On May 20th, 2010, Floyd Landis’ allegations of extensive doping by Lance Armstrong and others was made public. At the time, Lance was in the middle of the Tour of California. He experienced a rare crash that very same day, which led to an even more rare decision to drop out of the race entirely.

As luck would have it, Bicycling Magazine was riding along in the team car with Johan Bruyneel, filming it all.  Within hours Bicycling had the video up for viewing.  It was a glimpse at a side of Mr. Armstrong that the world had never before seen.

This video showed a worried, nervous, confused, and perhaps even panicky side of Lance.  It seemed surprising to some that this had been posted at all.  Lance was notorious for exerting pressure on the media to make sure he maintained control of the narrative.

Less than two days later, Bicycling removed the video.  At first it seemed possible this was just an error, or that perhaps the content was being rearranged or updated.  But the video never appeared on their site again, and no explanation was ever offered.  For many, this confirmed the authority Lance had over the press.

I was lucky enough to have a cached copy of the web page available, and when I loaded it, the video was still working.  They had removed the link from their video page, but had not yet removed the actual video file, which was a plain mp4 file.  I still wasn’t sure if the removal was an accident or intentional, but I downloaded the file just in case it was about to disappear forever.

I didn’t do anything with the video immediately.  Even when it was clear that Bicycling‘s removal was no accident I sat on the video. Probably more out of laziness than anything. But the story continued.

In May of 2011 (May is not Lance’s month) Tyler Hamilton came out with his allegations on 60 Minutes.  Momentum grew, and a federal case against Lance and others was in the works later in 2011, and in parallel a USADA case against Lance was developed.  The federal case was dropped in early 2012 (although apparently not for lack of evidence), but the USADA case proceeded.  In April of 2012, Lance and Tyler had the unfortunate restaurant incident, and in May of 2012 Lance publicly commented in an Outside Magazine interview that he would not fight the USADA case if it went forward.

I’d been meaning to make this video available in some form for a long time.  With everything heating up, it finally seemed like it was time.  It was really not a decision I undertook lightly.  I did a lot of reading about fair use, and what did and did not qualify.  What I found convinced me that I could publish the entire video and still be protected.

One choice I had was to edit the video, use pieces of it, and add my own interpretations.  This is an approach that I was sure even without any research was standard fair use (although even being well within standard practices doesn’t necessarily prevent a lawsuit).  But (aside from more basic laziness) there was a very good reason why I didn’t want to do that.  In edited form, and with the original video unavailable, anything I did could be questioned for content.  “How do we know that’s what it meant when we can’t see the original?” And perhaps more importantly, I wanted people to consider the question of why the video had been pulled.  Without the entire original video available somewhere, this was impossible.  This is what ultimately convinced me that uploading the entire video was the right choice, and that it was fair use.

On May 14th, 2012 I finally got off my ass and uploaded the video to YouTube.

Fast forward again, to October 20th of this year, when Neil Browne (@neilroad on Twitter, where he is apparently a big deal) wrote an article about Lance’s bad day, and wondered what ever happened to this video.  Twitter was quick to answer, and directed him to my YouTube upload.

Four days later, after the video had been accumulating views for over a year, I received a notice from YouTube that “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Bicycling Magazine.” (I didn’t notice this until November 5th).

When YouTube does this, you can either accept the removal and go on with your life (the wise choice if it’s actually copyright infringement), or you can file a counter claim, which says that basically the claim by Bicycling was a mistake and that I had a right to post the video. This is the harder choice, because then Bicycling might be more likely to choose to sue me.  If they don’t, within ten days the video goes back up. But if they do sue me, that’s not going to be a good time.

It’s interesting to me that they’d pursue this right now.  The original removal made some sense.  Yes, you could call it weak, and caving to the apparent power of Lance.  But back then pretty much everyone was doing that to varying degrees.  Even after the Floyd allegations, Lance remained the golden goose for a long time, and everyone still wanted those eggs.

But now that’s all changed.  Lance confessed.  He’s been stripped of his wins, and had the title “disgraced” officially added to his name.  After the confession the chains were off for the media.  Suddenly we had a whole lot of news coverage that looked very different from what we had seen weeks earlier.

So given that, why would Bicycling request the removal of my uploaded copy of their video now?  One possibility is that they just didn’t want to be reminded of their dirty hands in the original removal of the video.  That’s a bit silly because as I said, most news organizations had dirty hands back then.

The other possibility is that Lance is finding ways to exert his influence again.  Indeed, competely independent of this incident, I’ve seen people online say that it seems that Lance is once again trying to control the story. There’s a movie coming out about him that’s not likely to be very flattering, and a little damage control could go a long way.  CyclingNews just did a big exclusive interveiw with him also, and he’s been more active on Twitter again.

So it’s also possible that the timing of this removal is that Lance is still a nice-looking goose, and Bicycling still wants another golden egg or two.

Ultimately this is what helped me make my choice.  I have filed a counter claim with YouTube.  The same media politics that likely caused its original removal might still be at work here, exerting control.  People should be aware of this, and have an opportunity to weigh in on what this means.

Now that I’ve made my choice, Bicycling has some options.  They can sue me.  I don’t think they can win, and I don’t think that’s going to put much polish on their brand.

Or they can do nothing.  My copy of the video will be back up on YouTube in a couple of weeks, and we can all quietly slink back into our corners and pretend it never happened, like a blind date gone bad.

But I’m going to offer a third choice.  Bicycling could put the video back up on their own website, permanently.  If they did this, I’d have no need of getting this video back up on YouTube.  It’d be a great demonstration that first of all they aren’t really interested in suing people for good faith fair usage of news content.  And more importantly it would demonstrate that they are their own master.  Their video would be home again, and they’d get all the credit and glory.

On the one hand, this may seem like just one little stupid video.  And really it is.  Hardly a game changer in the grand scheme of things and probably only of minor interest to even the most hardcore followers of cycling’s dark side.  But to me it seems that the cycling community has to get away from knee-jerk protectionism, and this is as good a place to do that as any.

Update:

I spoke with Peter Flax, managing editor of Bicycling Magazine this evening and he was able to clarify several issues, and squash some of my “conspiracy theories.”  Killjoy.

He said it was the hope that Bicycling Magazine would be able to get this video back up on their own website. This would be a win for everybody. The original creation and subsequent removal happened prior to his term as managing editor, and he hadn’t had a chance to look at the specifics in this case, but was able to offer some insight into reasons for the removals.

The video was produced in a sponsored content deal, in which the video producer (Bicycling Magazine) makes a deal with a sponsor to gain access for filming. Generally a deal like this is for joint ownership of the material so that Bicycling can use the material on their site, and the sponsor can use it for promotional purposes.

As Mr. Flax understood those events in this case, the sponsor (not specified by Mr. Flax) decided that the material was not consistent with the image they had hoped for, and requested that Bicycling take it down, and they complied.  He also told me that since that sponsorship agreement was no longer in place, it was his hope that this meant that they had the right to repost it on the bicycling.com website, but at the time we spoke he still hadn’t had a chance to look at the specifics of this particular agreement.

He also addressed the more recent removal of the video from YouTube.  First let me clarify that, despite some of my earlier comments on Twitter, Bicycling is apparently a copyright holder of this material, and so they did have every right to file their claim of infringement with YouTube.  He said filing the infringement claim was just normal business practice when they discover copyrighted material, which seems perfectly reasonable. While I still maintain that my particular usage is fair use, most cases of using entire unedited copies of material do not fall under fair use.

These are of course perfectly reasonable explanations that don’t require any so-called conspiracy theories with Lance pulling all the strings (although they don’t entirely preclude some influence).  Still, conspiracy theories are just more fun.

He also expressed some dismay that I had not contacted Bicycling staff prior to publishing this.  He’s probably right.  I’m not a journalist, I’m just some hack on the Internet who felt that this needed to be out in the open.  And in this new world, where ordinary citizens participate more and more in media, it isn’t clear to me exactly what my role should be.  But explanations are not the same as excuses.  With hindsight, I see that I should have contacted them first, and for that I’m sorry.

It’s not that you don’t care enough about doping.  You care plenty, so much so that it’s become counterproductive.  We – well, you, anyhow – are helping to aim anti-doping efforts at the wrong people and it’s screwing things up.  Hey you – quit picking on the riders!

Let me explain what I mean.  As fans, we all fall in love with riders.  We feel much closer to them than we really are, and because of this their victories make us delirious, their losses make us sad.  And when they get popped for doping, we lose our minds, as if we’d caught our best friend and our significant other having sex atop our new bike.  How dare they touch that bike!

Oh boy, do we fans ever head down some rabbit holes in pursuit of dopers.  We conclude a guy is juiced because on his best day in a particular race, he rode a faster net time up a hill than a doper did on the same hill, more or less, 7 years ago.  We condemn an anti-dope crusader because 17 years ago, before he put in 12 years of anti-doping work, he doped too.  We conclude that the top 12 guys in this year’s USA Pro Challenge must be doped because they rode up a hill faster than Andy Hampsten did twenty-some years ago in the era of the patented “Ride Lots” training program.  It’s like we hate bike racing or something.

Don’t get me wrong.  Holding riders accountable for doping is a good thing and it is and will remain essential to enforcement efforts.  Riders are moral agents, after all and responsible for their choices.  (Well, except Hinault, who is a Fully Automated One Man Hippie Punching Machine Who Cannot Be Stopped).  Racers get laurels and benefit mightily when they win, and deserve a commensurate share of the blame when they lose, and when they dope they should be held responsible.  But pinning all the blame on them is a mistake because many people benefit far more from their doping, and focusing only on the riders allows the other conspirators to escape.  And it’s your fault, tifosi.  Cycling leadership is just doing what you asked, by punishing the dopers.

Please understand, pro bike racing isn’t really about bike races. It’s about making money.  As in any other sport, teams and promoters can only make money in one of two ways:  venue operations, and marketing.  Venue operations involve ticket sales, parking, souvenirs, and vending – not very lucrative stuff in cycling.  Marketing involves selling advertisement space, television rights, and other activities that put sponsor names in front of your eyeballs – and that is lucrative.  Actual bike racing is almost incidental to The Business of Bike Racing.  For all many sponsors care, bike racing might as well be NASCAR.  What matters to them is that their logo and name are in front of you when you are having a good time watching your favorite pro kicking ass, and that when you see their product in the store, you get a warm feeling you can’t explain, and plunk down cash for it.

I will give you an example.  I was a casual fan of bike racing for much of the 80’s and 90’s, but one thing I remember is that Mapei fielded some spectacular classics teams and scored some nice sprint wins in grand tours.  A few years back – about 5 years after Mapei stopped sponsoring the top levels of the sport – I was hunting for some adhesive to lock down some bathroom tiles in a home renovation project.  What should I see on the shelf, but Mapei brand mastic!  I was actually looking for the equivalent 3M product, but decided I would at least give the Mapei a try because they sponsor the sport, and hey, Museeuw and Tafi.  It had nothing to do with the quality of the product.  In fact, when I researched it later, I figured out that a lot of the Mapei products are probably aimed at a low end to midrange market and not really suitable for my bathroom.  But Johann Museeuw got me to look.

You (along with a wider viewership) are the target of this marketing.  Viewers are worth money to sponsors. This is why the starting and finishing chutes are bedecked with sponsor logos, why logos line key spots in the road (and get painted on the road), and why rider jerseys look similar to NASCAR race car hoods.  Marketing also dictates race strategy sometimes.  A weak team may have no hope for a win, but putting a rider into a small break where his name along with the primary team sponsor get mentioned every two minutes is worth a lot to a sponsor.

A racing team may introduce you to a brand and make its name stick in your head.  You may not know what Argos is, but by God, after the 2013 Giro and TdF, you know it goes together with Shimano thanks to John Degenkolb and Marcel Kittel.  Every time Kittel picked up green jersey points or won a stage, you saw the Argos logo and name.  Every time Kittel got into a leadout train or the laughing group with Cavendish, you heard Argos.  And every time he won and stood on the top step of the podium, and you saw the logo, Argos benefitted.   When you go to tank up, if there is a Texaco on one side of the street and an Argos station on the other, assuming equal prices, which would you be more inclined to patronize?

I’m not saying Kittle Kittel doped, just illustrating how sponsors are fighting for your attention and ultimately your dollar.  The more of your attention they win, the more likely they will win your dollars too.  Winning races (and other strong performances, like animating a day-long breakaway) is what pays off for a sponsor.  So in the end, like it or not, the sponsors are the ones who benefit most from doping.  It’s not that they are directly encouraging doping; it’s that winning is worth so much to them, and doping so remote in its negative consequences, that they have no incentive to step up and make it clear that doping won’t be tolerated.

It would be very hard getting national sanctioning bodies to suspend whole teams and their sponsors as a punishment for (and deterrent to) doping.  The UCI seems to have its hands full simply defining what it means for a bike to be a legal time trial bike.  Getting it to settle on a corporate anti-doping enforcement policy, given all the political and financial conflicts of interest in the sport, is highly unlikely.

No, it’s up to us.  We have to fight the doping.  I think we have the power to do so, to move that needle a bit.  Among our most effective weapons are belly-aching, and an almost fanatical devotion to gear.  Seriously.

We have a more powerful weapon than the corporations do.

Social media.

You are very 1990s if you think we need to have television commentators and newspapers and the police on our side.  Social media doesn’t render them completely irrelevant, but it diminishes their importance and gives us fans a seat at the table.  Admittedly, sitting in your underwear in your mom’s basement spouting off about dopers isn’t going to move the public debate very much.  But if a lot of us talk about it, and make a concerted effort link the dopers to their teams and their sponsors, wouldn’t the association of doper + team + sponsor start to take hold in the public’s imagination?

It’s not an entirely stupid theory and it is likely to make corporate marketers fearful.  We’ve all seen how any social media meme with a tiny whiff of substance takes off like wildfire.  Corporations are aware of this too, and that’s why they employ social media consultants.  Those consultants monitor the temperature of conversations about the company, work on counter-messaging, or just as often weigh in on social media when they think they can put out an imminent brushfire.   Just as companies spend a lot of money to build positive associations, they exert a lot of efforts to preserve their good image and to prevent negative associations from developing.

I doubt that any major corporations encourage teams and riders to dope.  Instead, many corporate sponsors of cycling seem to tolerate doping as something that just comes with the sport.  They live with it, like everybody else.  But what they won’t and can’t tolerate is a rider who gets caught doping, one who drags the company name through the mud.

My mud-slinging friends:  we do not need to resort to search engine chicanery, dishonesty or invective to get corporations to respond and exercise their power to clean up the sport.  We do not even have to sling mud.  What we need to do is simply speak the truth in our many social media communications, and link the dopers and their teams to the companies that sponsor them.  Don’t mention the rider who was caught doping, without mentioning the top line sponsors of his (or her) team, and link to the corporate social media addresses such as Twitter handles.  Facebookers can Facebook it, Twitterers can tweet it, and those on Tumbl’r can do whatever it is you do on Tumbl’r.  Don’t exaggerate and assume a preliminary result means doping, or that a guy’s fast time up a hill means he doped.  But do this honestly, and do it relentlessly.

And, if we discover doping that occurred in the distant past, don’t be too tough on the doper’s sponsors from back-in-the-day.  But it’s fair to ask, “In light of the Giuseppe Narcotico revelations this week, what is Bike Company X doing to ensure that their sponsored riders avoid doping today?”

It is *that* simple.  Well, sort of.  A lot of us have to do it for this tactic to work.  But if a lot of us do, then search engines and corporate desire for public good will should do most of the rest of the work for us.

If enough of us do this consistently, there will be a reaction.  Most corporate sponsors of pro cycling will probably just track the uproar at first and give the appearance of ignoring it.  Then, if an uproar has some legs, they may weigh in and try to do some crisis management.  After a while, if a crisis about a doper seems to be enduring, corporate leadership will likely demand the sponsored team take action to mitigate the crisis and then discuss severing relations – either the doper’s relationship with the team, or the sponsor’s relationship with the team.  Companies whose products are primarily outside of bicycling may well walk away.  Those who sell to cyclists are more likely to stick around, and therefore more likely to take action.

The other tactic we can use is to organize good old fashioned boycotts.  These don’t have much of a chance of succeeding with “big boy” sponsors – banks, phone companies and the like.  Who cares if a few cyclists boycott a Fortune 500 company?

But bike industry corporations “race what they sell and sell what they race.”  They are much smaller and more easily affected by social media efforts.   They can’t simply walk away from racing, not without causing damage to their sales numbers and long term commercial prospects.  For a bike industry company, the attraction of sponsoring a successful Pro team is that the marketing takes no effort – just put Victor Velo on the podium, and the racing fans will clamor to buy the bike, the component, the clothing, or what Victor claims he ate for breakfast the morning of the Queen Stage.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate to force the bike industry to confront this cancer that is eating away at the sport they live on.  The bike industry, our sport, and the utilitarian riders form a community, and there’s a fairly strong sense of the enthusiasts and the industry being in this together.  If you’re an enthusiast, you’re also probably an advocate for the sport, and for bicycling as a pastime and as a mode of transportation.  You probably do a lot to boost bicycling.  So it’s fair that those whose businesses we support should be at least a little accountable to us, since we’re acting as their boosters and (trying to live up to our role as) ambassadors for the sport.

Why shouldn’t Trek have to answer some hard questions about tolerating Lance’s abusive behavior for many years, and have to tell us what they are doing today to help keep the sport clean?  And why shouldn’t Cannondale have to tell us what it knew about the doping outbreaks on Liquigas, and why it put up with them (or did not)?

These measures aren’t a panacea, and these suggestions are not a comprehensive solution.  I hope this is the start of a serious discussion about how we change pro bike racing culture.  I make them with the full understanding that if a significant number of fans embrace this approach, they will likely hurt the sport at first the way a vaccine can make a person feel a bit ill, and these tactics may hurt people in the sport financially and professionally.

The reactions to Name & Shame + Boycott  may not be uniform, or uniformly positive either. Sponsors from outside the sport may drop their sponsorship, seeing nothing good coming from it.  But sponsors who are inside the sport – bike and component manufacturers, nutrient makers – are in somewhat of a hostage situation here, and are more likely to stick it out, take ownership of the situation, and demand that the teams and racers clean up their act.

While we’re talking about getting corporations to act responsibly, let’s also be perfectly clear about our responsibility here.   We’re not fans mouthing off if we undertake these tactics.  We become advocates.  If we want to be taken seriously, we cannot libel or slander sponsors, or teams, or the riders.  We have to know what we are talking about or we will lose credibility and damage our own cause and may put ourselves in legal jeopardy.  We have to exemplify the spirit of fair play and honesty we are asking riders, teams and sponsors to adhere to.

Sure, it’s an uphill battle.  But we don’t have to wait for the old media or national governments to react.  We can take matters into our own hands and start to move the needle ourselves.  We might be surprised at how fast that needle moves.

A few days ago that’s what I was doing; sitting, waiting, getting frustrated about the sitting and the waiting.

Coming toward me on the other side of the street was one of Chicago’s biking homeless on a old steel frame MTB knockoff.

There are lots of these guys around Chicago. For instance, the guy who owned the old Moongoose in the above picture. No, that’s not this guy’s bike. But the two of them could be brothers, so closely matched are their mannerisms and appearance.

There’s something different about these guys. Maybe even a couple things, or several.

Unlike the shambling variety of homeless, and the shopping cart pushers, you don’t see the same biking homeless always in the same area. They take their freedom to roam seriously. So, you don’t get acclimated to seeing any one of them like you do with some of the others.

But, it’s more than that. You can see them riding at you from a long way off and instantly know that it’s one of them coming down the road. Maybe it’s the slow, easy cadence, or the way they meander more than your average cyclist, or maybe it’s the milk crates covered in plastic bags strapped to the fronts and sometimes the backs of their bikes, or perhaps the sometimes wobbliness of their riding. Maybe it’s all of that, or none of it. I’ve never really stopped to ponder it.

I’d never seen this one before, at least not to the point where I remembered him at all.

When he was maybe two car lengths away from me, he looked over, saw me sitting in my car, and swerved smoothly to the opposite curb. He laid his bike down so that it was two-thirds in the road, and then walked toward me like he’d been waiting to see me.

He pantomimed smoking as he approached, “You got a cigarette?” he was asking.

I pushed the button to lower my window, allowing the a/c to leak out of the car. “Nope, don’t smoke.”

He continued walking toward me. He was maybe two inches taller than me, sandy-haired and broad. “That’s ok. Hey, I wanna talk to you for a minute.”

Yay me. Another homeless guy who wants to breathe booze in my face for five minutes.

I must have one of those faces that says, “Unload all of your besotted street wisdom upon me. Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with a cherry on top,” because this isn’t uncommon enough.

Before I get further into this I want to make sure I don’t paint too bad a picture of him. He didn’t stink, in fact he seemed clean. He did not even smell overwhelmingly of booze, just a little. Considering that it was about 1 pm, late in the day to be sober for Chicago’s homeless, he really was doing ok. He’d even shaved in the last twenty-four hours.

He stuck his fist out to be bumped. I obliged.

“This is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”, he said as he leaned his forearm onto the open edge of my window.

“Yes, it is.”

“Oh, hi, I’m Jimmy, by the way.” Another fist bump.

It went on like that for a few minutes.

I maybe should have been thinking, “This is a cool guy. He isn’t acting crazy. It’ll be fine.”

But what was actually going through my mind was, “He’s gonna try to snatch something, or he’s gonna hit me and snatch something, or he’s gonna spit on me and run away.”

He was in my space, talking too close, making small contacts. Fist bumping about every thirty seconds.

I waited.

He kept talking.

“Do you know that Jesus loves you?”

“Uh huh. I’ve heard that, Jimmy. Thank you.

“Welp, it’s true. He does. And so do I.”

“Ok, thanks, Jimmy.”

He missed or ignored the patronage in my tone, and I felt just a little asshole-ish for allowing it to come out.

Then he stuck his hand out, open. It was half again the size of mine. “Here, take my hand.”

I tried not to sigh. I’m pretty sure I failed. But, I took it. I took his hand and we locked our fingers around each others’ thumbs in kind of a Bro-power-handshake thingy.

“Now, look me in the eyes. Important things shouldn’t be said without eye contact.”

I thought, “Please, Jesus, if you reeeeeeeeeally love me… ”

I looked into Jimmy’s eyes. They were medium grey and surprisingly clear, hardly any little red blood vessels showing at all.

“Has anyone ever looked you in the eyes and told you that they love you?”

To my relief he didn’t actually say that he loved me. I made a point of not mentioning this failure.

“Sure, Jimmy. Yes, they have.”

“Well, good. Everyone should know that. Everyone should hear that.” He said, not letting go of my hand.

I thought, “This locked hands thing will either be better or worse for me when he goes for whatever it is he has planned.”

I waited without listening while he kept talking, rambling, not always making sense.

“Can I have my hand back, Jimmy?”

“Not till I say what I have to say. Now, look me in the eyes again.”

Right, eye contact. Again. Fine. Whatever it was he had to say this time, it mostly blew by me like a breeze. I just wanted my hand back and Jimmy to go about his business.

A few minutes later he released his grip.

I’d been waiting for the person who was supposed to meet me for way too long, which had nothing to do with Jimmy. I picked up my radio to call Debi in my office. Jimmy seemed to take this as his signal to split.

He stood up and backed slightly away, still talking. I can’t tell you what he was saying, it was all white noise to me by that point.

I said, “Bye, Jimmy. Thanks.”

Then he turned, picked up his bike, threw his right leg over the top, and rode away with a  half salute and a little wave.

About the author:

Bikezilla is the handle for Tom Schaller, a professional in the varmint control industry and a crack interviewer of personalities in the world of cycling. His writing can be found here and on his blog, “Bikezilla: Ride the Puddles.”

At four years old, before he could read or write, and before he could ride a bike, Bikezilla wanted to be a writer.

He figured that if he couldn’t write stories, he’d tell them.

For instance, he told his mom that he’d hold his new baby sister while she (mom) ran into the house for a moment. Then he dropped that very same new baby sister upon the ground. Not on purpose, but still he dropped her. She cried, mom came running, he got yelled at. They’ve hated each other ever since.

Some things are just meant to be, and she was meant to be a brother.

Sometime later he wrote a series of short stories based a Peter Gabriel’s “So” album. One of his sisters, no not that one, loved them. Knowing that he was supposed to suck when he wrote his first stories he also knew that she was a lying ho bag. It did not matter than she read and reread those stories many times. She was a liar. And so they also came to hate each other.

Thusly did Bikezilla wander through his life, leaving a black trail of dysfunction in his wake. Until Lesli Cohen found him digging through a McDonald’s dumpster for food and said, “Come, sit in that corner and eat your maggot covered dregs, and write for me, away from all the Wangdoodles and Hornswogglers and Snozzwangers and rotten, Vermicious knids.”

Right, she quoted Willy Wonka. Bikezilla didn’t get it, either. But he came and he ate his picked-over trash and he wrote and life was. It just was.

You can follow Tom on Twitter @bikezilla1 and can take a gander at his artwork on his Etsy page.

What may be interesting to you eavesdropping on the four of us is how these two men — who appear to be comfortable in what others have called Redneck Central — soon begin discussing cycling.  First, they have to recount the previous evening’s ride of some thirty miles. The larger man, C, has just come off a long cycling hiatus prompted by a sideways speed-over-wet spill that re-cracked an old broken bone site. In the hiatus, he regained the sixty or so pounds he  had lost the previous six months in cycling: he’s a good sized fellow. The previous night’s ride apparently required a few good-natured cyclists to hang back with C for him to grind it out to the end. The other man, M, used to own a cycle shop. His is a life long interaction: there would not be a local mountain bike trail through this part of the Cross Florida Greenway system if not for M out there on weekends with his bike and a machete, and he literally has the scars as proof.

About eight months ago, there was another dinner conversation between these two men about cycling. Then, we were a party of six, with the three men sharing full lifetimes of various forms of construction experience between them, as all are easily capable of long discussions of engines for every type of vehicle, have all owned a plethora of boats, and generally appear to be the kind of Redneck Royalty you always want on your buddy list if you can’t turn a wrench. This time the conversation involved the luridly-colored cycling apparel ubiquitous to road cyclists. C had mentioned that in his neophyte cycling period, he shied away from  such flashy apparel — he is fond of earth tones, darks, and neutrals for all other forms of being not naked. C recounted a tale of cycling through an area that is part of the Silver River preserve, when a motorist came upon him in a prosaically distracted state and, apparently seeing the sudden color block, swerved just in time.

C had said something  to the effect of “I never got into the color gear” and M completed the thought with “Until it saved your life.”

Obviously, among men’s men, whether or not cycling may have the kind of monster credibility that a teardown and rebuild of a 1977 F100 has to most of the swinging world, almost getting your life turned into road goo by a random moron raises cycling kit cred from men in weird package-showing trunks to  something entirely else.

Now, both these guys are over forty. M is going to find himself as a new grampa around the winter solstice. He has been married to the same woman for just short of thirty years. He once had red hair, but now it is short and gray. C is slowly returning to  the bicycle — two wheels meant loud pipes most of his life —and his hair is both receding and graying. Neither of these men are represented in modern media, but they can go to any hardware store and know the function of every item. Bicycling for them will probably never involve high-profile competition, nor will it ever be a viable transportation alternative. Cycling is cycling: an endeavor for its own sake, for the motion through air across the surface of the earth and using one’s body to travel not to a destination but for pure mileage.

If you are listening to these two men talk — men who met at a cell phone tower construction company (the most dangerous job in the country, currently) — you hear about the  recent excursions on paved trails through other sections of Florida’s landscape: Stories of bent or sprung spokes, riding into the headwinds of an oncoming hurricane, maybe some near-miss moments. There is no competition to the conversation, it is merely an exchange of shared interest. M’s posture will be almost lolling in his part of the booth, an arm flung out into the crowded space between tables; he is clearly pleasantly entertained.  C will find the conversation quietly motivating — he will ride a few more thirty-mile tears in the next fortnight — despite long, stressful days for wages.

The food will come – platters and platters of it – and everyone guts up at much as they can, as is their habit. The precipitation of earlier has ceased and the twilight is cool, damp, filled with the chorus of frogs and skeeters. It will turn out that these two men will see each other on a ride in later days, will see each other in a hail-fellow well-met way.  For them, it seems, cycling is not a sport as much as it is a private pleasure that can also be shared. If cycling has a mythic bruise from the misbehavior of those for whom cycling is a high-performance sport, then maybe these quiet men can give to it again some deserved elegance.

 About the author:

Wordsmith. Writer of essays, poetry, and fiction since forever. Artist working in a multitude of media. Tattooed person. Carriage driver. Publisher of Red Mare Press. One of the happier memories of my childhood was riding my child’s single speed Raleigh. I graduated to a three-speed Raleigh Hercules, which I took through the now-disappeared farmlands of my youth. As an adult I had two bikes – an ancient Raleigh camel-hump that is the sole inheritance (other than my genes) from my father, and a Mixte touring bike. I rode the Raleigh all over New Orleans to get to work as as an antique restorer and housepainter. The Mixte was my salvation from the pressures of graduate school. Then, as now, the bicycle is freedom.

“Verbruggen did a lot for the sport, to develop the sport but his decisions were – and this is between you and me – any decisions he made in a certain period to do with doping and so forth… It certainly wasn’t that he was pro-doping or encouraging doping, but he would always protect the sport,If he had to take a decision on something and he could see that the sport would be damaged because of that decision then he wouldn’t take the decision. I think that his was sort of his philosophy: ‘to protect the sport.’” Pat McQuaid to Antione Vayer – March 2013

In 2010, Cycling conducted 21,427 anti-doping controls with 254 adverse samples, only Football (30,398) and Athletics (25,013) conducted more anti-doping controls.  In 2009 the results were similar. 21,835 samples collected, 318 positives, with again, only Football and Athletics doing more testing, which – when you bear in mind the sheer numbers of sportsmen involved in those two sports – really puts Cycling at the forefront of anti-doping.

The pattern was repeated in 2008, and again, only Football and Athletics tested their athletes more. The results are telling – each year Cycling tests its athletes more than virtually every other sport, and every year the number of adverse samples goes down. Cycling is at the forefront of anti-doping, and with every passing year gets cleaner. Each year the UCI can tell us how much they are testing, and how the number of positives is going down. It reads well. Cycling leads the way, or does it? On the surface it’s an easy argument to accept. Each year we test more and more, each year the number of positives go down, with the conclusion being the UCI are doing a great job. But in 2012, the way WADA reports the figures changed. In previous years we were simply presented with total tests and adverse results; from this year onward we now have detailed figures – by testing agency, by product, by lab – and it can give us a whole different perspective. We can ask the question again, is the UCI really at the forefront of anti-doping, or is it just making sure the figures look as good as possible? In 2012 things continued to improve, 20,624 samples tested, 270 adverse findings, we continue to lead the way, and positive tests continue to drop.

  More importantly, cycling continues to lead the way in number of tests conducted on its athletes.

Note: Blood tests don’t include those for BioPassport samples

Again, as in previous years, only Athletics and Football rival Cycling for the numbers of tests, and if that was the end of the story it would make great reading. But that’s not really the end of the story. On August 2 of this year, Travis Tygart spoke to Shane Stokes of Velonation.

“We are going to have the USA Pro Cycling Challenge happen here in a couple of weeks. It’s one of the biggest races in the United States, and absolutely the biggest race in Colorado. Yet the independent agency based in Colorado [USADA] – which runs the programme for the Olympic movement which is also based in Colorado – is not doing the testing, because the UCI refuses to give up the control.  We are confident, just like in seasons past, there won’t be CIR testing, there won’t be human growth hormone testing, there won’t be EPO testing. It is a charade…”

The UCI has done its very best to monopolise testing within the sport. Nearly half of all testing conducted in cycling is conducted by the governing body – the UCI – the same body responsible for the promotion and management of the sport. A clear conflict of interests? Many think so, and Brian Cookson has made it a focus of his campaign for leadership of the UCI that testing should be moved out of the UCI’s hands and to those of an independent body. Cycling is not alone in this. Tennis, a sport widely critisised recently for its poor testing, sees the bulk of its anti-doping overseen by its own governing body, the ITF. Why is this crucial? Because if the governing body can control the bulk of the sampling, they in turn can also have a greater bearing on the results, its simple numbers management, and like schools that target the areas that bring them success in the eyes of the public, the UCI can control the numbers to make them look as good as possible in the eyes of the public, without really being an effective anti-doping program.

Percentage of controls carried out by sports governing bodies

  So how do the UCI manage these figures? Lets look at one example – EPO testing in urine. In 2012, as a sport we collected more than 19,000 urine controls. 13,000 in competition, and 6,000 out of competition. A huge number. The sad fact though is of those 19,000 samples collected, 7,000 were actually tested for EPO, around 30% of all samples. A number of factors affect this, not least of which are the budgetary constraints placed on the governing body, the national anti-doping agencies, and the race organisers. So what do we test? In 2012 as a result of in-competition testing there were 244 adverse samples for EPO, with just 24 samples out-of-competition positive. Is this purely because we take considerably more samples in-competition? No. Because despite taking twice as many samples in-competition as out-of-competition, we, as a sport only actually analysed 3000 in-competition samples for EPO in 2012, compared with the analysis of more than 4000 samples out-of-competition. If we look at it as a percentage, the percentage of in-competition samples testing positive for EPO is 7 times higher than for out-of-competition. This figure is repeated across all sports, not to such a great degree, but still, in-competition testing provides a much higher rate of adverse per tested, versus out-of-competition testing. Why is the positive rate so much lower in out-of-competition tests? It could be that riders simply aren’t using EPO to a great extent out of competition. It could be the sheer number of out-of-competition tests is dissuading riders from using EPO (the line the UCI would no doubt like us to believe), but it could also be that EPO testing out of competition is simply a failed exercise. In his recent book, Tyler Hamilton explained just how easy it was to evade a positive test for EPO, and in many ways the ADAMS (whereabouts system) assists this. Out of competition tests occur between 7am and 11pm, but within that you can specify a one-hour timeframe when you will be in an exact place at an exact time. If your specified window is 9am to 10am you know that your risk in microdosing EPO at 11pm is minimal. With a half life of around 6-8 hours when injected directly into the veins, it’s really not that difficult to be clean when you are tested at 9am. In competition it becomes more risky. Maybe if you are doping without your team’s knowledge you have to do it later at night when other riders are asleep. Your chance of being tested at 7am is greatly increased, overall the risk is higher. Knowing this, and knowing that the testing for EPO in-competition provides more positive results than out-of-competition, the expectation would be that of the 13,000 samples collected in competition, a vast majority would be tested for EPO. Out of competition, with its low EPO detection rate, you would expect the percentage of samples tested to be lower, for out-of-competition testing to be focussed on collecting blood data for the biological passport. So why does this not happen? As a sport we test considerably more samples for EPO out of competition, despite the lesser number of samples being taken. In tests conducted by National Anti Doping agencies, by race organisers, this is true. Granted, the bulk of samples collected by NAD’s are in-competition, but when it comes to actual analysis, the NADs focus their analysing on the in-competition samples, and they get results. Nearly 100 of the 250 positives come from National Anti-Doping agencies. The UCI, by contrast, test very few of their in-competition samples. The UCI analyse nearly all of the out-of-competition samples they collect for EPO, yet they only analyse around 20% of the samples they collect in-competition for EPO. When we compare the UCI percentages against national anti doping agencies, it becomes clear – the UCI heavily focus their analysis on out-of-competition samples, contrary to other sports. So what does this mean and what questions does it raise? Does the UCI focus on analysing urine samples out of competition for EPO for a reason? The suggestion would be yes. One group provides a high rate of positive, one group has a low rate of positive. Test the group with the low rate, it keeps your testing figures as high as possible, while keeping the number of positives as low as possible. Mathematically, if the analysis of the out-of-competition samples was switched to analysing in-competition samples, we would see an extra 66 adverse samples in 2012 based on the .7% detection rate. Of course that is just mathematics, and it’s unlikely that percentage would be exactly replicated, but there is a strong argument that it would be at least partially replicated. Which brings us back to the original numbers – the UCI are responsible for nearly 50% of the testing within the sport. By exercising this level of control, they are able to reinforce the statistics to their benefit. Are the UCI fiddling the figures? Are they making sure they test the group that produces the lowest rate of positive? Are we really leading the way in anti-doping? When discussing Verbruggen back in March Pat McQuaid said:

“I don’t fully back that, but then again maybe I’m wrong…”

Have things changed?

Cycling is changing. It’s becoming more and more popular and judging by the evidence we’ve seen during this year’s Tour de France, it is not dealing with its growing popularity very well.

For the most part, cycling fans have a few riders that they enjoy watching with which they may or may not share a nationality. Unlike football fans, up until now at least, the cycling equivalent don’t tend to support a team through thick and thin. One of the major reasons being the nature of the financial structure of cycling teams – the teams themselves don’t tend to stick around for very long for fans to develop any sort of rapport.

Team Sky fans

 

But recently, there has been a tribalism settling in around Team Sky, something which British cycling fans have never experienced before. The team actually has ‘supporters’ who wish to see the team succeed regardless of the rider. This is a behaviour which has been encouraged in the past by Jonathan Vaughters, the manager of Garmin-Sharp.

Two years ago, Vaughters released a 10-point plan outlining changes which he thinks should be implemented in order to improve and stabilise the sport of cycling. One of these points was:

• Consistent, year after year, team branding to develop fanbase

The turnover and renaming of professional cycling teams from one year to the next makes it easy to understand why this may be a desirable change to the sport. But the idea that cycling fans support one team and one team only the way football fans do is not straight forward.

In this year’s Tour de France, Mark Cavendish had urine thrown at him during the second individual time trial. This is not an isolated occurrence, similar unsavoury incidents have happened in the past. The most famous fan interaction is probably when Eddy Merckx was punched in the kidneys on a climb during the 1975 Tour de France.

Fans of any sport are liable to do crazy things and the more fanatical they become, the more maniacal they become. Football fans in stadiums have limited access to the stars of the show on the pitch. The interaction, for the most part, is confined to chanting from the stands. On a weekly basis, fans in England would chant about Luis Suarez being a racist bastard, Arsene Wenger being a pedophile or their desire to murder Malcolm Glazer.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger – the target of chants from rival team fans.

 

The majority of the people taking part in these chants are grown men who probably have children and respectable jobs and who might not usually resort to this kind of behaviour in any other setting. But this is the power of the mob mentality. Is there a minority of rabid football fans who could not be trusted to be within arms reach of the rival team’s players?

Friends of mine often cannot believe when they see cyclists wend their way up mountain passes through a mass of people. How are the riders not pushed off their bikes more often? How are there not more crazy incidents involving fans?

The only answer I have is that cycling fans are respectful of all of the cyclists and they’re not wishing any ill-will on the riders. Would stable, long-term team franchises threaten to destabilise this wall of respect that exists between fan and rider?

Then there’s doping…

What is the difference between Carlos Sastre’s ride up Alpe d’Huez in2008 and Chris Froome’s ride up Mont Ventoux this year?

Sastre finished 2’03″ ahead of everybody that day in 2008. Froome finished just 29 seconds ahead of Nairo Quintana on Mont Ventoux, and seven other riders finished within 2’03″ of him. Yet Froome has had to deal with an inordinate amount of accusations of doping, a problem Sastre, managed by Bjarne Riis, hardly had to deal with at all. So what’s changed?

Carlos Sastre winning atop Alpe d’Huez in 2008

The obvious changes since 2008 are that fans (and journalists), via social media, have been given much more of a platform on which they can air their concerns and shout out their doubts and accusations. There is also the fact that this is the first Tour de France since the USADA reasoned decision was released. It is to be expected that fans (and journalists) don’t want to be blindly led down an alley of deceit once more, so it is only natural that there are more questions now than ever. Fool me once and all that.

But there is a further contributory factor to the shit that Froome has had to put up with during this year’s Tour de France and that is the black and white-ness which some fans are now viewing the sport. Fans of Team Sky are adamant that Froome is clean, this tunnel vision view feeds and antagonises those who think he’s doping, and with equal tunnel vision the cries of doping are shouted louder, which in turn feeds and antagonises the Team Sky fans and it goes around and around and nothing constructive emerges.

This is a dangerous trend which is emerging among fans of the sport. Instead of chanting ridiculous songs about racists and pedophiles, cycling fans can simply cry ‘doper’. Arsene Wenger is not going to be asked in a press conference whether he is or isn’t a paedophile, because it’s preposterous and baseless. But if enough fans shout ‘doper’ at a cyclist, because of the sport’s past, it is probable that he will eventually be asked in a press conference if he is or isn’t a doper, whether it’s preposterous and baseless or not.

A further problem with the fandom model being urged by Vaughters and being realised by Team Sky is that fans have absolutely no say in what goes on in ‘their’ team. The financial model for cycling, even with stable ‘team branding’ does not rely on the fan at all. With football, if the fans don’t like the manager, if they shout loud enough about it (literally) then there’s a fair chance the manager will be sacked. Football teams need fans to buy merchandise and fill stadiums. Being a spectator of cycling costs nothing, managers of cycling teams do not have to pander to the fans the way football managers do.

Fans don’t pay for this privilege

Last week it appeared that Team Sky manager Dave Brailsford caved to public pressure and released some of Froome’s data to L’Equipe for analysis, but this is very much the exception. It appears that cycling teams want fans, but ultimately, they don’t need them.

Currently, many cycling fans have a guarded cynicism which they cannot be blamed for after enduring decades of scandals. Given the fact that fans have not got a long affiliation with any one team, what would happen if a spate of riders on the one team tested positive? Would fans simply jump ship?

Football fans usually support a team because their Dad or older brother supported the same team. There’s a family history involved and a loyalty that to turn your back on would be blasphemous. Dr. Niall Redmond works for the popular game Football Manager and is no stranger to maniacal football fans. He himself is an avid supporter of Manchester United and I asked him if he found out tomorrow that United had been organising a massive team-wide doping programme in the 1990s and all of the 1999 Treble winning team began admitting to taking various drugs in order to win….would he still support the team now?’

“If it were proven, I would be massively upset and very angry, but I would keep supporting them” admitted Redmond “in the hope that it wouldn’t happen in the future, that the team and those in charge would change and it would become something good again.”

But what about football fans by nature being blind in their support? Does this contribute to a complete unwillingness to acknowledge that there’s a chance there might be doping prevalent in their team?

“I’ve talked about the possibility of doping in football to a number of football fans who dismiss it instantly. If you said to any fan, there’s a worldwide doping problem in football, but your team is involved, there’s no chance they would want it to come out. But for me, if it were a rival team, say Barcelona, then I would take pleasure in seeing it come out.”

This loyalty that football fans have toward their own team and the tendency to spite any rival is the reason why the sport is so popular. But it is perhaps also the reason why fans think there is no doping in football. Redmond suggests “what’s happened in cycling, and how the world now views cycling, probably makes it more unlikely that football authorities would ever investigate doping in any significant way”.

Cycling has a conundrum. The doping problem is known but now teams are gaining ‘fans’. There is a very real potential for the sport to grow in popularity but in tandem, the potential is also there for it to degenerate even further into a never-ending game of mud-slinging. Team Sky have had to deal with this problem more than any other team and so far they have yet to find a solution. Endless aspersions is not the price that teams should pay for gaining fans. But currently, this is what the sport is stuck with.

“We are a self-supporting cottage industry of knowledge, forums, Twitter thinkers and doers.

We all have a certain amount of responsibility. This collective mind has created something and it must be nurtured and sustained because it seems pretty clear to me that most of the established truth-pimps are happy with the status quo.”

A little over a year ago I did a piece on the myth surrounding Armstrong’s “500” tests. With help from others, I sat down and calculated what the true number was, and then released it. But I didn’t just present a number, I presented a breakdown with full details of how the figure was reached, and explanations of any possible variance, so that the reader – while presented with the final conclusion – also had the information to check for themselves, correlate that information, make an informed judgment with all the information in front of them.

When L’Equipe announced in 2004 that Armstrong had tested positive for EPO, they didn’t just say he tested positive and produce some dates, they provided full details, the methodology, the sample numbers, the correlation, the places, the names, so that it couldn’t be questioned, misinterpreted, or opposed.

When Gazetta dello Sport published their findings on Cipollini they did the same, with race schedules and calendars all playing a part in the work they presented so that the reader had the fullest possible information on which to make their judgement.

Dopeology.org is another great example, nothing is added without sources, sometimes multiple sources. If something finds its way onto the site it is checked, double-checked and verified to ensure its total accuracy.

Twitter has lent itself to 140-character journalism, sound-bites, and snippets of truth that don’t tell the full story. A single tweet – Armstrong 23:08, Froome 23.11, Pantani 23.15 – suddenly becomes a piece of work that people rapidly tweet and re-tweet, and use to make their own judgments from the most minimal of information. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a blog link that lists the top ten times for a climb, but lacking any explanation of race tactics, weather condition, parcours notes, or other information that is key to the final outcome (and the reader making an informed decision).

Sometimes, either many hours later, or even a day later, @veloclinic or the excellent Ross at The Science of Sport do more detailed articles, but by then most people have just read the headline and made their own decisions based on the smallest amount of information. Speed has become more valuable that accuracy, being first more important than being correct/most in-depth.

The Kimmage Fund débâcle is a great example. Many sites tried to be first, breaking the news in either an inaccurate, slapdash, or tabloid manner. It took three days for Velonation to put out their article, but when Shane did finally break it it was in-depth, accurate, with a full view of the story. Of course by then it was too late, the tabloid headlines and 140-character summaries had already got the attention and a well-thought-out article was lost amongst the general hubbub.

Social media has given some relatively normal people great power, but as a friend of mine reminded me recently, with great power comes great responsibility. I am fully aware that if I come forward and tweet an allegation, within minutes it is re-tweeted multiple times, people who don’t follow me end up reading it, they re-tweet it, and in a very short time it becomes accepted as fact. Those 140 characters – without the benefit of the full context of maybe a series of five tweets – eventually become the most minimal of information as people add comments to the RT, abridge it, condense it, until it becomes no more than a couple of words floating around the Internet. Television interviews given by riders, journalists, or team staff are abridged from 5 minutes to 140 characters, context is changed, details are lost, perception becomes quoted as fact, and people believe it.

Some are excellent; @veloclinic says nothing without backing it up with huge amounts of (largely confusing) data. @inrng, makes no statements without a lengthy blog post covering all aspects, with the most information possible. And that is the responsibility we all must have, when we put out data, when we reach conclusions, we must provide the reader with the fullest amount of information possible, so that they may make the most informed decision they possibly can.

The recent issue of climbing times is frustrating me endlessly. A list of climb times is not information, it is just base figures that ignore so many other factors. It gives people the bare minimum of information from which to make their decision, and we have to be more responsible than this.

For instance, if you are to present climb times for four Tours – 2000, 2002, 2006, and 2013 – for each of those four sets of data at minimum we should present:

• Stage length
• Stage details (How many other climbs, etc.)
• Position of stage within the race
• Weather details if available
• And a brief summary of the stage, e.g., what was the standing of the GC at start of day, when were the attacks made, who made the attacks, how long did the attacks continue, was the rider riding for the stage or for GC position?

Information that, while it may not prove relevant, gives the reader the maximum possible information from which to make a then much more informed decision on how they interpret the data in front of them.

Within forty eight hours of writing this I logged onto Twitter to the news that Geert Leinders, former doctor with Sky and Rabobank had been involved in clinical trials of Gas6 at Leuven University.

“It seems Dr Leinders was involved in clinical trials of Gas6 at the Catholic University in Leuven”

“Geert Leinders was involved in clinical trials of Gas6”

“Geert Leinders, Gas6, Interesting?”

This story slowly gained ground, tweeted by many well respected names in cycling. Eventually a piece appeared by notable French blogger Guillaume Prebois which made brief mention of rumours circulating regarding Leinders, this time at University of Louvain. (There is considerable confusion over the two universities.)

By now the story was true. Thomas Frei had tweeted regarding Gas 6,

Leinders had been linked, Sky were using Gas6 – people believed it.

Respected science blog, Scienceblogs.de, then wrote on the matter. First drawing climb times from another blog:

that failed to mention faster times by Marco Pantani in an earlier Tour de France (and again failed to account for tactics, parcours), before moving on to explicitly state that Leinders was involved in the clinical trials of Gas6.

“Dopingmittel eingestuft werden. Kandidaten dafür wären beispielsweise Telmisartan oder GAS6, das  Gerüchten zur Folge beim Giro d’Italia dieses Jahr eingesetzt wurde, und bei dessen klinischen Tests Geert Leinders, ehemals in Diensten des Teams Sky, beteiligt gewesen sein soll.”

So where did it start? A single powerpoint slide

on the CyclingNews forum listed Leinders name. The Universite Catholique de Louvain became the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Within three pages Leinders involvement was accepted, Sky had become linked. A few pages later the mistake was recognised, but by then it was too late, the story had already become fact.

Is the original forum poster at fault? No. Because while we have  a responsibility to question, a responsibility to investigate, we also have a responsibility to verify, to validate, to ensure the information we then pass on is sourceable.

We have a responsibility, and just as a journalist would never print allegations, or rumours without fully sourcing their information, we too – whether we have a hundred followers on twitter, or ten thousand – have a responsibility to be confident of our assertions. People do listen, and some have gained unprecedented power over the last two years, unforeseeable influence, but with that power, as was so rightly pointed out, comes great responsibility.

In evaluating Froome we must wind the clock back to August of 2011 and his breakthrough performance at the Vuelta. On a 20% section of the famous Angliru with 2km to go, Froome was released from his domestique duties, but it was too little too late. Since that day, though, we’ve witnessed twelve climbs where Froome has performed at a very high level.

Using the pVAM approach, there are two ways in which we can analyse Froome’s performances. Firstly, we can compare Froome’s efforts against the historical baseline which we have already established (updated with Giro 2013 results that overall lowered the baseline). Secondly, we can estimate an equation which will explain Froome’s VAM in terms of gradient, altitude, and climb length.

Method One: Froome v Historical GT Baseline 2008-2013

The latest equation for estimating pVAM is:

pVAM = 2885.17 + 416.825 ln(Gradient) – 0.0620 Vclimb – 0.0880 Altitude

Compared with the equation before the Giro:

pVAM = 2912.14 + 426.293 ln(gradient) – 0.0711 Vclimb – 0.0836 Altitude

After lacklustre performances in the Giro the changes to the constant and altitude coefficient have shifted in the direction of slower pVAMs. However, the gradient factor has reduced, which in most cases will offset the decrease in the constant, and the Vclimb is now subtracting less from pVAM. Before and after examples are listed in the table below, and the change is minor (the pre-Giro equation is 0.1% faster on average).

The average residual for Froome for the twelve climbs mentioned above is 0.805%. On average he performs close to one per cent better than the historical baseline predicts. One important observation is that overall, performances on GT climbs (green) are better than those on climbs in shorter stage races (red).[ref]Some caution is required due to the small sample size dominated by two positive outliers.[/ref]

Such a result is unsurprising given that riders will only want to hit their best form in the three-week events. Additionally, Froome may only push himself to his absolute limit when the big occasion calls for it (although we should note that he held himself back for Wiggins last year). So far this season Froome has out-climbed his rivals comfortably, giving the appearance that on those days he left some gas in the tank. The counterpoint, however, is that during the weeklong stage races there should be less accumulated fatigue.

We can use Froome’s average residual to transform baseline pVAMs into “Froome-pVAMs” simply by multiplying pVAM by 1.0805. In this way FpVAM gives us the VAMs predicted specifically for Froome for the upcoming Tour de France.

Predicted VAMs for the 2013 Tour de France:

Method Two: Froome Regression Analysis

Alternatively, taking Froome’s previous performances, we can run a regression to define an equation which fits his performances alone: [ref]In this case, the length of the climb (Vclimb) is not a statistically significant determinant of VAM. This result is not unusual for the small sample size; it may also indicate some inconsistencies between performances. Overall, the model still fits well.[/ref]

pVAM = 3412.06  + 604.343 ln(Gradient) – 0.0855 Vclimb – 0.0971 Altitude

Applying this equation to the climbing statistics above, we can produce Froome-specific pVAMs.

These results are quite remarkable in that there is little difference between the approaches.  Indeed, they both predict exactly the same VAM for Alpe d’Huez. Quite surprising is that a VAM of 1619 on Alpe d’Huez corresponds to a time of 2488 seconds, or 41’28”.[ref]Time (s) = (Vclimb/VAM)*3600[/ref]

In historical terms this time is quite slow for a Tour de France favourite, although similar to the ascents of Sanchez (41’24”) and Contador (41’33”) in 2011. Contador’s performance came after two hours of maximum effort and at the end of an attempted Giro-Tour double. If Contador can reach his 2011 form, can he match or even beat Froome? The data suggests yes, possibly.

Remember that a pVAM is only what is expected from an average performance of a top-3 rider over a three-week tour. Given the importance of Alpe d’Huez to this year’s race, it means we would expect an above-average performance. Froome’s entire season is geared towards the final week of the Tour – if he has another level, this is where we will see it.

How fast can Froome go? Breaking the 40-minute barrier requires a VAM of 1679, or 4.5% greater than (baseline) pVAM. Historically, such a level is not unattainable, but in a presumably cleaner era it would require several factors being very favourable. Firstly, Froome has to find top form.  For a chance of a sub-40’ time we will need to see a reasonable positive residual (all things being equal) on an earlier climb in the Tour. Secondly, the conditions need to be favourable – no rain, no extreme temperatures, no headwind. Thirdly, Sky (or another team) needs to set a strong pace from the bottom of the climb; it is rare to see strong positive residuals without a big leadout. Finally, the most important factor is competition. It’s highly unlikely that we will see a maximal effort from Froome if the general classification is already decided or there are no climbers to lay down a challenge. I believe that a high 39 minute time is possible if these factors align, however, if only one or two are favourable we may see a time around 41 minutes, or 1-2.5% greater than pVAM. Given the importance of the stage/race, I would be surprised to see a winning time significantly slower than the 41 minutes 28 seconds predicted for Froome.

Alpe d’Huez is not the only climb of historical value in this year’s race. Bonascre (Ax-3-Domaines) and Ventoux are both used regularly in the Tour. The predicted VAM for Froome is very similar to the performance of Contador and Schleck in 2010. It should be noted that Contador and Schleck were performing track stands marking one another, with Menchov and Sanchez 14 seconds quicker on the day. The same climb has been used in 2001, 2003, and 2005, and the time we predict for 2013 would be close to a top 5 in those years (although in 2005 the race had already exploded on the previous climb). For Ventoux, the predicted time is around 50’17” which is more than a minute slower than Contador and Schleck in 2009. The remaining three climbs are all being used in a finishing position at the Tour for the first time, so there is no historical reference point available.

As the predicted performances of Froome on the above climbs are not remarkable by historical standards, there is room for the other general classification contenders to find an extra gear for this year’s race. Froome too will need to lift it a notch if he wants to continue his domination; otherwise the battle in the mountains may be closer than has previously been anticipated.

We expect riders to be caught if they are doping, yet we have nothing firmer than suspicions, innuendo, and Secret Pro-esque rumours. We hear time and again after someone was pinged that “the whole peloton was suspicious.” If the whole peloton is always suspicious, well how come no one does a Xavier Tondo and reports anything to the authorities? Simple answer – some of the authorities are broken, too. So how do we change this ?

Some say life bans are the only path towards change, but I disagree with this. I don’t think the environment exists where they can be implemented fully. We’ve had rules, regulations, and gentlemen’s agreements about returning dopers, but when push came to shove (or signing a deal on the dotted line), no one blinked an eyelid when Ivan Basso was the first big name rider to re-sign for a WorldTour team instead of spending two years at a lower level. What we have are commercial interests determining how someone returns to the sport and at what level, and not in a predefined manner. Life bans are using a hammer to crack a singular nut.

It must be agreed that what we have at the moment is broke. We have dopers returning to race without showing good faith or rebuilding our trust in them; we have teams hiring ex-dopers and letting clean riders go; we have silent ex-dopers at management, coach, and Sporting Director levels and no one really bats an eyelid. There’s a quote from Trent Lowe that has stuck with me from earlier this year,

“I am convinced that to complete the workload I was given on an ongoing basis, one would have to dope in order to recover. I was not doping and therefore my health suffered a lot from such over-training. Sadly I believe this scenario may still be ongoing in professional cycling, and I feel it still has a very long way to go.”

We can’t go banning cyclists for life when the sport is as broken as this. To paraphrase Floyd Landis the whole thing needs burning to the ground with the hottest flame possible as we let it die. It seems that it is impossible to untangle the good, the bad, the good going bad, and the bad trying to be good. For a fan, how can one differentiate between a David Millar and Danilo Di Luca – other than by innuendo, Twitter hearsay, and dodgy rumours ?

It seems as if the professional sport doesn’t have a doping problem, it has a fundamental ethics problem. It seems as if everyone operates on the attitude of,”Well, someone’s going to be screwing me, so I might as well screw someone/everyone else.” We have teams that are only concerned with optics, to be seen to do the right thing, and we’ve teams trying to do the right thing but failing, and we’ve teams not giving a damn.

If we don’t subscribe to the Floyd Landis idea of burning the whole thing to the ground, what do I think we need to do? We need to change our anti-doping policy to a drugs policy, we need to look at the bigger picture than just the cyclist that uses. We need a review of the doctors involved in the sport, along with the sporting directors, the race calendar, and the treatment of riders during Grand Tours. We need to let people see there is a belief in the system, be it the bio-passport, be it the whereabouts reporting system, be it the legal system when it prosecutes.

We need a sea change from the top down for professional cycling to work, and this doesn’t mean a breakway league with TV rights for teams, Mr Vaughters, it means a searing honesty to the sport’s faults and flaws – not a slow reveal when it best suits your commerical needs. It needs a different UCI – not just a different President – and  it needs a better model for young riders to come in to the sport and be valued as young riders, not just as some talent to be flogged for the greater exposure of some sponsor.

Whoever you are in the sport of professional cycling, you have a duty to be honest and try make a single change to your sport – to make it a better place after you leave than when you started. Don’t talk bullshit, don’t speak out of both sides of your mouth, don’t say one thing and practise another, reach out and try and make that change or face someone like Floyd burning the whole shit pile to the ground when you least expect it.

With Mr. Di Luca’s recent positive, the talk on the club ride at the weekend was back to what to do with drug cheats in sport.

As was to be expected the majority piped up saying that the only way to deal with cheats was to ban them for life, an understandable first comment, but this is something I feel is all too easy to say when it does not directly affect the speaker.

The “ban the cheat for life” phrase never looks to the word “why” – why do people take drugs to improve their performance, a question that goes well beyond the sporting arena.

In terms of sport, here is a very short list of suggestions:

• A young sports person is persuaded to do so by a coach/mentor
• An aging sports person wants one more shot
• The sports person has an addictive personality
• The cost vs. cash return makes it a no-brainer not to
• Everyone else does it

Etc. etc.

It’s human nature to look for an edge sports and life, and we are told by historians that people have been taking PEDs since before the ancient Olympics.

Whatever the reason we must face one sad fact, if there is a pill or substance that makes you go faster, be stronger, or more alert at your desk (and I will make a confession here, as I type I am on my drug of choice, fresh ground coffee) someone will take it.

Cycling has a sad and sorry history of overt and known drug use, and because of that has become the sport that all other sports hide behind while pointing the finger (but that’s another rant), back to matters at hand.

Outside of sport, with the exception of the most heinous of crimes, we don’t ask those caught breaking the law (or taking drugs to do their job) to give up their career for life after being caught, in fact we try to use the justice system to both punish and help them.

It might not be perfect but we try.

With this in mind I thought we could apply some of the laws of the English criminal justice system to the punishment phase of drug use in sports, in particular the laws surrounding drunk driving.

In most cases of drunk driving the offender gets a ban, a fine, and is sent on their way, but in serious cases the system looks to punish and help the driver, with a form of advanced testing.

This means once a driver has completed their ban, they have to sit their driving test again, except this time the test is much harder to pass.

When a new driver takes a test, they are allowed a small percentage of errors. This is done because some aspects of driving only come with the experience that the new driver will not have gotten yet from a few lessons with an instructor.

However when the returning drunk driver comes for their advanced test the examiners don’t allow for any errors!

Of course this means that our drunk driver has to attend driving school again and unlearn all the bad habits they picked up over the years, they have to sit through the theory lessons, take the theory test and so on, in fact it’s a back-to-basics approach, that the drunk driver has to pay for themselves.

Also if the court wants, it can order the driver to attend counselling prior to ever getting near the driving school.

I think something similar to this can be applied to drug bans in sport.

Currently if a cheat gets caught, they serve their two-year ban, after which they can return to competition, and once back they are in the same drug-testing procedures their clean colleagues are on.

To my mind this raises the question, “Is this fair to the clean sports person?” and I would answer that question in the negative.

Therefore I suggest that if the drug cheat wants to return to their sport, they should be helped and made to work for the privilege of being a paid professional.

Here is my suggestion for advanced drug testing for returning cheats.

• First off, during their ban they must attend some form of approved counselling that looks at their use of drugs and tries to answer the question “why” as well as helping prevent future use.
• Once they return to active competition the drug cheat must be subjected to a period of enhanced drug testing.
• Rather than assuming they are now clean and are playing by the rules, we have to say, “Sorry your history tells us that you cheated and we can’t really trust you for now, so for the next x length of time you will be subjected to the advanced testing programme.”
• Rather than the random sampling a clean athlete gets, the returning cheat must be tested at every event regardless of where they finish.
• They must be tested as often as is medically safe to do so outside of competition, and there must be a zero tolerance approach to whereabouts.
• Counselling is used to try to help the “why” and the advanced testing is used to make it hard for them to return to their old habits.

“Who pays for this?” I hear you ask.

Simple; the drug cheat.

Let’s face it, at the start of your cheating career buying PEDs online may not be too expensive, but as you move up and have a fully-functioning programme including doctors, blood storage, blokes on motorbikes etc. the costs mount up.

So if you’re at the start of your sporting career and thinking of spending some of your hard-earned cash buying PEDs online, the cost of advanced testing might focus your mind and could deter you, but if you’re going to take the gamble, then I would suggest taking your PED money and putting it on the spin of an online roulette wheel, ‘cause it’s probably safer for your health.

Whereas if you’re an established pro with an some form of programme in place, then the cost of advanced testing will surely be a drop in the ocean to what you were paying for your programme.

Looking at Mr Di Luca’s “cycling is clean” statements before he was caught in the Giro, it is clear that good people who don’t take PEDs will forever be tainted by those who do. If you choose to race clean and make cycling your living or pastime, you must be prepared for the eyebrow of suspicion to be forever raised.

However I think with an advanced system of testing in place – paid for by the cheats – the clean will have hope that the eyebrow won’t be raised in their direction.