Great Post From Gerard's Cervelo Blog Re: TDF

Triathlon Forum
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Thought I’d post it here for the benefit of the peaceful tribe. Some good point raised…

Where to start

29-Jul-2007: I’ve started a blog entry several times in the last week, but every time I drowned in a sea of disbelief. How many idiots does it take to hold a Tour de France? Every day somebody manages to do or say something even dumber than the day before. A small selection:

  • UCI and the ASO make strong statements about fighting doping, but they still cannot figure out the Fuentes nickname “Valv. (Piti)”. There is apparently a fairly well-known rider with a dog named Piti, but they just can’t put their finger on it. ASO probably thinks it’s Lance, just because.
  • Valv. (Piti)’s teammate’s dog is also on the list. Must be some fast canines they breed in Spain, I wonder if they can outrun Michael Vick’s dogs.
  • UCI comes up with a rider pledge against doping, apparently without any input from riders, teams or race organizers. Only riders who sign the pledge can ride the Tour, so everybody signs, making the whole pledge a mockery. ASO is happy despite not being consulted, until the first doping case appeared. Then it was all the fault of the UCI again, didn’t see that coming.
  • Experts agree that no doping-sinner will ever pay one-year’s salary back to the UCI as stated in the pledge. If any of the riders busted at the Tour ever does, I will grab my bike and ride from the UCI headquarters in Switzerland to wherever the ASO headquarters are in an attempt to broker a truce. Then I will move on to the Middle East.
  • Astana’s Matthias Kessler sets a new world record for testosterone/epi-testosterone ratio. Blames four packages with “Chinese writing” on them. I’m sorry, but either he has completely missed the whole tainted food supplement discussion for the past ten years, or he is insulting every cycling fan in the world with the most bone-headed story every. How can somebody that stupid still be alive? It goes against everything we know about natural selection.
  • Sinkewitz’ test results come out in July, even though the test was early June. Is there no procedure to get these things done quickly?
  • UCI blames the ASO, ASO blames UCI. Still didn’t see that coming.
  • When the Sinkewitz information came out, it was just about the A sample. How can we trust an anti-doping process that can’t even follow its own confidentiality rules?
  • German TV stops broadcasting when the Sinkewitz affaire comes out “because cycling has a doping problem”. Message to other sports: Make sure you don’t have any positive tests. Translation: You can’t stop doping, so just don’t do serious testing.
  • German politicians jump on the bandwagon and call for all sort of actions. They don’t like cycling anymore, but they continue to love the clean sports of track & field and soccer. As long as they don’t take doping tests seriously anyway, once they do they will probably walk away from those sports as well.
  • Speaking of soccer, the FIFA president finally admitted in 2003 that soccer did have a doping problem. But still no action on information that the ex-captain of the French team regularly visits a Swiss clinic for some blood work. Comments from the French soccer federation: “We haven’t read the article, although it is probably true. But is that illegal, we’re not sure?" (and have apparently no desire to find out).
  • Adidas considers stopping the sponsorship of T-Mobile over doping concerns. No word on their sponsorship of major-league baseball teams.
  • Dog race is rudely interrupted by Markus Burghardt from T-Mobile. Dog protests: “Can’t they keep this cycling freak show off the road while we’re having a serious event.”
  • Vinokourov tests positive for using somebody else’s blood. Of course, only the A sample but the news leaks anyway. Vino proclaims innocence (didn’t see that one coming at all), says he has always raced clean, snickers can be heard in the peloton. Still, whether he is clean or not, it is hard to believe anybody could be so stupid to use a doping method that is so easily detectible. Or is it arrogance?
  • Rasmussen misses the gate change announcement and ends up on a plane to Italy instead of Mexico. Forgets to tell the anti-doping authorities in the ensuing two months.
  • UCI blames the ASO, ASO blames UCI. Still didn’t see that coming.
  • Rasmussen gets embroiled in a doping controversy. Rabobank is “surprised”. Nobody else is. Once again, snickering can be heard in the peloton.
  • Cofidis institutes the “Movement for clean cycling” and stages a protest with a few other teams. Later that same day, Cofidis rider Moreni tests positive and Cofidis goes home.
  • Rasmussen is rumored to be one of the “men in black” who train in neutral apparel to avoid being recognized by doping inspectors. And supposedly Rasmussen doesn’t want to draw attention to being in Italy when he is supposed to be in Mexico. Putting another nail in Darwin’s coffin, he does however pose for photo-ops.
  • WADA’s Dick Pound claims that cycling’s positive doping tests and exclusions show the sport is not serious about cleaning up. Come again? Aside from that, he seems to be having a good week, no reports of any slander lawsuits against him.

So where does the sport go from here? Cycling has two options. Either we get back in line with most other sports in the world, stop serious testing and pretend we don’t have a problem, and life will be grand (big-paying sponsors, good TV contracts, not a care in the world aside from cyclists dying at an early age and robbing those wanting to race clean of a chance to win the big races). Or the sport, riders, teams, sponsors and fans all agree that we have to push through now, that things will get worse before they get better, but eventually they will get better. Nobody should believe that this year’s top-10 is clean, but it may be a little cleaner than last year. Babysteps, as a friend of mine would say. That does make it difficult to love the sport right now, I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly interested in watching the last week of the Tour. On the other hand, I still love the sport as much as I ever have, and it was certainly good to be out on the bike in Collingwood, where we are for our North American dealer show. In the end, it’s much more important that people discover and enjoy cycling as a participatory sport, and if we can top that up with some interesting and mostly clean professional cycling, that’s a bonus. If not, I’ll just go for another ride.

So where does Cervélo go from here? Well, we think the change has to come from within the teams, and as a sponsor we need to encourage that change. So we are happy to contribute to the Team CSC anti-doping program, but we want to do more. One of the ways we now hope to do that is by exploiting the superiority of our bikes. You see, thanks to the rave reviews by CSC riders and mechanics in the peloton, we regularly get other teams asking if we would be interested in sponsoring them. We have always said no, as it’s just too much work, but this past month, I have started to respond with “Sure, if you institute Team CSC’s anti-doping program”. So far one team has said they would be interested in doing that, so we’ll see how that progresses, and I’ll keep you informed. If we can get a couple of teams to adopt the Team CSC anti-doping program, maybe it can snowball from there.

If you have any other constructive ideas on how Cervélo can do its part in changing this sport, please let me know.

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Who would have thought that engineering would help clean up the Tour? Funny how people here love to say “it doesn’t matter what frame you put these riders on,” and yet teams realize that it DOES. Cervelo doesn’t pay anything (just gives bikes), so I think it is showing that at least some people are starting to realize that good old fashioned Merckx/Pinarello/Colnago geometry is great for the road, but not so much for TT’ing… That, and maybe, just maybe, building a carbon bike the way you’d build a bike out of Reynolds 831 is probably not the best way to build a bike… If that skillset can be used a bargaining chip to get people to ride cleaner, then that is great. I, for one, was in some ways pleased to see the CSC boys struggle in the last TT. Cancellara was showing that he had busted his ass for two-plus weeks and he was TIRED. None of this nonsense of smoking the final TT on fresh legs. Imagine, the world TT champ is worn out from a grand tour. It seems like a novel concept these days. To me, that was the surest proof the program is working. The CSC riders looked human. And I was cheering for them because of it…

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edit: Oooooops, I was wrong.

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Good points there.

Maybe it’s time that bike component manufacturers take a role in turning up the heat on the teams to quit doping.

Win on Sunday, sell on Monday. Works particularly well in the bike industry, and they (the bike companies) of all people should know they’d be hardest hit if a team they sponsor is caught doping.

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Personally, I find this blog entry to be disingenuous. I mean Basso was on CSC when he was doping. He was riding Cervelo. I think Cervelo is jonny come lately to the game. If there were serious they would have been really pushing for testing years ago, not now when they didn’t have a rider podium at the TdF. Its weak and pathetic in my opinion.

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Whose model should Cervelo have emmulated? What bike company can you point to pre-2006 and say “they did it right, do it like they do”

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I am not saying other companies had testing protocols in the past. I just find it rather hypocritical when their previous main GC podium contender rider was a doper, and now that they don’t have any guys podium at then end, they are all over pushing testing etc. It wasn’t like doping was not known about and it wasn’t as if rumors of people doping wasn’t rampant. If they wanted to know about Basso doping I am sure they could have found out. Instead, they like everyone else turned a blind eye, cashing in on him, until it wasn’t profitable anymore to do so because of his bad press. Now to come out trying to play the lets get rid of doping in cycling card is just weak.

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Maybe I’m too much of a cervelo fan…

But stick yourself in their shoes. Cervelo was supplying bikes to CSC from 2003. Basso moved to CSC in 2004. We don’t know if Basso was already doping (or if he really ever doped at all… since he claimed never to have doped). I wouldn’t be sure that Cervelo could just “find out” if Basso was doping; I’m assuming they had more important things to do, like design and engineer better bikes.

When Puerto exploded in 2006, even if Cervelo got a whiff of what was happening before the shit hit the fan, what could they do? Even if they knew Basso was doping, could they simply withdraw sponsorship from the team mid-season? Furthermore, if one of the riders of the team independently seeks out a way to dope himself, are you going to penalize the rest of the team, some of whom have been around for longer than Basso, and have helped you in the development of your bike?

I believe bike (and bike equipment) companies have far more at stake here than other sponsors. Like I’d watch the Discovery Channel anyways, whether or not they sponsor a cycling team. I’m not gonna cancel my T-mobile subscription just because someone on the team was caught doping. And I’ll probably never drink Gerolsteiner, be insured by AG2R, nor install heating from Saunier Duval. However, as a cyclist, I wouldn’t risk riding a BMC Pro Machine and be teased by my cycling buddies for riding a bike that sponsored 2 teams that had been caught doping in the past 2 years; I’d rather ride a soloist. (I’d have 2nd thoughts about the BMC TT01 if I were given one though. (= )

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Cervelo was probably busy enough figuring out how to sponsor a pro cycling team… let alone have time to figure out an anti-doping policy.

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Can’t agree with you. If you use your argument then essentially no one in cycling can initiate any kind of action to clean up the sport because at any place in the sport you are never going to be more than one place removed from someone who is doping, someone who has doped, someone who was on a team that dopes etc etc. Therefore by your standard, they are guilty by association and thus disingenuous hypocrites

Reading what Cervelo are doing in this area is most reassuring and gives an added sense of pride when I ride mine now.

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your opinion is assinine. basso was suspected to be involved in Puerto so CSC dismissed him unless he could prove his innocence. I doubt cervelo would have had any say in it anyway, but Riis acted rather quickly to boot him.

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I’m not sure if this adds anything to the conversation but Cervelo bikes in the 90’s were very similar to GT. I have owned a P2, a P2k a P3 and GT Vengeance and I must say that the similarities make one wonder who had the ideas first.

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I was talking about the process of weeding out the dopers, not the similarity in designs.

Specialized did not set up some stringent program after the Festina debacle, this is not their fault nor their responsibility as the bike sponsor. I was suggesting that what is being done now hasn’t been done before from a sponsor standpoint. I wasn’t taking a shot at Cervelo’s IP.

-SD

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The CSC Anti-Doping policy is a bit hypocritical given the person that has to over see the policy is an admitted doper.

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kind of hypocritical, since they’re keeping Riis
.

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I dunno, the way I see it they all doped so Riis is a great guy to be leading the program since he at least admitted it.

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So the inmates are running the asylum.

As long as someone is willing to do “whatever it takes” sports will have doping/cheating. As long as one of them is doing it, all of them will be doing it. They’ll catch a few hear and there, mostly because the people who are doping are doing it in a stupid way. Then people like Riis will stand up and make a statement 20 years after the crime when there is absolutely no repercussions to it and everyone will say what a stand up guy.

Riis would do whatever it took to win in '86 and he’s willing to facilitate it today and hide it behind “the CSC anti doping policy” Kind of like the Cofidis anti doping coalition that started the same day they got kicked out of the tour.

The only way the doping is going to change is if the riders who are riding w/ the cheats stand up and say this guy won this stage because I saw him stick a needle in his arm or stick a patch on himself last night etc… and we all know that’s not going to happen.

The next best thing would be to let them all dope themselves up and maybe in 20 years they’ll be doing 2 stages back to back and they’ll cut the tour down to 12 days. Then when they’re climbing a mountain and someones heart explodes they’ll have the same appeal as Nascar, Tapout and Ultimate fighting.

Sorry for the rant, but I’m getting sick of hearing all the riders saying they’re clean, all the testing agencies that can’t follow their own rules, and all the governing bodies saying they’re going to institute change. They’re all a bunch of liars that don’t want to change anything because the reality of getting rid of the doping is that their sports will get slower and people will get board and go to watching some other mindless sport that’s full of doped up idiots who will bash each others brains in for some TV time and a paycheck.

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**Then people like Riis will stand up and make a statement 20 years after the crime when there is absolutely no repercussions to it and everyone will say what a stand up guy. **

If everyone in cycling was/is doping, it says something about the nature of cycling, not the nature of the humans involved in cycling. You don’t just randomly get an era of 1000 bad humans that all happen to end up cyclists.

If I’m going to hire a team coach/manager from within the cycling world (which would presumably be wise) I’m going to have a hard time finding one that didn’t dope right now. I’d rather have one who was honest than one who isn’t

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You should check out who the major security companies use as “consultants”. usually convicted felons. Web security companies, yup, they employ hackers. If you want to understand how the dopers and thieves are getting away with it, you have to think like one. I see nothing wrong with the hiring of Riis. He probably knows all the tricks of the trade. Who better to have as someone who can recognize the signs.

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Yes it says something about cycling, and it says it about people like Riis who blamed his doping on the culture of the sport at the time. I would say the culture of the sport hasn’t changed and won’t change until those 1000 people who are faced with the choice of doping or being dropped by the team, and choose to be honest instead of famous. Do you really believe that all these 1000 riders all came to the conclusion to seek out Dr. Feelgood on their own? You don’t think the dopers like Riis would say something to the effect of “Ivan, you’re a good cyclist but I can make you a champion, like me.” If you believe that Riis is some savior of cycling, I’d suspect you also believe it when people like Bonds say that he took the clear and cream and didn’t know what it was, BS.