Seems like pretty open language from McQuaid. I wonder who he is referring to about riders they have started proceedings against, based on the passport. I noticed also that the UCI seems to get credit in other sources for moving ahead with the passport.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61O2...type=sportsNews

Call me wary.

He has provided frank talk before, but then we had the apparent collusion during last year's TdF.

Hopefully these aren't Star Trek 'Expendable Ensign' equivalents. If they are, then they might as well create a new team member category: GC Rider, Domestique, Ensign Expendable and thereby formalize the role. Hopefully the riders union will support their fight fo real contracts.

Then ne'er do well cyclists could even apply for, try out and gain official GC Team contracts knowing that they just have to sacrifice two years of competition where they likely wouldn't achieve anything anyways. The GC contenders like L'Ance could get Scotty (aka Verdruggen/McQ/Joohoo B.) to beam them out of doping control, leaving the Ensigns to be consumed by the evil WADA Empire who, despite their complete bumbling, managed to create the only cloaking device known in the cycling final frontier. The look-a-like pointy-eared sport fraud lawanians and their cloaking device having not been written into the script yet, and are just starting to go through auditions.

In a later series, aka the next doping generation, the WADAnians (esp those with no knowledge of cloaking technology) will actually become members of pro tour teams, and heroes of the cycling federation. Some of use will even strive to learn their language. But, be on the look out for the genetically enhanced borg who will assimilate everything into mind-numbing sport boredom.

Dave.

Wow you must have a lot of free time. The "apparent collusion" has yet to be proved in any way.

Everyone believes in conspiracy theories, just not everyone believes my theory.

Ok, but my WADAnian expendable ensign theory is more credible than yours.

At least mine isn't out there at the edge of the universe.

(perhaps you haven't noticed how small fry or those 'desperate at the very ends of their career' seem to get busted a lot more often than the harley-riding GC contenders - not a conspiracy, just observation)

Dave.

While I don't believe there's collusion per se, I think there's a certain inertia and embarassment that hinders the fight against doping in cycling. Canadian UCI cycling officials actively lobbied me in the 80's (when I managed CCA doping programs) at the Canadian Cycling Association to change the name from 'doping control', or 'anti-doping', to 'medical control' , the quaint euphemism the UCI used to use.

They also accepted tacitly that there were differences between pros and amateurs, that nudge, nudge, wink, wink one had to be prepared for if one wanted to be a pro. The biggest fans of the sport I know are officials, so I can see them wanting to smooth things out a bit and maybe talk too loud at dinner, or have a chat before going in to do the testing when you know you might be ending someone's career.

And that's a tough thing to root out; officials' assignments are highly political, lobbyed-for prizes, so it would be hard to keep a job in that field and be an uncompromising campaigner. Sooner or later, you will piss someone off, like maybe the president of your national fed that depends on dopers results to bring in licensees and cash, and poof, your international assignments dissappear.

That's why I think Pierre Blanshard was significant as CCA president and a UCI official. He had a track record of prodding the CCA on inaction on Jeanson when he was Quebec president, yet managed to keep enough friends to keep his UCI jobs when he was elected CCA president, and even get asked to do the first chaperoned UCI tests at T of C.

For those reasons, I have some hope, but I know they aren't all like Pierre. So, I applaud McQuaid for saying what would have been considered heresy in the 80's, but know he has a herd of cats, as this forum suggests, to get in line.

L

True, the comment about doping being entrenched is "open," but the second comment is the same bogus doubletalk for which McQuaid is now infamous.

Recall this dates back to pre-Tour a couple years ago when it leaked out that WADA had more than 30 guys, including some big name stars, with passports with abnormalities beyond threshold (e.g. clearly indicating doping) immediately prior to the Giro. As it turns out, McQuaid had intended to bury those results without a word and cover them up. He was furious when they leaked out. He stonewalled. He claimed (just as he does in this article) that it was just a few, an insignificant number, not something so big, and that he felt it would be better for cycling not to reveal their identities, but instead talk to them quietly and help them get back from the dark side to the ranks of the good guys.

Then came the Bernard Kohl mess and more and people came back at McQuaid and put him in a box, basically saying one of two things had to be true: either the Passport system had caught Kohl and the other dopers and McQuaid had buried the results, or Passport didn't detect any doping in Kohl or the other dopers. Tough spot for McQuaid. Take your pick: either the Passport he was talking up at the ultimate guarantee that cycling was now clean turns out to be impotent, ineffective, completely beatable, and not a significant deterrent, or it worked, but McQuaid was part of the apparatus covering up the doping, and instead of prosecuting Kohl and Co., he went to them privately, told them where their Passport values had gone awry and helped them hide in plain sight.

He was stuck. The only way out was to create a sort of bogus middle ground that McQuaid refers to here as "a potential anti-doping rule violation based on the passport". He's trying to spin this as instances where the blood values indicate doping, just not enough to merit action other than private warnings, while protecting their identities. Problem is, if there is any objective system of evaluation, that is replicable in a uniform and just way, then there is no such thing as "a potential anti-doping violation." There is no such thing as "a little pregnant."

Bottom line: McQuaid is playing a completely bogus game of semantics. A con job. And I think only a fool would be swallowing it. Then again, part of the problem with the Passport, is that McQuaid refuses to disclose anything about the thresholds and objectively verifiable standards for application of the Passport. Instead, it's essentially "look, we know doping when we see it, and we'll let you know when we see it. Until then, move along, move along, and don't ask me any more questions."

Setting aside the words, the actions of the UCI under McQuaid are unambiguous. He's a critical cog in the veil of silence, a central player in the non-stop obfuscation, a guy who has fought transparency at each and every turn, and a guy who has actively attacked and attempted to discredit every one of the guys who blew the whistle, from Jakshe to Kohl. He is a tool of the entrenched doping machine. He is just a plain old tool.

Well said. Excellent statement of the "real world" context in which things aren't nearly so entirely black or white and certainly not as simple as they might seem to some. This is the dilemma of the political arena generally. I'm sure when Anne Gripper started out, she didn't intend to become a completely compromised tool of the "don't rock the boat" bureaucracy that finds endless rationalizations for why they should actively cover up doping rather than shine a light on it and prosecute it. I understand the "trust us, we mean well, and we really believe we stand a better chance of weeding out doping if we work with the cyclists behind the scenes, without upsetting the sponsors, etc., etc." rationalization. I just happen to regard that as the proverbial slipperly slope. As McQuaid and Gripper have demonstrated, once you start sliding, you're going to wind up on a very long journey to the bottom of the hill.

As you point out, the Blanshard's of the world are the exception, not the rule. To put it another way, McQuaid ain't no Blanshard.

Not a very effective tool of omerta if he keeps saying stuff like the above. Kinda like a mob boss saying organized crime is alive and well!

I suspect, as the leader of such a sport, he is trapped by the decisions about what are the thresholds. You can see that Pechstein was sanctioned by ISU (se para 61 in the CAS decision) for certain blood levels that did not seem to trigger the same reaction by the UCI when certain blood values from the tour were published, then, ahem, unpublished. The ISU had to fight quite a long expensive legal battle with Pechstein, and had to do it with thresholds they had to pick; WADA doesn't seem to have them yet. I strongly suspect UCI doesn't either, and knows from passport testing that many pros would not pass the ISU thresholds.
http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centre/news...ompete+olympics
http://www.tas-cas.org/d2wfiles/document/3...20PECHSTEIN.pdf

Thanks, but are Gripper or McQuaid compromised on passport sanctions? Given that the International Skating Union (I encourage you to read the CAS decision on Pechstein) http://www.tas-cas.org/d2wfiles/document/3...20PECHSTEIN.pdf, had to steer it's own course on the thresholds for passport doping, and as cycling is probably at least as bad for doping, I can imagine why the UCI would take a wait and see approach to the ISU's case. Pechstein is the first non-analytical passport values case that I know of. As far as I know, the other passport related cycling cases just used the passport to identify likely dopers, that were then tested and busted other ways.

So that makes the UCI exactly a week late in acting on the ISU decision , if they haven't already, since the final Pechstein appeal was denied Feb 18. http://www.ctvolympics.ca/speed-skating/ne...wsid=45887.html

I'm just hoping there are some National cycling federation presidents reading this who decide to write the UCI now and say, 'Ok, time to set the UCI thresholds, set aside the legal budget, and hunker down'. Maybe some loud and clear warnings that it's coming too so there's someone left to ride the Tour.