VeloNews reports that BMC has suspended former World Road Race Champ Alessandro Ballan since his name has now appeared to be linked to the latest doping raid of some Italian pharmacist. This bothers me for a few reasons and of course, I'm going to tell you about them.
On the side of innocence:
In the article there's a statement from BMC that says the suspension isn't an accusation of guilt, but due to UCI and team guidelines, it's the proper course of action. How is this not an accusation of guilt? To me it's the exact same thing when a girl cries rape and she isn't sure that she was actually raped . Whether the guy did it or not, now he's a rapist and Ballan, with no actual evidence, is now a doper. I'm not saying that Ballan did or did not dope, what the hell do I know about his case except that he's been suspended for something he's been "allegedly" tied to. VeloNews now lets it's readers comment on the bottom of all it's stories. Most of the time these comments are exactly what you expect from people who comment on news stories, they're dumb, but there's one regarding this case that I think makes a lot of sense and brings up a good point.
madisonwi writes, "at what point is "allegedly" equate guilty? based on this type of reactionary policy with regards to doping would the texan still have 7 tour victories? or would he have been suspended by the team for the comments made by the french press of his alleged "doping" during his tour reign. not that i want to give dopers a free pass, but this system is starting to destroy a sport, or game if you will, that i am very fond of."
If you're familiar with the Armstrong dominance of the Tour de France you know that there wasn't a single season that some news story didn't link him to doping. There was the Ferrari scandal, who by the way was found guilty of providing cyclists with EPO. There's the case of the soigneur who testified in court that she had been instructed to drive great distances to pick up unmarked packages and bring them back to the team. There was and still is no shortage of people who accuse Armstrong of doping and claim to have evidence, but he's never been suspended or withheld from competition while they investigate. Why does Ballan have to sit out arguably the most important race of his season but Lance never did?
Let's assume he's guilty:
There are a lot of cyclist who seem to get busted when various Doctors keep fantastic records of who they're supplying illegal products too. From the Doctor's side I can't say I blame them. They get no prize money when a guy they've supplied dope to wins, but they get all the jail time if they get caught for dealing. The only bargaining chip they have is to supply names of the people they've been juicing. But, what I don't understand, is why any of these cyclists would readily allow their name to be put into some log, or in the case of Operation Puerto, some ridiculously easy to decipher code name? If it's me, and I'm going to make the decision to dope and I have to go find someone to provide me this stuff, it's sure as hell not going to be me that he's selling it to. I'm going to get some friend who I've known for a long time and he's going to be the go between. In exchange, he gets a cut of my salary as a pro and any extra prize money that comes a long with it. My name isn't showing up anywhere! Maybe these cyclist need to watch the Wire and treat their dope buying like dope selling where you use a clean name as a front for everything. It's always seemed so simple, yet, there they are, cyclists names written down on logs and in diaries and even in balance sheets.
I know this makes me sound like a proponent of doping and I'm not. I'd love to believe that the sport is totally clean but I'm also not an idiot. There are still plenty of guys in the peloton so juiced it's coming out of their pores. That's the nature of a sport where you can't test for something if you don't know it exists. EPO was around for decades before scientist finally figured out a way to test for it. If you don't think there's some modern day form of EPO flowing through the veins of dirty cyclists that the labs haven't even heard of, you're naive. It's just the way it goes. But that's what makes it a soap opera because the plot is predictable yet entertaining. New drug gets invented, new guy uses it, new guy wins a bunch of races, test is created, new guy gets busted, everyone is outraged, guy swears he had no idea, proclaims his innocence, gets suspended, maybe comes back, maybe doesn't. Meanwhile, just like when you sing in rounds, you can start the process all over again at "test is created." It's a cycle and it's not going away, but there still needs to be some sort of accountability for throwing guys out of races just because their name popped up on some dirty Dr.'s record. Doesn't he actually have to test positive to be positive? Isn't that why they have crews of people all over the globe showing up at cyclist's houses at 5am to take hair, blood and urine samples. The system is set up to try and catch them off guard and I have no problem with that, but I just think you actually need to catch them before you suspend them.
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