Coming back to the gaming of the system, they (Sir Wiggo and Brailford) can technically stand up there with a straight face and say they did everything clean, because they have followed the rules (albeit very loose and easily hijacked) to the letter even though you and I consider them to be doped to the gills, but just like legally using caffeinated gels that none of us need a TUE for, they have taken the step of taking a drug legally that you need a TUE for. All playing inside the rules.

Rules need to be tightened if you don't want the players to get away with this stuff. This is what Dumoulin was kind of implying in his cyclingnew.com interview. There is always be someone who takes full advantage of the rules, playing completely legally if the rules allow for it. It's like the pro triathlete who sits at 12.01 m of the draft zone forever and they when he enters he takes 14.99 seconds to get through every times. He sits right on the boundary of what he is allowed to do. If we don't like it, make it 20 m and 7.5 seconds to pass once you enter.

I am certain that if you had Vino participate in this thread, he'd basically tell us that every team NOT doing what Sky is doing are idiots for leaving time on the table. Do you see how this ends up. Everyone ends up using every armament that the current arms race allows.

Wiggo still "performance enhanced" but totally legally...basically legally approved doping. Technically same deal as a 2.99 second sticky bottle hand off. (I assume they allow 3 seconds, but I might have that number wrong).

For the record, yes, I think Wiggins is a doper. Same with Froome. Same with the Williams sisters. And same with Bobridge and most of the other athletes implicated by Fancy Bears.

Eh, my guess is that it's setup to allow than to disallow. A strong union gets things setup like that.

Eta: when you start talking about people's "health", there are going to be far more restrictions on what authorities can do to stop someone from doing their job. So my guess is that if medical say xyz helps w whatever symptom, legally they are going to have hands tied when trying to ban it.

RowToTri wrote:

So he was injected with a powerful corticosteroid with potentially dangerous side-effects just before the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France and the 2013 Giro. He applied for and received a TUE for them both times - so he followed the rules.

I think it is clear that the rules need to change. But it is also clear that his actions are very much against the spirit of clean sport. Here is what David Millar, doper cum anti-doping crusader says about this drug:

“As I said in my book [Racing Through The Dark], I took EPO and testosterone patches, and they obviously produce huge differences in your blood and you felt at your top level … Kenacort, though, was the only one you took and three days later you looked different.
“I remember it was one of the reasons I took sleeping pills because Kenacort put you on this weird high. It’s quite scary because it’s catabolic so it’s eating into you. It felt destructive. It felt powerful.”
Millar said there was no doubt in his mind that the drug was performance-enhancing and called on the powers-that-be to ban its use in-competition via TUEs.

“You would do all the training but my weight would stick,” he said. “But if I took Kenacort, 1.5-2kgs would drop off in like a week. And not only would the weight drop off I would feel stronger.
“If you are non-asthmatic and you take Ventolin it’s not going to give you any advantage. But if you take Kenacort it’s not only going to make a sick person better, it’s going to make a sick person better than a healthy person. That’s a very grey area.

From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...anned-says-david-mi/

Do we consider Wiggins just taking all of the legal advantages he could, or do we consider it an immoral choice, looking to gain an advantage against riders who respect clean sport and/or not be forced to take dangerous substances in order to be successful?

It sounds to me like we are creating a bar that Wiggins was supposed to meet (and failed to) so we can act outraged. Wiggins and team laid the expectation that they weren't doping and they aren't. The TUE process is completely legal and within the rules. The fact that we don't accept the TUE process is not relevant to this point. We can't retroactively create a standard for fairness then impose it on an athlete.

I frankly don't care one way or another about the TUE process. But people here get so appalled at any little medication that we need to draw a line. The TUE process is what sets the standard for taking certain medications.

No one would object to it if they never thought it would come out. I also wonder if WADA really have the in house staff to review every TUE

First the team does it. They send it to the UCI. If the UCI say it's a ok. I don't see WADA having the resources to sense check every application

This shit - and that is what this is - has exposed brailsford and wiggins for being no different from Lance and Bruyneel in spirit only in the letter of the law

Yeah, I really think that is the easiest / simplest solution. No massive changes in the system are required....just make TUE's public.

I agree, Ralph.




I couldn't disagree more. Athletes have a right to medical privacy as much as anyone. The system should allow for that, as it does at the moment. If the TUE system is allowing athletes to take drugs to enhance performance under the pretence of medical need, then the TUE approval system needs refining. Perhaps a start would be having more than one doctor review and sign off the TUE or not approving TUEs retrospectively so they can be used to mask PEDs.

That's where the focus needs to be. Stripping athletes of medical privacy is not correct. These are sportsmen and women, not gladiators at the whim of the public.

I agree, Ralph.




I couldn't disagree more. Athletes have a right to medical privacy as much as anyone. The system should allow for that, as it does at the moment. If the TUE system is allowing athletes to take drugs to enhance performance under the pretence of medical need, then the TUE approval system needs refining. Perhaps a start would be having more than one doctor review and sign off the TUE or not approving TUEs retrospectively so they can be used to mask PEDs.

That's where the focus needs to be. Stripping athletes of medical privacy is not correct. These are sportsmen and women, not gladiators at the whim of the public.

nope. most of us would agree that they played by the rules, albeit using an interpretation of the rules that pushed things to the hazy boundaries of the rules. Proving intent is a lot harder to do, and not many are trying to prove that though most would agree that the intent is to take full advantage of the fringe (or is it marginal) benefits provided by the treatment.

the outrage is at the inconsistencies between what were done and what were stated by Wiggo and Brailsford when they claimed that they'd hold themselves accountable to a higher standard (e.g. no needles). It was a publicity ploy at the time to extricate themselves from the fall outs from the Armstrong investigations, and they had not imagined at the time that they would need to reconcile their actions with their words at a later time (albeit the disclosure was made public by an organization with serious moral credibility issues)