Basso set for UCI drug role - Yahoo! Eurosport UK
Eurosport - Tue, 06 May 10:48:00 2008

Former Giro D’Italia winner Ivan Basso will become an anti-doping campaigner for governing body UCI.

Italian Basso is banned until October due to his involvement in the Operación Puerto doping scandal.

UCI president Pat McQuaid backed the news that Basso will come on board in the fight against drug cheats.

“He has made a mistake,” McQuaid said. “He has paid. I believe he will interpret this role to the best of his ability, for us and for the Italian cycling federation.”

Why do I find this difficult to believe? When David Millar got caught, he fessed up almost immediately, and was an outspoken critic of the doping lifestyle from the outset of his ban. Basso has been living the plush life, and has been nearly invisible … and he didn’t admit any wrongdoing for quite some time after he got busted.

Part of me thinks that Basso is just paying lip-service to the process in the hopes that he’ll get back on a ProTour squad sooner, rather than later.

And McQuaid is gonna help him do it.

Fucking hypocrites.

From Velonews: Rock Racing sues to get into Tour de Georgia

Rock Racing is suing the Tour de Georgia’s owner and its organizing company, asking to be let into the race that starts April 21.

The team’s owner, Rock Racing LLC, filed a complaint April 8 asking for an injunction against the race’s owner — the Tour de Georgia Foundation, and its organizer, Medalist Sports, court records show.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday in superior court in Fulton County, Georgia.

Rock Racing spokeswoman Martine Charles said the team had an “oral agreement” with Medalist Sports to participate in the race.

“It was revoked at the last minute. We’re pursuing legal alternatives,” she said.

Last month, Medalist’s Jim Birrell told VeloNews that Rock Racing was not invited to the race simply because there is not enough room for the team.

“There are a finite number of slots we’re interested in filling, and it’s hard, there are too many qualified teams to extend invites to, and not enough slots,” Birrell said.

Has a lawsuit ever helped anything in professional cycling, except draining the coffers of the team?

At least the Amgen Tour of California was honest about why it was excluding various members of the (Crack) Rock Racing team … doping allegations, and open investigations into Operación Puerto.

Medalist’s story seems unlikely, but convenient. Rock Racing is bad for cycling … even for the clean riders on the team (and I’m sure the vast majority are), the bad boy image doesn’t help. And the Escalades and podium girls just make it all about image; not about the sport.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, how soon the implosion for the Rock?

From cyclingnews.com comes word that “Cipollini and Ball’s relationship on the rocks”:

The relationship that was started last fall in a Las Vegas discotheque could come to an end if Mario Cipollini does not get his say in the management of Rock Racing. The Italian, who came out of retirement at the age of 40 to race in the Tour of California last week, and his lawyer met with the owner of the team, Mike Ball, yesterday to discuss the coming season.

“We need to sit at the table and make clear who is in command,” said Mario Cipollini in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport’s Luigi Perna. The Italian from Lucca and lawyer Giuseppe Napoleone were scheduled to meet with Ball later in the day.

“The boss is Ball, but after him it is me. Therefore I want to manage the squad starting now. I can organise the participation in [Milano-] San Remo. To find men to race is not a problem. … If Ball does well it will continue, otherwise goodbye. I now understand that the name Cipollini still has value, in the United States and elsewhere.”

Cipollini was happy with his return, but not with the fiasco surrounding the team and Ball’s backing of Tyler Hamilton, Oscar Sevilla and Santiago Botero. The riders, all allegedly linked with Operación Puerto, were barred from racing by the organiser, but continued along daily by riding behind the race caravan and signing autographs for fans at the stage villages.

“For a week I had an infinite amount of patience … Maybe it was my great desire to return to racing with an important project. However, we can’t go forward like this. We are not able to continue to pull along this heavy weight that ruins our image, and now Ball also understands this. It is not enough to advertise and show off models.”

So, first Sevilla, Botero, and Hamilton are prevented from riding the Amgen Tour of California … and now, Cipo is threatening to bolt from the team unless he takes a more active role in how the team is run … somehow, I don’t see Michael Ball giving up any control of the team unless/until the team starts to disintegrate, and by that time it will be too late.

I’m still calling for an implosion before the end of the Tour of Georgia.

We’ll see.

Ball signs Sevilla, invites Landis to camp
Rubber has yet to hit the road in ‘08, but second-year continental road team Rock Racing continues to generate considerable attention, this time because of reports that owner Michael Ball has been courting Floyd Landis to fill an unspecified team advisory position.

Word of the deposed 2006 Tour de France champion’s involvement with the team came in the wake of director sportif Frankie Andreu’s departure based on “differences” in philosophy with Ball.

Less than two weeks after Ball signed a scandal-tinged Tyler Hamilton, Landis’s email address was included on an internal team message relaying details of an upcoming January 18-31 training camp in Malibu, California.

But beyond visiting the camp, Landis risks having his two-year doping suspension extended if he violates section 10.9 of the World Anti-Doping Code, which prohibits him from participating in “any capacity,” be it in competition or other activities “authorized or organized by any signatory or signatory’s member organization.”

Never one to avoid controversy, Ball has also signed former Kelme and T-Mobile standout Oscar Sevilla, a rider who, along with Rock Racing recruit Santiago Botero, was implicated in Spain’s Operación Puerto doping investigation.

No wonder Frankie decided to leave the team … one rider I can maybe see using the “let’s give Tyler another chance, he’s an American rider, blah blah blah” rationale, and granted, Frankie isn’t entirely snow-white himself, having admitted to using EPO during Armstrong’s 1999 Tour de France win … but throw in Botero and Sevilla to the mix, and it sounds like Michael Ball is really just going for maximum shock value before the team implodes and he pulls the plug mid-season, putting a lot of good, hard-working riders out of work, just to pimp his overpriced clothing line with a bad-boy image.

Who pays $240 for a pair of jeans?

Hey, Michael Ball-sack … we want sponsors, but we don’t need your kind … kindly fuck right off, okay?

Basso gets a two-year ban because of Operación Puerto … Ullrich retires for the same reason.

Floyd Landis is still awaiting the outcome of his arbitration after “testing” positive for testosterone during last year’s Tour. I still think he’s getting screwed, even if he was doping.

Sinkewitz tests positive for testosterone … and is “amazed!”.

Michael Rasmussen misses 3 surprise anti-doping tests by not being where he indicated he’d be on certain days, and ends up getting kicked off the Danish national team. And now a former teammate from his mountain biking days is accusing Rasmussen of doping back then as well.

Bjarne Riis admits to doping and is persona-non-grata in the team car at the Tour.

Erik Zabel has his green jersey from 1996 struck from the records (as does Bjarne Riis with his yellow jersey the same year).

Richard Virenque gets to keep all of his polka-dot jerseys, though.

I’m so sick of doping stories … not because I think all the riders are clean, or because I think that all the riders are doping, either … I’m jaded, but optimistic that things are changing.

Patrick O’Grady, over at Mad Dog Media seems to illustrate it well.

I think people are getting screwed in the interim; and I’m afraid the sport is going to disappear off the map (especially on TV in the US) for several years before it starts recovering.

Sports … all sports, including cycling, the sport so near and dear to my heart … are entertainment; just like music, just like movies.

Do we pull a musician’s CDs off the shelf, or an actress’s movies out of the theaters when they go into rehab? Why is it that we can more easily accept drug use amongst “artists” than athletes?

I’m still watching the Tour … I will always watch the Tour … I find it exciting and … <gasp!> … entertaining!

But as long as athletes are held to a higher standard than entertainers, we will continue to be scandalized.

Maybe it is time to just declare all performance enhancing drugs legal in professional athletics … let them do what they want to do! Test the amateurs; test them often, but test them fairly!

Change the culture from within, not by kicking out the cheaters (because that will never happen), but by changing the mindset of the riders. Eventually, it will happen. If Linus Gerdemann is to be believed, it already is amongst many of the younger riders … so let’s give it a chance without more and more scandals or allegations.

Declare an amnesty for all current cyclists … allow them to admit to previous performance enhancing drug use; without stripping them of victories (so who won the 1996 - 1998 Tours?) and without fear of punishment. Throw the doors open wide.

If riders get caught after the amnesty? Life-ban. Massive fines. But allow everyone to wipe the slate clean and start over.

Including Bjarne Riis and Erik Zabel … for as long as we continue to punish riders for mistakes they’ve made in the past, then no one else will come forward voluntarily, and the secrecy will continue to drive the peloton.

Amnesty is the watch-word for the remainder of the 2007 cycling season.