gord wrote:
Dev, you're drawing a false equivalence. If the rule says "12m back", and you stay 12m back, then you're obeying the rules in letter and spirit. If the rules say, "you can use otherwise prohibited drugs to treat an existing medical condition as long as you obtain a specific form of approval", and you invent a condition to justify using some drug that you think will help your performance, that's cheating.
I don't know whether BW is an asthma sufferer or whether the treatment is appropriate. If he is and it is, then sure - carry on. But so many inconsistencies have come to light that it's reasonable to wonder whether the critical elements on which the TUE rests are legitimate, and if they're not, then he was cheating. Or, if you want to stick to the credo that you're not cheating unless the UCI or WADA say you were, he was morally in the wrong. And to return to your original analogy, someone who sits 12m behind another rider, when the draft zone is 12m long, and who takes <15 seconds to exit that zone when the rules allow 15s to pass, is not in any kind of moral grey area.... hence the false equivalence.
The issue of whether or not the TUE should have been granted is, to some extent, a separate question. My reading of the timelines that have been quoted and the procedures that were followed is that the process broke down in this instance, and that an exemption was granted when perhaps one wasn't warranted. But whether or not the TUE should have been given, on the basis of what was submitted, doesn't alter the fact that the submission shouldn't have been made if BW wasn't suffering from whatever malady he claimed to be, if there weren't other permitted remedies available, etc. And if it shouldn't have been made, then it's cheating, in the same way that appealing for a catch in baseball or cricket when you know that the ball hit the ground before you took it is cheating, regardless of whether the umpire gives it out or not.
I think we can all "sniff" what was going on. But then tighten the rules so guys like Wiggins don't get away with it. That's what I am getting at. If he legally got the TUE he did not cheat. He could fabricate all kinds of reason why the TUE was needed provided he could generate the correct supporting documents, then he's followed the rules. The problem many of you guys get into is all this discussion about the spirit of the rules and moral code and all of that. Like I said, I don't feel he followed the spirit, and it does not conform with what I think is morally right, but I bet you some guy from Khazhakstan or Kenya is thinking that every everything Wiggo did is just fine and they are going to do exactly the same thing and get legally juiced up. So you need a tighter system.
Now if you prove that the TUE is invalid then he cheated, but right now the TUE is valid so no rules were broken so legally speaking no cheating. Using our morals, yeah, he probably was on the wrong side of our moral code, but our moral code unfortunately carries zero weight in getting his TdF title revoked. Prove the TUE was invalid and that this was straight up cheating, then it's all good. Until then he did everything legally.
It's like the train at 70.3 Worlds. All legal slipstreaming at legal distance....or maybe actually not. As it stands Wiggins was likely MORE LEGAL than most of the 70.3 WC front group as more than one of us saw guys slide inside 12m and not make the pass. That's definitely illegal and cheating (the fact that they got away with it does not make it "not cheating"), but they got away with it as no ref was there. Wiggo on the other hand has tabled everything he has done to the "refs" and has not hidden anything that we are aware of.