that old wives’ tales will make them invincible. Considering that it is possible that Landis could, unfortunately, be that stupid (witness his dealings with one Will Geoghegan), Amory went on to testify that Landis’ test profile didn’t fit any known profile of metabolized testosterone gel. Put another way Amory said, “Eating a truckload of oranges won’t make you faster, but if you try it anyway, your urine will come out orange and as we can see, Mr. Landis’ urine is still clear.”

And flown in from Ireland, Meier-Augenstein told us in terms accurate to a thousandth of an inch close is good in horseshoes and hand grenades but the margin of error in the LNDD work was too great to consider positive. This is like dropping a bomb in Iran. It’s close to Iraq, and shares 75% of the spelling, right down to the order of the first three letters; could the difference between “Q” and “N” really be that big a deal? Only if you want to avoid an international incident. Oops.

Occasionally, an accused athlete will cry out that he or she is the subject of a conspiracy. Judging from the LNDD records, the work seems too shoddy to meet the standard for deliberate. So that brings up the question: Could it be WADA believes it must not only not lose any case it prosecutes, but it must also get results? Could it be that Pound, Tygart and company believe the organization must have periodic prosecutions no matter how tenuous the data? This smacks of the often-rumored scene in which Dick Cheney screams at the CIA: “Find me some damn WMDs!”

Catlin’s testimony is the most disturbing of the bunch. Testimony concerning the WADA laboratory code of ethics that Catlin drafted—but was changed by someone else—shows that labs are not to testify against other labs. WADA strategy is to circle the wagons first and foremost. In other words, prosecution trumps truth. What is shocking is that finding the truth is not a priority. Implicitly, the mission is to get positive tests and then to do anything necessary to support the result, rather than make sure the result is accurate.

Whether or not Landis doped, the system exposed in the course of these proceedings should not be tolerated. It is not based on a presumption of innocence nor does it place a supreme value on fact. American tax dollars should not fund this operation. It seems likely now Landis didn’t dope and WADA and USADA are colluding to cover the incompetence of the lab with an organizational structure designed not to protect the sport but to legitimize careless lab work as irrefutable proof. USADA is funded by Congress. If you vote, you get say in whether or not these practices continue. By writing your Congressman, you might help save cycling from a fate worse than doping.

This entry was written out of love, frustration and a desire to see some clean, healthy competition in the PRO peloton. Thanks to Padraig for this great contribution.

At All Cost

Is it any wonder that WADA is going after Floyd Landis tooth and nail? Consider a possible situation in the abstract: A cyclist tests positive. Following an evaluation of testing procedure, auditors find that procedures were skipped, machines mis-calibrated and rights violated. A reasonable person could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the resulting black eye to WADA would undermine public confidence to such a degree that there would be little respect for the findings. Kinda like how we view intelligence reports of WMDs by the CIA in say, oh, any Middle Eastern nation. Put another way, if WADA were to lose such a case, many people would—rightly or wrongly—come to the conclusion that the organization lacked the ability to catch the real dopers and would mistrust any result as yet another false-positive. Ever heard of the boy who cried wolf? WADA knows lost cases undermine credibility, which is why the organization believes it can’t afford to lose a single doping case. But such a strategy is counterproductive.

Whether you believe Landis’ Wiki-defense or not, the truth is none of us really know if he doped. He makes a compelling case for his innocence, but we really don’t know. And the truth is there are cyclists who are innocent of doping but whose names have been forever tarnished. Take the case of hapless Danilo Hondo.

Danilo Hondo has been shown to have had such a low concentration of Caphedon in his body that it not only didn’t affect his performance but it was most probably too tiny an amount to be deliberately administered. Put another way, he didn’t mistakenly take too little, such as might happen in an error concerning order of magnitude where someone takes 10mcg instead of 10mg. This guy didn’t intend to dope and didn’t benefit from the presence of the drug in his system.

He received the same penalty as a rider who doped in order to win as a result of a policy known as “strict liability.” It dictates a zero-tolerance environment (adopted to give the appearance of being tough on dopers) in which any stray compound found in a pro’s system results in a penalty.

Another hypothetical: Suppose you are driving down the street in a 35 mph zone. You approach a construction site that is soon to be a new school. You miss the new 25 mph speed limit sign and an officer notices continued rate of speed. He pulls you over. In the United States, the officer has leeway to give you a warning instead of a ticket for what would otherwise still be a minor infraction. In the world of WADA, you don’t drive for two years. Period.

Some people may think that the “strict liability” standard is reasonable. It is not. American jurisprudence is built on the idea that intent is significant when a crime is committed. The courts in America hold that the penalty for striking a pedestrian with your car should be different if you never saw the pedestrian and did so only accidentally than if the pedestrian was your former boss and you waited outside of work for the chance to run him down and subsequently backed over him before fleeing to Tahiti. Grading crimes according to severity helps to give the public the perception that outcomes are fair. Stealing a pack of gum is not the same as stealing a car, no?

In the Landis case the defense has accused WADA and the lab at Chatenay-Malabry of poor record keeping, shoddy lab work, changing and erasing computer data and refusing to let their representatives attend a procedure WADA’s own rules grant. An American prosecutor accused of such action could wind up disbarred.

WADA tested B-samples of Landis’s urine to which the A-sample was clean—this is a clear violation of its own procedure. Logically, if the A-sample was clean, the B-sample cannot be tainted, provided the lab did the work correctly in the first place. If the lab didn’t do the work correctly then it shouldn’t be permitted to perform any further testing until an audit of its procedures and equipment has been performed. In finding a B-sample positive when an A-sample is negative, only one thing has been proven: The lab is not performing its science consistently. Repetition of results is one of the most basic standards of science and any lab that can’t manage that isn’t much of a lab.

Because the administrative process is not transparent and WADA and USADA seem engaged in a win-at-all-costs ideology, we are unlikely ever to learn the real truth to whether or not Floyd Landis doped at the Tour de France. If we cannot be certain that the outcome was justly based on fact, then there are four victims: The first is Landis; he deserves an outcome based on the truth, whether he doped or not. The second is WADA; if we are not convinced justice was served, we will not trust it is fulfilling its mission. The third is the sport itself, which is losing fans due to the general mistrust for all cyclists in the PRO peloton. And the final victim, of course, is us; if we are not convinced WADA is pursuing its mission competently and that the athletes are clean, we are robbed enjoyment of our favorite sport.

This entry was written out of love, frustration and a desire to see some clean, healthy competition in the PRO peloton. Thanks to Padraig for this great contribution.

Photo Courtesy: www.theage.com

Omerta

The term “Omerta” is known as the silence of the mob. Don’t rat. Until recently, the term has only been used in connection with the mafia. Recently, though, Omerta has come to be identified with cycling’s collective silence on the problem of doping. Attached to the term in its original usage was an odd sense of honor and integrity, a captain-goes-down-with-the-ship mentality. If caught, you defended yourself without implicating anyone else and if convicted, you did your time … quietly. Plea deals were for drunks, not gangsters.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present Ivan Basso, Mister “I was only researching the possibility of doping, but didn’t actually dope just yet.” If you want to be an honorable louse, this is how it is done. He will tell nothing of what he might know, only of his involvement in what he says was yet to become doping. Lest anyone think his admission is a step in the right direction, this is Omerta at its classic best. He has copped to only what they have irrefutable proof of. This isn't a light bulb in the darkness but a flashlight pointed the wrong way--after the Giro victory was on the books.

Should anyone think his admission will help turn the tide against doping, what he has done, in fact, is teach his brethren a sort of low-impact plea. His statements were to full disclosure what the Toyota Prius is to a carbon footprint. Frankly, his behavior stands in stark contrast to what are now the typical displays of mob togetherness as seen in trials such as John Gotti's and on the Sopranos: "If I'm going, you're going too." Should we actually praise Basso for his amazing integrity? Not if we want a dope-free sport.

This entry was written out of love, frustration and a desire to see some clean, healthy competition in the PRO peloton. Thanks to Padraig for this great contribution.

Blah, Blah, Doping, Blah, Blah

What can I say that has not already been said about doping in cycling?

When I started BKW my goal was simple: To shed light on the cool and often overlooked aspects of cycling. To keep all my posts positive and avoid the negatives of the sport. Focus on the little things. All well and good, but I don't think I can take much more of this doping crap. I do not even know where to begin. Do I blame the journalists, the riders, the doctors, the DS, Dick Pound, the UCI, WADA, Cyclingnews.com, that damn rock 'n roll music, MTV, or myself? Has my patience run out before everyone else's?

I would like to hear from you, so post your thoughts and your opinions. What's going on in our sport and where does it leave the diehard fans of PROfessional cycling?