The Contador suspension being overturned confuses me. It makes me believe Floyd even more that there is basically a top ring of cyclist where conspiracy boils over. It makes me wonder how Don Alejandro Velverde actually got suspended when to my knowledge he's never actually tested positive for anything, only linked to the Puerto issue. I could be wrong about that as now days doping stories and facts are all running together. I'm also confused as to why Contador's defense is really any different than Tom Zirbels? Seems like they both had tremendously low amounts of clenbuterol in their system. Both claimed it was ingested without their knowledge. Only difference is Contador isn't proving it came from meat but that it's the only explanation because it couldn't have been anything else and Zirbel couldn't prove which supplement it might have come from since he was notified so late. Neither seem like realistic defenses but if one works why wouldn't the other?
I'm obviously not a lawyer or a chemist working in a testing lab but as average as my mind may be I can certainly tell that if this doping issue is really going to get resolved, fair/equal treatment and adherence to policy is a good place to start.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Response To a Piece on GMA
GMA ran a story on a kid this morning who got cut from his high school baseball team because he's not good enough to make the team. Unfortunately, the kid is a double below the waist amputee and therefore the version of the story they ran was about that and not about what actually gets you cut from a team, lack of skill set. I firmly believe and have written in this space before that sports are the great equalizer between a lot of other socially driven issues that face society. Take a look at at almost all professional sports from their beginnings to present day and it's clear to see the changes that took place from a socio-economic prospective. Sports, at their core are about winning, and in order to win you need the best players available to you. The owners of every major sport in the world didn't all get together and say, "Hey, let's help the racial divide by giving minorities a chance to make a living playing this game." No, they went out and found the athletes with the highest skill set and thought it was a wise decision to pay them for that skill regardless of race, creed or anything else that makes one person different than the next.
There were a few facts that GMA pointed out that I thought did not help their point in the story.
1) The kid is a pitcher. While pitchers aren't often thought to need a lot of mobility there are very specific plays in baseball where a pitcher needs to be able to run. Covering bunts was brought up in the piece. I can also think of covering home plate in the event of a passed ball and a runner on third. And, a ground ball fielded by the first baseman often requires the pitcher to cover first. These are not un-athletic moves and often turn into a foot race between the pitcher and the base runner. You would be a pretty bad coach if you simply over looked this skill set for your pitching staff. While they didn't give his 40, 60 or shuttle times in the piece, they did have ample footage of him walking at it looked a bit awkward and forced leading me to believe mobility in any of these situations would definitely be an issue.
2) The kid has a fastball of 80 mph. Without calling names I could go through a litany of guys I grew up with playing against that at the little league level threw the equivalent of 80 and were dominant. Probably the case with this kid. But, like all those guys I'm not naming, everybody else grew up too and by the time we were playing varsity baseball, the kids you used to fear were the ones you hoped were pitching because their 80mph fastball was the same as it was 5 years before. What used to be dominating was now basically a batting practice equivalent fastball. I played on a lot of pretty good baseball teams growing up and an 80mph fastball was easily on the low end for most of the guys on our staff. It certainly is not an impressive number and I'd also venture to say it's probably not accurate as there was no video footage of a gun actually recording an 80mph fastball.
3) The kid is right handed. If you know anything about baseball this is a big factor. If he's left handed and throws 80 and can't run but has other decent off speed stuff, he probably makes the team.
The thing that gets to me most about this story is that it's so easy to see this situation isn't about this kids disability or his ability to overcome it to this point in his life, but the media sensationalizing it and skewing the facts to get a reaction out of the uninformed masses sitting on their couch drinking their morning coffee. Whoever the correspondant was doing the story said the kid had a real shot as a big league prospect. This is just a ridiculous statement and no big surprise that there were no MLB scouts offering their opinions on his skills.
Jim Abbott is probably one of the greatest pitchers ever to play the game and he only had one hand. His disability didn't hold him back because the rest of the skills he brought to the table made up for the fact that he only had one hand. There was another story I saw the other day about a division one basketball player who is an amputee from the elbow down on one arm. At some point, his playing career will probably end as well, but for now, he's able to bring other skills like size to the table to make up for that fact.
Unfortunately for this young man he's reached that point where, at least to this coach, the level of the game has passed his skill set. It sucks. Believe me, I know. But no coach would be around very long if he cut talented players simply because they didn't have the legs he was born with. If you're good enough to play, you'll play regardless of what may be seen as a disability to others.
I'm not here to bash this kid. In fact I think it's great that he's overcome all of the obstacles he had to just to make it to this point in his life, much less baseball. He loves the game of baseball and wants to keep playing and he's hurt that now he's reached that point where the level of the game has passed the skill set he has to offer. Unfortunately, this happens at some point to 99% of the people who play sports growing up. Even the ones who work really hard and really want to be professionals. If it didn't, professional athletes wouldn't be as well paid as they are because they'd be easily replaceable.
There were a few facts that GMA pointed out that I thought did not help their point in the story.
1) The kid is a pitcher. While pitchers aren't often thought to need a lot of mobility there are very specific plays in baseball where a pitcher needs to be able to run. Covering bunts was brought up in the piece. I can also think of covering home plate in the event of a passed ball and a runner on third. And, a ground ball fielded by the first baseman often requires the pitcher to cover first. These are not un-athletic moves and often turn into a foot race between the pitcher and the base runner. You would be a pretty bad coach if you simply over looked this skill set for your pitching staff. While they didn't give his 40, 60 or shuttle times in the piece, they did have ample footage of him walking at it looked a bit awkward and forced leading me to believe mobility in any of these situations would definitely be an issue.
2) The kid has a fastball of 80 mph. Without calling names I could go through a litany of guys I grew up with playing against that at the little league level threw the equivalent of 80 and were dominant. Probably the case with this kid. But, like all those guys I'm not naming, everybody else grew up too and by the time we were playing varsity baseball, the kids you used to fear were the ones you hoped were pitching because their 80mph fastball was the same as it was 5 years before. What used to be dominating was now basically a batting practice equivalent fastball. I played on a lot of pretty good baseball teams growing up and an 80mph fastball was easily on the low end for most of the guys on our staff. It certainly is not an impressive number and I'd also venture to say it's probably not accurate as there was no video footage of a gun actually recording an 80mph fastball.
3) The kid is right handed. If you know anything about baseball this is a big factor. If he's left handed and throws 80 and can't run but has other decent off speed stuff, he probably makes the team.
The thing that gets to me most about this story is that it's so easy to see this situation isn't about this kids disability or his ability to overcome it to this point in his life, but the media sensationalizing it and skewing the facts to get a reaction out of the uninformed masses sitting on their couch drinking their morning coffee. Whoever the correspondant was doing the story said the kid had a real shot as a big league prospect. This is just a ridiculous statement and no big surprise that there were no MLB scouts offering their opinions on his skills.
Jim Abbott is probably one of the greatest pitchers ever to play the game and he only had one hand. His disability didn't hold him back because the rest of the skills he brought to the table made up for the fact that he only had one hand. There was another story I saw the other day about a division one basketball player who is an amputee from the elbow down on one arm. At some point, his playing career will probably end as well, but for now, he's able to bring other skills like size to the table to make up for that fact.
Unfortunately for this young man he's reached that point where, at least to this coach, the level of the game has passed his skill set. It sucks. Believe me, I know. But no coach would be around very long if he cut talented players simply because they didn't have the legs he was born with. If you're good enough to play, you'll play regardless of what may be seen as a disability to others.
I'm not here to bash this kid. In fact I think it's great that he's overcome all of the obstacles he had to just to make it to this point in his life, much less baseball. He loves the game of baseball and wants to keep playing and he's hurt that now he's reached that point where the level of the game has passed the skill set he has to offer. Unfortunately, this happens at some point to 99% of the people who play sports growing up. Even the ones who work really hard and really want to be professionals. If it didn't, professional athletes wouldn't be as well paid as they are because they'd be easily replaceable.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Football Trick Shots
Holy crap, this has nothing to do with cycling!
I found this retweeted on twitter through the various channels. I guess this guy is the backup QB at UConn and if you're the backup QB at a small program, this is probably the best way to showcase your arm strength and accuracy. I'm not sure how many other D1 QBs would watch this video and shrug as something they all sit around and do and never thought to film. I'm guessing a lot. Still, it's pretty good stuff if you like this kind of thing. Some of the throws are pretty impressive, especially if you go ahead an assume it was the first take on each one, which, there's no real proof of that. In my opinion the best throw is when he hits the ball that's been kicked off the tee. I would think those don't exactly fly in straight lines.
What I've never understood about these videos, since there's basketball versions all over the place, is how excited the other guys around get when he makes it. Sure it's impressive, but jump up and down, leap over a trash can impressive? I don't know...
I found this retweeted on twitter through the various channels. I guess this guy is the backup QB at UConn and if you're the backup QB at a small program, this is probably the best way to showcase your arm strength and accuracy. I'm not sure how many other D1 QBs would watch this video and shrug as something they all sit around and do and never thought to film. I'm guessing a lot. Still, it's pretty good stuff if you like this kind of thing. Some of the throws are pretty impressive, especially if you go ahead an assume it was the first take on each one, which, there's no real proof of that. In my opinion the best throw is when he hits the ball that's been kicked off the tee. I would think those don't exactly fly in straight lines.
What I've never understood about these videos, since there's basketball versions all over the place, is how excited the other guys around get when he makes it. Sure it's impressive, but jump up and down, leap over a trash can impressive? I don't know...
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Finally a Non-Doping Cycling Controversy
The latest cycling controversy has nothing to do with anything that can be put in your body to help you perform better. Well, that's not entirely true. Radio ear pieces are inserted into your ear and without them as a modern day rider you probably perform less efficiently.
As most are aware the UCI wants to ban the use of two way radios used by riders and their directors in professional cycling. This year they have instituted a ban on the radios at all but the largest races and the riders are not happy about it. Most of them cite safety concerns about being alerted to road conditions and other crap like that. But, let's face it, most of these guys have matured through the professional ranks with someone in a team car, watching the race feed on a tv, telling them exactly what's going on. I don't have any specific statistics to back it up, but I'd be willing to bet way fewer breakaway attempts succeed these days because the team directors can tell their boys exactly how fast to ride to catch the break inside the final kilometer. This is insanely valuable information if you're the guy/s who is/are assigned to lay down a pace that will ensure the break gets caught. You don't want to catch them too quickly because other attacks will get launched. You don't want to leave it too late, because, well, you lose. Without a team director in a car with a calculator and a radio you've got to send a guy back to that car to try and find out this information. The riders can give me all the lines about safety they want, I'm not buying it.
But, the real concern here shouldn't be safety or the dissemination of information. The real concern should be what long term affects this fight between the riders and the UCI will have on the sport. We've already seen our first protest by the riders at the Mallorca Challenge. They all defied the rules by using radios and the UCI fought back by neutralizing the stage and not recording results. Tyler Farrar won the bunch sprint, but without real results he basically won a group ride on closed roads. Minus the closed roads, I now have something in common with Tyler Farrar.
On twitter this morning Robbie Hunter writes that the UCI will lose the fight. But, I'm not so sure. The UCI is nothing if they aren't stubborn and I think we can clearly see with their constant denial of ever doing any wrong and their need to always be the ones dictating policy, I don't know that they'll ever back down.
The way I see it the two sides both have these chips to play. Riders can continually defy the rule by wearing radios. Which, they've already shown is sort of a weak hand to play because even after their first little exhibition at the Mallorca Challenge they already folded for the rest of the race and will not use radios out of respect to the Mallorca Challenge fans and race promoters. At the Tour of Qatar, same thing. Riders were going to protest and then the chest beating ended when a punishment that nobody was really willing to chance was laid out in front of them. Every time the riders decide they want to protest by using radios, the UCI, who has the power here, can simply lay out some harsh punishment and call everyone's bluff.
The real test is going to be for much bigger races with a larger viewing audience and much more prestige to the winner. Sure Tom Boonen really likes being the winner of the Tour of Qatar, but I'm sure he'd trade every Qatar victory for just one more Paris-Roubaix (They can use radios at Roubaix). Criterium International and Ghent-Wevelgem are both big races where radios are banned. Player lockouts and strikes happen in other sports all the time. Maybe a unified rider strike at either of these races would get the point across. But, it just seems apparent to me that as soon as riders stop racing big time races over something as frivolous as the use of radios, sponsors start fleeing and taking their money elsewhere.
We've already seen big time teams struggle to find title sponsorship and with the other controversy that is consistently hanging over the sport like a black cloud, who in their right mind is going to pony up a few million bucks just to have their logo on the butt of some cyclist planted firmly on the ground?
I'm not saying the riders are completely wrong. And I'll admit this opinion completely omits a larger problem that the radios are really just a piece of the total problem. The UCI is basically a tyrant writing new rules without consulting the constituencies they represent. But, in the end, like most things, it's going to come down to money. If the riders stop racing their bikes I hope they all have some other form of gainful employment lined up because the money that feeds them is going to dry up pretty fast.
And, while I clearly think the safety argument from the riders is stupid, I'm not in favor of the ban. I actually think Craig Lewis has the best idea.
As most are aware the UCI wants to ban the use of two way radios used by riders and their directors in professional cycling. This year they have instituted a ban on the radios at all but the largest races and the riders are not happy about it. Most of them cite safety concerns about being alerted to road conditions and other crap like that. But, let's face it, most of these guys have matured through the professional ranks with someone in a team car, watching the race feed on a tv, telling them exactly what's going on. I don't have any specific statistics to back it up, but I'd be willing to bet way fewer breakaway attempts succeed these days because the team directors can tell their boys exactly how fast to ride to catch the break inside the final kilometer. This is insanely valuable information if you're the guy/s who is/are assigned to lay down a pace that will ensure the break gets caught. You don't want to catch them too quickly because other attacks will get launched. You don't want to leave it too late, because, well, you lose. Without a team director in a car with a calculator and a radio you've got to send a guy back to that car to try and find out this information. The riders can give me all the lines about safety they want, I'm not buying it.
But, the real concern here shouldn't be safety or the dissemination of information. The real concern should be what long term affects this fight between the riders and the UCI will have on the sport. We've already seen our first protest by the riders at the Mallorca Challenge. They all defied the rules by using radios and the UCI fought back by neutralizing the stage and not recording results. Tyler Farrar won the bunch sprint, but without real results he basically won a group ride on closed roads. Minus the closed roads, I now have something in common with Tyler Farrar.
On twitter this morning Robbie Hunter writes that the UCI will lose the fight. But, I'm not so sure. The UCI is nothing if they aren't stubborn and I think we can clearly see with their constant denial of ever doing any wrong and their need to always be the ones dictating policy, I don't know that they'll ever back down.
The way I see it the two sides both have these chips to play. Riders can continually defy the rule by wearing radios. Which, they've already shown is sort of a weak hand to play because even after their first little exhibition at the Mallorca Challenge they already folded for the rest of the race and will not use radios out of respect to the Mallorca Challenge fans and race promoters. At the Tour of Qatar, same thing. Riders were going to protest and then the chest beating ended when a punishment that nobody was really willing to chance was laid out in front of them. Every time the riders decide they want to protest by using radios, the UCI, who has the power here, can simply lay out some harsh punishment and call everyone's bluff.
The real test is going to be for much bigger races with a larger viewing audience and much more prestige to the winner. Sure Tom Boonen really likes being the winner of the Tour of Qatar, but I'm sure he'd trade every Qatar victory for just one more Paris-Roubaix (They can use radios at Roubaix). Criterium International and Ghent-Wevelgem are both big races where radios are banned. Player lockouts and strikes happen in other sports all the time. Maybe a unified rider strike at either of these races would get the point across. But, it just seems apparent to me that as soon as riders stop racing big time races over something as frivolous as the use of radios, sponsors start fleeing and taking their money elsewhere.
We've already seen big time teams struggle to find title sponsorship and with the other controversy that is consistently hanging over the sport like a black cloud, who in their right mind is going to pony up a few million bucks just to have their logo on the butt of some cyclist planted firmly on the ground?
I'm not saying the riders are completely wrong. And I'll admit this opinion completely omits a larger problem that the radios are really just a piece of the total problem. The UCI is basically a tyrant writing new rules without consulting the constituencies they represent. But, in the end, like most things, it's going to come down to money. If the riders stop racing their bikes I hope they all have some other form of gainful employment lined up because the money that feeds them is going to dry up pretty fast.
And, while I clearly think the safety argument from the riders is stupid, I'm not in favor of the ban. I actually think Craig Lewis has the best idea.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Connect the Dots
With all the new talk about the Floyd interview and what that might mean there are a set of dots that I'm connecting that I'm not sure most people are. It's not a complicated line of logic to follow but it's sort of indirect.
Bill Strickland, editor something or another at Bicycling magazine, wrote a blog where he looked at all the podiums of Lance's 7 Tour de France victories and he wrote something along the lines of fine, you want to say Lance was on the juice, here's the other podiums and how many of those guys have been connected to doping so who do you give the award to? How far down the placings do you have to go before you find the first legitimate clean guy to FedEx a yellow tshirt too? His podiums here. And, obviously those are more my words than his because he gets paid to type things and I just do it because I want to.
Sticking with the same idea we make it to the 2006 Tour de France and Floyd wins, then he doesn't, and Oscar Pereiro becomes the new champion and he makes public statements about how Floyd stole his Tour de France title but Floyd says he knows for a fact that Pereiro wasn't clean either. Floyd was his teammate the year before on Phonak and witnessed Pereiro taking part in blood transfusions. Then Floyd says he talked to Pereiro before the final TT of the 06 Tour and Pereiro says he still has half a bag of blood to take. But, Pereiro says he's clean, Floyd says he isn't, you can decide for yourself who you want to believe. But, if we go by the same sort of logic that Strickland is using above, if Floyd's dirty then the next guy probably is too, so who should actually be winning the 2006 Tour de France?
This brings us to our most current doping controversy in this drama free sport. Three time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and contaminated beef ingestion related positive. Here are the facts, the amount of clenbuterol found in Contador's system is so little that the performance boosting affects are scientifically questionable at best. Here's another fact, on that great battle to the summit of Mt. Ventoux this is past Tour de France a seemingly clean Andy Schleck had no issue matching a doped Contador pedal stroke for pedal stroke. This can only mean a few things, 1) Contador is really clean or 2) Schleck isn't so clean either. I guess it could also mean 3) Schleck is super human going uphill but sucks against the clock?
Basically, what I'm trying to say here, is all you Andy Schleck fans out there might want to keep your stones in hand before chucking them at Contador through the walls of your glass house. I know Andy Schleck is the golden boy in the media, but I'm not sure you've got to jump to too many conclusions to connect the dots in this situation. I'm not convinced that if you want to find the real clean winner of the 2010 Tour de France your search will stop at the 2nd step of the podium.
And, please don't take this as some sort of cry to give Levi the jersey. Levi used to be a guy that was good for two weeks and then dropped time like a rock in water. There's no way I believe age and experience have suddenly made him a 3 week contender. Gonna have to keep looking down the results list further than that.
Bill Strickland, editor something or another at Bicycling magazine, wrote a blog where he looked at all the podiums of Lance's 7 Tour de France victories and he wrote something along the lines of fine, you want to say Lance was on the juice, here's the other podiums and how many of those guys have been connected to doping so who do you give the award to? How far down the placings do you have to go before you find the first legitimate clean guy to FedEx a yellow tshirt too? His podiums here. And, obviously those are more my words than his because he gets paid to type things and I just do it because I want to.
Sticking with the same idea we make it to the 2006 Tour de France and Floyd wins, then he doesn't, and Oscar Pereiro becomes the new champion and he makes public statements about how Floyd stole his Tour de France title but Floyd says he knows for a fact that Pereiro wasn't clean either. Floyd was his teammate the year before on Phonak and witnessed Pereiro taking part in blood transfusions. Then Floyd says he talked to Pereiro before the final TT of the 06 Tour and Pereiro says he still has half a bag of blood to take. But, Pereiro says he's clean, Floyd says he isn't, you can decide for yourself who you want to believe. But, if we go by the same sort of logic that Strickland is using above, if Floyd's dirty then the next guy probably is too, so who should actually be winning the 2006 Tour de France?
This brings us to our most current doping controversy in this drama free sport. Three time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and contaminated beef ingestion related positive. Here are the facts, the amount of clenbuterol found in Contador's system is so little that the performance boosting affects are scientifically questionable at best. Here's another fact, on that great battle to the summit of Mt. Ventoux this is past Tour de France a seemingly clean Andy Schleck had no issue matching a doped Contador pedal stroke for pedal stroke. This can only mean a few things, 1) Contador is really clean or 2) Schleck isn't so clean either. I guess it could also mean 3) Schleck is super human going uphill but sucks against the clock?
Basically, what I'm trying to say here, is all you Andy Schleck fans out there might want to keep your stones in hand before chucking them at Contador through the walls of your glass house. I know Andy Schleck is the golden boy in the media, but I'm not sure you've got to jump to too many conclusions to connect the dots in this situation. I'm not convinced that if you want to find the real clean winner of the 2010 Tour de France your search will stop at the 2nd step of the podium.
And, please don't take this as some sort of cry to give Levi the jersey. Levi used to be a guy that was good for two weeks and then dropped time like a rock in water. There's no way I believe age and experience have suddenly made him a 3 week contender. Gonna have to keep looking down the results list further than that.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
I Believe Floyd
If you follow cycling and all the related drama you are well aware of the interview that Floyd Landis recently did with Paul Kimmage. I would post the link to the entire 30,000 word un-edited transcript, but, like most things that speak ill of Lance Armstrong, it has been taken down. Or, at least I can't get to it anymore.
When I started reading it I thought there's no way anything new will be said. It'll be the same old Floyd sounding a little bit crazy, but there were parts that completely blew me away. Without access to actually quote them, I'll be paraphrasing as best I can remember so, bear with me.
First, I've always thought that Lance Armstrong doped his way to 7 Tours de France victories. I've had conversations with people as far back as 2004 where I took that exact stance. Whenever he was questioned about it he always took the exact same stance that I did when I was questioned about my fake ID at the age of 19. I would pretend to be completely outraged that anyone would question me. I would act tired of reciting my birth date and address. I would then grab the idea back from the person and insist that I would take my business elsewhere. Sound a bit familiar?
What I didn't ever say was that I blamed him for it, just like I don't blame Floyd, or any other guy who wants to race, much less win, the Tour de France. I've always taken the stance that every single one of us makes some sort of decision at work because that's what we're expected to do or even what we think we have to do to keep our jobs. For some of us those decisions are easy, for others, they are not. One could obviously make comparisons to other professions decisions that need to be made, but that's neither here nor there. For a Pro Tour level cyclist, that's the decision you have to make and I am not about to point the finger at anyone, whichever direction they decide on. So again, I've always thought that Lance doped, just like I always thought everyone else did also, but I never realized how corrupt and just how much of an asshole he is.
There were two main pieces of that interview that stunned me.
1) When Mercury stopped paying Floyd and the UCI wouldn't force the team to pay him out of the bank guarantee and Lance stepped in to tell Floyd to quite down and even apologize because down the road they'd need a favor, ie., make a positive go away like (maybe just like Lance's 1999 test), I was pretty blown away.
So that's how you do it? Wow. Tough to fault anybody for doping when you proceed under the impression that the guys who are meant to govern the sport are complicit in the act. It's one thing if everybody dopes and everybody has the same access to all the same drugs. Then, essentially the playing field is leveled. But, if only the biggest and richest stars can dope without having to worry about a positive test because it can be made to disappear, then the playing field's not really so level is it?
2) People always talk about how much of a difference the dope makes. I've always found that the people talking about this difference aren't the people on the juice and therefore don't have a first hand experience of just how effective the stuff is. The reason for this is pretty obvious; if you are juiced up you can't exactly come out and say how much better you’re riding thanks to the extra blood bag you just shot up the night before. But, in this case, we have Floyd, who has stopped pretending like he was clean and flat out said, it's helpful, but probably not 40% more helpful, which is the made up statistic that is generally thrown around.
Floyd says in the interview that the stuff helps, but you still have good days and bad days. It's no surprise that his incredible ride in stage 17 on the way to Morzine at the 2006 Tour was the day after a transfusion, but, the wattage numbers have been looked at from that day, and it wasn't exactly impressive from the standards of a guy with double the fresh red blood cells in his veins. So, who knows, maybe everybody else was just too tired to chase?
In fact, Floyd says that the guys in the peloton speak pretty openly about what they're doing and that he knew, from speaking to Oscar Pereiro (who denies all of this, obviously) that he still had half a bag of blood to transfuse before the final time trial. If you remember, Floyd ended up beating Pereiro in that time trial by enough to take the yellow jersey back and win the 2006 Tour de France. Floyd doesn't specifically say that he didn't juice more before that last day, but he does say that he knew Pereiro had the bag and that he still wasn't worried because he knew he was just a better time trialist.
Again, this is pretty useful because if the stuff is going to make you 40% better and the guy I need to beat basically has a turbo button and I don't, I'm pretty nervous about my chances. Even with knowing that Pereiro would be juiced up for the final TT, Floyd still knew he could beat him. So is the stuff effective? Of course, but it's probably not the turbo button that everybody thinks it is. Especially if you just go ahead and admit to yourself that everybody else is doing it too.
So again, I believe Floyd. Why? That'd be a good question because he did write a book that I bought that was 100% about how he didn't use drugs. But I believe him because at this point he's giving this information away. We live in a world where TMZ and all the other smut rags are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get first pictures of celebrities kids. This morning I watched another 20 minute piece on GMA about Charlie Sheen. If Floyd wanted to, he could make all of his money back by selling this information to those news outlets about how everybody's cancer hero used drugs. If the person that Floyd is essentially accusing of doping all these years wasn’t a huge celebrity, then there’d be no opportunity to sell it and, there obviously is. But that's not what he's doing. Instead, he sat down with a journalist, answered a ton of questions and then allowed the unedited transcript to be posted online for anybody who was interested to read it.
I'm not sure what implications this has for cycling in America or the world or if at all. The more of this stuff that comes out the more convinced I am that Lance Armstrong is in a ton of trouble. And I also have a feeling that Lance isn't a guy that's going to go down alone which means that all his boys from all of those postal days, which makes up most of the popular US Cyclist (Hincapie, Zabriskie, Vande Velde) probably aren’t sleeping so well either.
I do know that the more I read about all of these exceptions being made of Lance recently it adds a ton of credibility to what Floyd's saying about his power to have the higher ups make positives go away. What exceptions you might ask? When Lance came out of retirement the UCI waived his biological passport requirement so he could race the Tour Down Under. At this year's Tour of California there's another doping requirement being waived for Lance if he wants to race there. I get that race directors would be foolish not to push to have Lance at their race. Any race with Lance is bigger than without. But if the UCI and WADA and any other governing body wants the public to believe that they were and are anything but complicit in the doping issue, these would be good times to tell even Mr. Armstrong that he's not above the law. Or, maybe he is?
When I started reading it I thought there's no way anything new will be said. It'll be the same old Floyd sounding a little bit crazy, but there were parts that completely blew me away. Without access to actually quote them, I'll be paraphrasing as best I can remember so, bear with me.
First, I've always thought that Lance Armstrong doped his way to 7 Tours de France victories. I've had conversations with people as far back as 2004 where I took that exact stance. Whenever he was questioned about it he always took the exact same stance that I did when I was questioned about my fake ID at the age of 19. I would pretend to be completely outraged that anyone would question me. I would act tired of reciting my birth date and address. I would then grab the idea back from the person and insist that I would take my business elsewhere. Sound a bit familiar?
What I didn't ever say was that I blamed him for it, just like I don't blame Floyd, or any other guy who wants to race, much less win, the Tour de France. I've always taken the stance that every single one of us makes some sort of decision at work because that's what we're expected to do or even what we think we have to do to keep our jobs. For some of us those decisions are easy, for others, they are not. One could obviously make comparisons to other professions decisions that need to be made, but that's neither here nor there. For a Pro Tour level cyclist, that's the decision you have to make and I am not about to point the finger at anyone, whichever direction they decide on. So again, I've always thought that Lance doped, just like I always thought everyone else did also, but I never realized how corrupt and just how much of an asshole he is.
There were two main pieces of that interview that stunned me.
1) When Mercury stopped paying Floyd and the UCI wouldn't force the team to pay him out of the bank guarantee and Lance stepped in to tell Floyd to quite down and even apologize because down the road they'd need a favor, ie., make a positive go away like (maybe just like Lance's 1999 test), I was pretty blown away.
So that's how you do it? Wow. Tough to fault anybody for doping when you proceed under the impression that the guys who are meant to govern the sport are complicit in the act. It's one thing if everybody dopes and everybody has the same access to all the same drugs. Then, essentially the playing field is leveled. But, if only the biggest and richest stars can dope without having to worry about a positive test because it can be made to disappear, then the playing field's not really so level is it?
2) People always talk about how much of a difference the dope makes. I've always found that the people talking about this difference aren't the people on the juice and therefore don't have a first hand experience of just how effective the stuff is. The reason for this is pretty obvious; if you are juiced up you can't exactly come out and say how much better you’re riding thanks to the extra blood bag you just shot up the night before. But, in this case, we have Floyd, who has stopped pretending like he was clean and flat out said, it's helpful, but probably not 40% more helpful, which is the made up statistic that is generally thrown around.
Floyd says in the interview that the stuff helps, but you still have good days and bad days. It's no surprise that his incredible ride in stage 17 on the way to Morzine at the 2006 Tour was the day after a transfusion, but, the wattage numbers have been looked at from that day, and it wasn't exactly impressive from the standards of a guy with double the fresh red blood cells in his veins. So, who knows, maybe everybody else was just too tired to chase?
In fact, Floyd says that the guys in the peloton speak pretty openly about what they're doing and that he knew, from speaking to Oscar Pereiro (who denies all of this, obviously) that he still had half a bag of blood to transfuse before the final time trial. If you remember, Floyd ended up beating Pereiro in that time trial by enough to take the yellow jersey back and win the 2006 Tour de France. Floyd doesn't specifically say that he didn't juice more before that last day, but he does say that he knew Pereiro had the bag and that he still wasn't worried because he knew he was just a better time trialist.
Again, this is pretty useful because if the stuff is going to make you 40% better and the guy I need to beat basically has a turbo button and I don't, I'm pretty nervous about my chances. Even with knowing that Pereiro would be juiced up for the final TT, Floyd still knew he could beat him. So is the stuff effective? Of course, but it's probably not the turbo button that everybody thinks it is. Especially if you just go ahead and admit to yourself that everybody else is doing it too.
So again, I believe Floyd. Why? That'd be a good question because he did write a book that I bought that was 100% about how he didn't use drugs. But I believe him because at this point he's giving this information away. We live in a world where TMZ and all the other smut rags are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get first pictures of celebrities kids. This morning I watched another 20 minute piece on GMA about Charlie Sheen. If Floyd wanted to, he could make all of his money back by selling this information to those news outlets about how everybody's cancer hero used drugs. If the person that Floyd is essentially accusing of doping all these years wasn’t a huge celebrity, then there’d be no opportunity to sell it and, there obviously is. But that's not what he's doing. Instead, he sat down with a journalist, answered a ton of questions and then allowed the unedited transcript to be posted online for anybody who was interested to read it.
I'm not sure what implications this has for cycling in America or the world or if at all. The more of this stuff that comes out the more convinced I am that Lance Armstrong is in a ton of trouble. And I also have a feeling that Lance isn't a guy that's going to go down alone which means that all his boys from all of those postal days, which makes up most of the popular US Cyclist (Hincapie, Zabriskie, Vande Velde) probably aren’t sleeping so well either.
I do know that the more I read about all of these exceptions being made of Lance recently it adds a ton of credibility to what Floyd's saying about his power to have the higher ups make positives go away. What exceptions you might ask? When Lance came out of retirement the UCI waived his biological passport requirement so he could race the Tour Down Under. At this year's Tour of California there's another doping requirement being waived for Lance if he wants to race there. I get that race directors would be foolish not to push to have Lance at their race. Any race with Lance is bigger than without. But if the UCI and WADA and any other governing body wants the public to believe that they were and are anything but complicit in the doping issue, these would be good times to tell even Mr. Armstrong that he's not above the law. Or, maybe he is?
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Losing Motivation
Back in November I decided I wanted to qualify for the Boston Marathon for a really good reason. I want, and always have wanted, one of these:
When I decided to do this I convinced myself that running through the winter would be better than riding through the winter and I've got to tell you, no the weekends, it is. Going out for 10-15 miles in sub freezing temps for a run is a bit easier to do than the equivalent long ride. It's easier to stay warm and besides the occasional 20mph wind gust freezing my face off, I can generally tune out the cold and just run.
When I first started this plan I was able to run outside at lunch. Now it's gotten a bit cold for that considering that I'd have to bring tights and the whole super hero get up to work on a daily basis. The obvious solution to that was run on the treadmill and while that was ok for a while, I'm over it. I just can't seem to get motivated to run on the treadmill at all anymore. This really shouldn't be surprising since it's about the most boring thing you can do. I rode indoors on my rollers the other day and was blown away by how much easier it was to mentally get through a hard 90 minute roller session with intervals than to stay on the treadmill for even 5 minutes. As soon as I start I just want to get back off.
So, here I sit, typing this instead of running during my lunch hour. It's supposed to be close to 50 today so I was looking forward to getting the change to run outside. When I just checked the weather, it's 35 and feels like 32. Warmer than I'll probably run in this weekend, but I didn't bring the right clothes for it.
All of this for a silly jacket. Hell, I don't even care if I run 9 hours in Boston (ok, that's not completely true) but I just want to qualify once and get my jacket. And, while we're sort of talking about motivation, why is it easier to get motivated to run 15 miles in 20 degree weather than 30-45 minutes indoors on a treadmill in a temperature controlled environment? That part confuses me a bit also.
Alright, I better go run because later Jill will ask me about it and I like telling her I did it rather than making up an excuse. I want warmer weather and longer bike rides!
When I decided to do this I convinced myself that running through the winter would be better than riding through the winter and I've got to tell you, no the weekends, it is. Going out for 10-15 miles in sub freezing temps for a run is a bit easier to do than the equivalent long ride. It's easier to stay warm and besides the occasional 20mph wind gust freezing my face off, I can generally tune out the cold and just run.
When I first started this plan I was able to run outside at lunch. Now it's gotten a bit cold for that considering that I'd have to bring tights and the whole super hero get up to work on a daily basis. The obvious solution to that was run on the treadmill and while that was ok for a while, I'm over it. I just can't seem to get motivated to run on the treadmill at all anymore. This really shouldn't be surprising since it's about the most boring thing you can do. I rode indoors on my rollers the other day and was blown away by how much easier it was to mentally get through a hard 90 minute roller session with intervals than to stay on the treadmill for even 5 minutes. As soon as I start I just want to get back off.
So, here I sit, typing this instead of running during my lunch hour. It's supposed to be close to 50 today so I was looking forward to getting the change to run outside. When I just checked the weather, it's 35 and feels like 32. Warmer than I'll probably run in this weekend, but I didn't bring the right clothes for it.
All of this for a silly jacket. Hell, I don't even care if I run 9 hours in Boston (ok, that's not completely true) but I just want to qualify once and get my jacket. And, while we're sort of talking about motivation, why is it easier to get motivated to run 15 miles in 20 degree weather than 30-45 minutes indoors on a treadmill in a temperature controlled environment? That part confuses me a bit also.
Alright, I better go run because later Jill will ask me about it and I like telling her I did it rather than making up an excuse. I want warmer weather and longer bike rides!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)