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Cycloblogs go buggy over drugs

The cyclingblogs are all crackers over the LAT 2 part article on WADA, USADA, Pound Dick and the generally broken, wasteful, and autocratic system that polices performance enhancing drug use among elite and professional athletes.

TBV is the clearinghouse for all manner of opining and fact on these matters, an informational effort that I think rivals the physical effort of a long distance ride, without the fun and exhilaration. It's like being on a century ride that never ends.

The current interest is not without precedent. Outside mag, sometime last year, wrote an article about Don Catlin's modest proposal that the system was not helping matters and that it should be radically re-imagined, if not scrapped, in favor of a voluntary testing model:

. . .  he's decided to mount a campaign to radically change the way sports go about fighting drugs—an idea that he's revealing publicly for the first time in Outside. Catlin's vision is to replace the current law-enforcement model—in which all athletes are treated as suspects who are monitored and tested to find evidence of specific drug use—with a reward model, one driven by a new voluntary system that, he hopes, would enable officialdom to actually prove that the athletes who take part in it are clean.

All three regular readers of this space (including myself) may remember a somewhat half-baked scheme of my own: trust that everyone is using, and get hard data on what the effects of drugs are, and whether they make a difference, and abandon the system of sanctions in return for full (but secret and anonymous) disclosure by athletes.

I was struck by Floyd's words (reported on Pezcycling) on What Happened - he has derived no benefit from fighting this, and even if he wins his case, he may end up broke. Clearly, winning the Tour is the worst thing that has ever happened to this great athlete.

"If I'm banned for four years and stripped of my title and prize-money, I'll never race again. My desire for it would have been obliterated."

Will the appeals process come down to purely money and staying power? "I wasn't the highest-paid cyclist and it's looking like this might cost me $500,000," he said. "I think the authorities know I'll run out of money. They've said they'll appeal if they lose the hearing and that might take another year.

"How can cycling win? Either the winner of its greatest race is a cheat or the credibility of the system is in tatters if I'm found innocent. Neither is a great result."

For the umpteenth time, Floyd was regretful of his 'excuses' immediately post-test: "It was a mistake to come out with those things but I'm not an expert and I'm very unhappy that I've had to become one."

I could go on about how the tolerance of this kind of physical surveillance is sympomatic of our times: Surveillance of the body, and behavior are both becoming more onerous and paradoxially more tolerated and exptected, but that's another post. . .

Blessings of the Lizard . .

LAT commits heresy by thought & word, if not deed: Is the system of doping testing flawed?

This first installment in a multi-part series on the  kangaroo court/show trial system of policing drugs in sports (or "sport" as the British say) is long overdue, and should have been undertaken by the largely acquiescent cycling-press (I'm looking at you, ProCycling).

It's a still-timid piece that dares raise the questions: Does zero-tolerance work? How effective is a policy of punishing those who unwittingly ingest substances that contaminate supplements, or that appear in concentrations far too small to affect performance in any way? Is this causing more harm than good? Ask the still-appropriately named Dick Pound:

"The less discretion there is in the finding of a doping offense, the better it is," he told The Times in an interview.

In the closed, secretive, arbitrary fiefdom that is USADA/WADA, an "investigation" of this sort basically means disclosing the obvious: the rules are arbitrary, and the authorities are themselves judge, jury, and executioner, and athletes are guilty as soon as charged.

Several prominent links - among them a powerpoint->PDF of the defense case for Floyd Landis. Basically: it comes down to the fact that the tests of FL's pee were mislabeled and mishandled; the lab in France made a number of probably harmless clerical errors, but such sloppy lab work would not stand up in any court of law. Floyd's A and B results both were apparently positive, but gave such widely varying results as to call the test itself into question. At no point can FL's advocates claim that he is innocent and this is all a mistake, but instead that the evidence against him is so error-ridden and inconsistent as to call the entire case into question. I can imagine with Pound of Dick would say to that. We don't have to imagine. He has said publicly in the past that if USADA doesn't get the result he wants, that he would bring the full weight of WADA down on Landis. Pound claims that drugs are the greatest danger to sport. I rather think that autocrats like Pound are much scarier.

A five month hiatus

OK. There was the Tour de France, the best and most controversial in years. I was glued to the set, unable to blog, unable to work, to do much else besides teach my class (barely) and wonder what the world was coming to. Floyd's escape on stage 20 (?) went beyond mere athleticism into the realm of heroism. I asked my students if any of them had seen any of it. They all looked at me like I had just dropped my pants and was commencing to stroke myself in a lascivious manner; i.e. not in a good way.

After that, and the eruption of the testosterone controversy, much faeces began to hit many different sets of rotating blades. Can't and won't bore with it here, but suffice to say, given the title of this journal, these events, thoughts and situations are with us still, and wil continue to constsitute the present. As Jameson says, "Always historicize."
Wishing you and yours a joyous Celebration of the Lizard (see Dec 05 post).