Race organizer and now RFEC president Jose Luis Lopez Cerron shown here giving instructions unrelated to beef delivery to Levi Leipheimer. (photo courtesy BBC News)

“I am pleased to be announcing the partnership with the Basque-based Kalitatea Foundation, the organization behind the “Eusko label” project highlighting food products grown and cultivated in the Basque region. This relationship will help solidify the development of Basque, Spanish, and Catalan riders of all stripes,” stated Lopez Cerron.

The promotional program would involve Basque beef, in particular.

“We are  happy to provide assistance to the Basque beef industry, which has suffered some minor inconveniences because of the clenbuterol debacle in relation to my close personal friend, Alberto Contador. We are looking forward to a Basque beef commercial series for the European market featuring our top three finishers at the Vuelta Espana,” stated Lopez Cerron.

The campaign “Bask in Basque Beef” will feature footage from farms throughout the the region with clips showing Contador, along with Alejandro Valverde and Purito Rodriguez, dining on high-quality steaks from the northern region of Spain. The campaign is produced with the cooperation of the RFEC, which is underwriting the campaign in exchange for sponsorship money promoting key races in the region.

When asked if this campaign was “payback” to the beef producers whose reputations were damaged following the Contador debacle where Lopez Cerron delivered beef that the Contador insisted was tainted with clenbuterol, Lopez Cerron was aghast at the inference.

“No way, says Jose. Never, never, never. Kalitatea came to us with the suggestion for partnership, and they also suggested the beef industry would be logical for inclusion, as professional cyclists are consumers of vast quantities of protein and so are their fans. This is in no way some sort of apology to the beef industry for what they were put through during the Contador business,” stated Lopez Perron.

Cycling pundits weren’t convinced this was strictly a coincidence.

“Look, firstly, Jose is elected to the presidency after being the meat driver for Contador. What’s next? Motoman taking over French anti-doping efforts? Now, the RFEC has announced a partnership deal with an industry they took aim at in order to defend one of their hallowed cyclists? Seems there’s some tainted beef in this particular story. Rank, tainted beef,” commented an anonymous Telegraph reporter who may have been Brendan Gallagher.

The campaign is rumored to be rolling out into the European Union in March. More details on the race sponsorship will be revealed in January, according to Spanish cycling officials.

Verbiest or Vaughters? That’s the question on Jonny’s new glasses as Ripp and Jonny recount the exploits of Alberto Contador, Martin Vinnicombe and David Millar’s twitter sabbatical. The anchors welcome Rachel Neylan to the show, talking about her silver medal at the World Championships, her role models, and fashion. Saddleblaze brings a whole new dimension to the concept of team camps and Aussie freckles. Joan Hanscom gives us the update on USGP cyclocross happenings, and “Undercover Gunn” delves into the world of cycling hair. Sorry Tyler Farrar, you finished fourth in the hair competition, and missed the cut for segment inclusion. And what the heck is that thing in the background throughout the episode? You’ll have to ask Lotto-Belisol’s Bill Olivier…

Follow along with the crew on Twitter: @RippFinklemann, @theJonnyGunn, @CyclismasMercer, @saddleblaze. Follow show updates on Twitter @CCNN_TV.

Or take the show on the road with our iTunes downloads.

Illustration by Anders Bendixen

Reports suggest that the possibility of losing his team’s World Tour place, coupled with the exposure from the Danish edition of Tyler Hamilton’s book, The Secret Race, was more than the stoic Dane could handle.

“There were several participants to whom Riis offered autographs during the Contador event here in Las Palmas, but the fans refused the overtures. The look on Bjarne’s face was certainly telling. I think his confidence has taken a massive hit,” relayed one fan who participated in the ride with Contador.

One anonymous team member echoed the sentiments, saying Riis has withdrawn from public interactions, and would prefer to spend time alone in the shower clutching his Crotch Eagle plushy toy rather than face the crushing demands of the media under the current circumstances.

“I feel bad for the man on one hand, because everyone was doing it at the time, but on the other hand, I don’t understand why he doesn’t just come clean. I will say, though, he’s been on the phone muttering ‘Yes, Hein… Yes, Hein…’ more frequently than normal. And in a quieter voice,” stated the anonymous team member.

Cyclismas has learned that Riis didn’t leave Gran Canaria with his team, and instead has taken the advice of major team backer Oleg Tinkov, who suggested Riis needed a confidence boost. Tinkov has flown in self-help guru Tony Robbins for a special four-day session to include walking over hot coals and an intense day-long seminar on “Outstanding Relationships.” Tinkov offered his clarification on why Robbins was brought in to boost Riis’ flagging morale.

“It was important to get Bjarne from Position 4 on the Robbins Scale of Outstanding Relationships – planning your escape – back to Position 1 where he can enjoy an outstanding relationship with love and passion. Bjarne needs to rediscover his love and passion for the sport. I think it’s working. I’m pleased to see him starting to laugh again, and spending less time hiding. You’ll see a rejuvenated man in 2013,”  stated Tinkov via phone.

When asked if Riis would be coming completely clean on his doping activities, Tinkov was direct.

“It’s none of your business, and it’s ancient history. We need to move forward in the sport in order to effect change. I look forward to the UCI’s independent commission. I’m sure they will get to the bottom of all these problems in cycling,” concluded Tinkov.

Riis faces a chilly reception from the UCI license commission, and an uphill climb in ice skates to retain his World Tour license. It’s not known if he’ll be bringing the hot coals to the meeting, or if they’ll be provided by Ernst & Young.

* * * * *

The 2012 Vuelta has been run and won. The history books will remember it as potentially being one of the finest editions in recent history. Alberto Contador was the victor, but for many cycling fans the victory will have been both entertaining as well as hollow, if only because of who ended up being the winner.

Plenty of contenders lined up for this race, and it was keenly anticipated. Chris Froome would get the opportunity to lead a team for the first time, aiming for victory. Joaquim Rodriguez would try to go one better than his Giro 2nd place, and of course Contador would make his return from a doping suspension. Alejandro Valverde would look to add more impressive results to his stage win in the Tour de France.

The beginning of the podium sorting. (Image courtesy of Cycling Weekly)

It’s worth pointing out here, before we dive in with any commentary, that the Vuelta this year was an absolute beast of a course. Far more difficult than the Tour, and the Giro also somewhat paled in comparison. With a stunning ten summit finishes, it was a course made for climbers, and one where we would normally expect to see a rider ‘bonking’ in a big way, unable to cope with the continuous demands of hard climbing with little recovery time.

In truth, what we saw was far from that, and the reality is that the climbs also saw the highest comparative wattages of all three Grand Tours this year, on a par with what we saw in 2001, an era we obviously now know to have been heavily doped. Here are the brutal figures of it, clearly in stark contrast with recent mantra of what we’d consider a ‘normal’ performance:

Rodriguez: 6.25 w/kg
Contador and Valverde: 6.15 w/kg

These figures, calculated on a French site using the averages from the five climbs over 20 minutes in this year’s race, are in stark contrast with the average wattages we saw from the victors at the other two Grand Tours this year:

Hesjedal: 5.7 w/kg
Wiggins: 5.9 w/kg

Provided those numbers are calculated consistently, there is a significant margin there that means that any of the top three would likely have won the Giro or Tour by minutes. Except we know, courtesy of Valverde, that he couldn’t produce numbers anywhere near that in France, where he finished a distant 20th, albeit with a stage victory to his name.

Remember – because this needs emphasis – this was by far the hardest race of the year, with the steepest climbs, and yet some of the power rates we observe here are made in the third week, a period where fatigue would certainly have been present.

I’ll go into why those factors are worthy of attention in a moment, but first, it’s worth having a look at those who made such a large effort, and their year in the sport.

Contador, of course, was freshly returned from what amounted to a six-month suspension – with his results of the 18 months prior to that annulled – after testing positive for clenbuterol in the 2010 Tour de France. That Contador’s case went to CAS in the first place was because of a somewhat intriguing process of investigation by Spanish authorities. Initially recommending a one-year ban, they then cleared Contador, a process both WADA and the UCI found disturbing enough to convince them to appeal the decision to CAS themselves. The process was seen as indicative of a Spanish unwillingness to investigate or prosecute doping cases involving Spanish athletes.

The suspension consequently had two effects. Contador obviously lost his results, but of more relevance was that his Vuelta preparation was enormously hampered by a lack of racing time. Contador’s only race post-suspension – and prior to the Vuelta – was the seven-stage ENECO tour in which he finished fourth. So he came into the race high on training time, but significantly under-prepared in races completed during 2012. It’s therefore fair to suggest that Contador would not have been at his peak, but would have been very familiar with the route.

Joaquim Rodriguez, in contrast, is the Spaniard upon whom the most accolades have been lauded in 2012. Second in the Giro d’Italia (winning the points jersey and two stages), first in La Flèche Wallone, and with multiple other top-ten finishes dating back to the Tour of Oman, his has been a very long season, but also his most successful. It meant he came to the Vuelta as a polar opposite of Contador: over 40 racing days completed, and for the second year in succession he was to attempt the last of two Grand Tours in a year. At 33 years of age, that’s no mean feat, and few at his age have managed to complete two Grand Tours on the podium in a calendar year.

Alejandro Valverde came to the Vuelta after an even more exhausting schedule, starting his season eight months earlier at the Tour Down Under, where he finished second. Valverde went on to ride at least 50 more days prior to the Vuelta, including the Tour de France and Olympic Games, and yet still put in one of the best performances of his career by finishing second. Had he not been involved in that famous crash during echelons in the first week, who knows if he would have been able to take the top step instead?

Chris Froome rode having completed months of exhausting racing in peak condition, as the right-hand man to Bradley Wiggins, and then on his way to collecting a bronze medal at the Olympic Games. It was probably expecting too much of him to be able to compete at the Vuelta, but after his strong showing last year – and at times looking stronger than Wiggins at the Tour – Froome’s name was right at the head of the list of contenders for the Vuelta. Of all the contenders, his performance probably best showed what should be expected of his schedule. He was promising in the first week, but ultimately his program caught up with him, and he faded, exhausted in the final week, to finish a distant fourth.

So our leading four contenders (and as it turned out, also the top four finishers) all came into the race either under-prepared, or after long and difficult goals had already been undertaken during the course of the season.

So how, then, are the year’s most extraordinary climbing numbers produced? Put into perspective, if Rodriguez had managed to do the wattages in the Giro that he displayed in Spain, Hesjedal would have been so far out of sight that his time trial would have been for cementing second place, and not remotely competing for first.

This was an outstanding race by any measure. Contador’s victory in Fuente Dé will live long in the memory for its sheer audacity, its plot hatched and executed long before the final climb, to almost universal acclaim. The three weeks had all the drama, entertainment, and panache the world longs to see at the Tour de France.

But, after the bitterly-public Armstrong events played out over the last few months, it also failed to dispel lingering questions about the sport. Make no mistake: The top two riders from the Vuelta have both been suspended for involvement in doping. The third has been around teams clearly associated with it in the past, although never sanctioned himself.

The world has just watched a man found guilty of (and suspended for) doping come back and win a Grand Tour just weeks after that suspension finished. They’re entitled to wonder if it’s genuine.

These three riders on the podium are not strangers to the sport’s ills. Fans have seen too many false dawns over the last twenty years to not raise an eyebrow when something very extraordinary occurs, and in one of the hardest races in recent memory, we have a reminder that the past is very much still here with us in the present, simply as a result of observing the identities of those undertaking such feats.

I’m not suggesting or implying that anybody is doping now. There could be a reason why they’ve struck super-human form at their home event. But over the last few months we’ve been told to put our faith in the numbers, to take into account the climbs when viewing those numbers, and the reality is that what we’ve witnessed here fails the most basic test – that of human instinct. We may have been witness to the show of a lifetime, but we must consider – was this simply the same show we’ve seen before? If the identities of those at the front haven’t changed, and the numbers aren’t lying, how can we know the culture has shifted?

Of that we can only be sure of one thing, and that is that time will be the best judge. Until then, we’ll have to wait and see if these numbers translate to equivalent gains at next year’s major events. If so, what will be the world’s determination then? Are we going backwards, or forwards?

They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.”

~ Akira Kurosawa

Bjarne Riis’s autobiography really should have been written as a Greek tragedy (Oedipus Wrecks? No, that’s being saved for the ultimate Lance Armstrong story). Prometheus was punished for stealing the gift of fire and Riis, too, seems to be being perpetually punished for his own sins. But, unlike Prometheus, Riis isn’t chained to a rock and having his liver plucked out by vultures every day. No, Riis has been punished by being given the anti-Midas touch: everything he grasps turns to shit.

Look at all that has happened to him with that 1996 Tour win, with Laurent Jalabert (a broken back just after being signed as team leader for CSC-Tiscali), Bo Hamburger (busted for EPO use but got off on a technicality), Ivan Basso (busted in Operación Puerto), Carlos Sastre (defected to Cervélo as soon as he won the 2008 Tour), Andy Schleck (defected to Leopard with the core of the Saxo Bank set-up at the end of 2009), and Alberto Contador (now the cycling world’s most pointless star signing). Every time the Dane seems to have got it right, something goes radically wrong.

You might think that Riis should have got the message by now and found something different to do with his life, but that’s not the Riis way of doing things. Back when he was a kid, starting out as a bike rider, the Dane was a winner. But then, as he moved through his teens, the wins dried up:

I didn’t develop physically as quickly as the others, and suddenly talent alone wasn’t enough to keep my winning streak going.”

 

When trying to qualify for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 Riis was told by the Danish coach that he should simply go home, hang up his bike and give up riding:

Perhaps the national coach was right. Perhaps I didn’t have it in me. And perhaps no one had ever dared to say it to my face before then.”

 

Instead of quitting, Riis, aged twenty, decamped to Luxembourg with another rider from Herning, Per Pedersen, and worked harder at turning the dream of a pro contract into reality. When the RMO squad started up at the end of the 1985 season, Riis and Pedersen were both competing for the same seat in the squad. Pedersen got the gig and Riis was left scrabbling for a ride for the 1986 season. In the end he got a gig with Lomme Driessens’s latest squad, Roland Van de Ven, alongside another Danish rider, Brian Holm. Riis’s time with Driessens was not happy:

Driessens [who had worked with Eddy Merckx, Freddy Maertens and Sean Kelly] loved telling old stories about heroes, villains and how to win bike races. I took it all in, but knew that there were only a few things that I could learn from him that were genuinely useful.”

One year with Roland was all Riis endured before he was dropped. He got a ride with another Belgian squad, Lucas. That turned out to be a disaster from which Riis was rescued only by the intervention of his fellow Dane, Kim Andersen, who recommended him for Bernard Tapie’s Toshiba squad. That turned out to be another disaster for the Dane. Until Riis got a chance to ride the 1988 Tour of the European Community as a member of the mixed Denmark-Luxembourg squad. There he was able to do a favour for Laurent Fignon. That favour paid off in spades the following January when Riis, aged twenty-four, without a ride and having to face the prospect of quitting the sport he’d fought tooth and nail to be a part of, got a call from Fignon’s directeur sportif, Cyrille Guimard, and joined Super U.

In his own autobiography, We Were Young And Carefree (Yellow Jersey Press), Fignon had this to say of Riis:

Bjarne was happy to get stuck in, he had a solid constitution and liked to work hard. Riding on his wheel was total joy, because he could do anything: go fast when he had to and go through a gap with perfect timing. I never had to tell him anything, never had to say ‘Come on’ or ‘Slow down.’ I glued myself to his wheel and didn’t have to do anything else. It’s not often as harmonious as that. I had got it right with him but I had no idea that he would make his name in any of the ways he eventually did. He had a ‘big engine,’ but this has to be made clear: he was a good rider but not capable of winning a Tour de France in normal circumstances.”

Super U became Castorama and Riis stayed a part of the team until things went tits up during the 1991 season and Fignon and Guimard realised they were heading for d-i-v-o-r-c-e. Riis was twenty-seven and had just watched a rider three months his junior finally step out of the shadows and win the Tour de France: Miguel Induráin. The Dane realised it was time to step up to the plate himself. And for the first time in his career Riis was somewhat spoilt for choice as to whom he’d ride with next: Fignon wanted him to move to Gatorade with him, and Ariostea’s directeur sportif, Giancarlo Ferretti, also put an offer on the table.

Gatorade would have been more of the same, Riis laying his future on the line for Fignon, whereas Ferretti was offering Riis the chance to ride for himself as well as working for the greater glory of Moreno Argentin and Rolf Sørensen. The choice was easy for an ambitious domestique and Riis signed with Ferretti. Two years with Ariostea were followed by two years with Emanuele Bombini at Gewiss. And then came 1996. Telekom. That Tour de France win.

That Tour de France win is where we have to loop back on the story of Riis’s rise from rags to riches and consider how it was actually achieved. Consider how and when doping entered the Bjarne Riis story. Unlike Simon Pures such as Stephen Roche who never, ever saw any doping during their careers, Riis was aware of its existence from as early as his first year in the pro ranks, at Roland. Riding kermesses in 1986 he witnessed firsthand the use of amphetamine-filled syringes. He and Brian Holm both made the same choice: doping was not for them. At the Flèche Wallonne in 1986 Roland’s soigneur offered Riis an injection:

It hadn’t taken long for me to realise that I had a lot to learn before I’d find my own place and my own identity in the cycling world. But what I did already know was that I didn’t want to turn over and let a stranger stick a needle in my backside and inject me with goodness-knows-what. It was the first time anyone had ever offered to inject me with anything.”

Riis refused to accept the injection unless he was told what it contained. The soigneur responded by shooting the contents of the syringe down the sink:

I could be pretty certain that I wouldn’t be getting much help or support from him again in a hurry after that. He didn’t look the sort who would let getting snubbed like that be forgotten any time soon either. But it was my body, my health and my career, and if I was going to take any medicines it was going to be though my own choice, and on my own terms and something that was properly tried and tested. I certainly wasn’t going to let a Belgian masseur force me into it.”

That Belgian masseur was Jef D’Hont. Ten years on from that incident at the 1986 Flèche, Riis would be reunited with D’Hont at Telekom, where the Belgian had been employed since Walter Godefroot took over the squad in 1992. D’Hont only survived a year with Riis on the team before becoming surplus to requirements at the end of the 1996 season. Eleven years after that, in 2007, D’Hont published an autobiography in which he blew the gaff on doping at Telekom.

Brian Holm, who had joined Telekom in 1993 and stayed through to 1997, also published an autobiography in 2007 and in it he confessed to having doped. Then the floodgates opened: Christian Henn, Bert Dietz, Udo Bölts, Erik Zabel, and Rolf Aldag all confessed to having doped at Telekom. Andreas Schmid and Lothar Heinrich, Telekom’s doctors at the Freiburg University Hospital, confessed to having facilitated their doping. And then Riis too finally confirmed what everyone already knew: he was a doper, just like all the rest. Unlike some of the others, though, Riis took full responsibility for his doping, didn’t try to blame D’Hont or Schmid or Heinrich. He had, he insisted, doped of his own free will.

Like many pros, Riis’ doping began with vitamin injections, which he had to learn to administer himself. Once that needle goes under the skin it becomes ever easier to rationalise the contents of the syringe, as Riis was to learn.

As well as witnessing drug use at kermesses Riis was also aware of the gossip in the peloton:

You heard people talking about riders who would experiment with different products, but no one seemed to have any concrete knowledge of who these riders were exactly or how they were doing it.”

 

Eventually Riis became a rider willing to experiment with different products. He doesn’t say when it was that he started doping (it was before 1992 and all the implications are that it was after he joined Super U) but the product – cortisone – was easily sourced. Having seen a marked improvement in his form from the cortisone, the Dane was faced with a new choice:

To continue using what I saw as relatively harmless products, or whether I was going to graduate to the kind of stuff that was said to really make you move. Maybe the latter was what I needed if I wanted to commit to being one of the best. As things stood, it was pointless training like a madman if the others were simply getting better results than me thanks to systematic doping.”

Riis moved up from the basic cortisone he was using to a stronger form, Kenacort. He lost weight, his legs grew stronger, he suffered no side-effects. Like a kid trying different brands of cigarette, Riis had found his cortisone of choice. Then, in the Autumn of 1992 and when riding for Ariostea, Riis was introduced to EPO by another rider:

I’d always been of the opinion that it was the rider who had trained the most effectively, who was best prepared and who was tactically the smartest who won races or did well. But it seemed as though none of that was necessary any more. Now I understood that it was those who found the right drug who were winning races.”

For Riis, winning was not just about finding the right drug, and EPO was just one factor in the improvement he showed during the 1993 season:

It was the combination of my weight loss, serious training and systematic EPO use that made all the difference. Losing weight meant that I simply had less mass to drag up the climbs, and I’d been able to train harder and more specifically to my goals. I was able to ride hard day after day, which had a hugely positive effect in my self-confidence, as did my improved results, and the fact that I was able to follow the world’s best riders.”

Initially Riis was only using small-ish doses of EPO. He recalls one occasion when a teammate tested his haematocrit level for him, using his own centrifuge. It was forty-seven per cent. His team-mate’s was sixty:

The figure gave me something to think about. I took EPO in moderation, which would amount to two or three courses of it during the season, normally in the run-up to the bigger races. But here was a colleague with a markedly higher haematocrit level compared to mine, and I wondered whether that meant he took much more EPO than I did, or bigger doses, or more courses. And I wondered whether there were many other riders in the peloton who were also riding around with haematocrit levels of sixty per cent.”

Having started with cortisone and graduated to EPO Riis started adding other doping products to the mix, including growth hormone:

I didn’t like it. I felt as though it somehow blocked me – that my body and legs weren’t functioning properly. Maybe it worked better for other people, but it wasn’t right for me.”

 

Prozac turned out to be a much better choice:

The pills made me feel much more positive, which allowed me to see possibilities rather than limitations. This really seemed to help at stage races, which can be very stressful mentally, and where maintaining a positive frame of mind could really help.”

Doping, for Riis, was just one element in the aggregation of marginal gains. The Dane also had an altitude chamber in the cellar of his house in Luxembourg. He dieted. Used acupuncture and herbal supplements. Tinkered with the set-up of his bike. Paid attention to his power output. Used goal-orientated training programmes. And then there was Luigi Cecchini:

He taught me a lot, and I was like his apprentice. We brought out the best in each other when we were working on developing new or different methods of treatment, training programmes or cycling equipment – anything that could help us steal a march on the competition.”

Anything, that is, apart from doping. Riis is adamant about this:

“In his time as my personal trainer he had never given me any banned products nor written me out any prescriptions for any.”

 

An important question ought be asked here: what is a banned product? To you or me a banned product is something that’s on the list of banned products. Others don’t agree with that. Back in 1994 Michele Ferrari claimed that doping was not doping if it didn’t show up in the doping controls. Many riders before and since have expressed similar views: if it can’t be tested for, it’s not doping. What does Riis think a banned product is? Here, perhaps, it’s just a minor error that Riis claims that the cortisone he first started using wasn’t banned, even though the UCI had got around putting it on the banned list in the seventies, about a decade after it was first used by cyclists and two decades before a reliable test came about. And here, perhaps, it’s also just a minor error that Riis claims that the EPO he first started using in 1992/3 wasn’t banned, even though the IOC had banned it in 1990 and the UCI a year later, although it’s use wasn’t regulated until 1997 and no test was available until 2001?

* * * * *

By the time the 1996 Tour came around everything had clicked into place for Riis. We’ve already looked at that race from three different angles (in Riishomon, parts 1 + 2, part 3 and part 4). For his stunning performance on the Hautacam Riis credits not his doping but his bike set-up, specifically his use of a smaller than normal big ring:

It was that ‘secret gear’ that did for them – I could see it in their eyes. Each time I’d attacked, I’d done so in the big ring, while they struggled in their small chain rings. It made them think that it was easy for me to be in the big ring, and that I was too strong for them. With plenty still left in the tank and completely in control, I accelerated one last time, and was on my own. None of them could follow me. This was it. Now, having broken them with my earlier attacks, I gave it everything I had, satisfied that none of them were going to be able to follow me.”

In a 1997 interview, Riis also credited Cecchini for the role he played that day:

Cecchini had told me in advance:  everything can get settled that day. The one who has the highest lactic acid threshold when it goes uphill, he’s the one who wins. And that person was me.”

 

Did doping play a role? Riis doesn’t really consider this in Stages of Light and Dark. He’s still peddling the dream, albeit having already pointed out that he was using EPO. But Riis really seems to believe that EPO was not primary factor in his success:

Bike racing was a lot more than just doping. There was also the strategy, the tactics, the mental strength and the ability to suffer.”

 

That the ability to suffer was enhanced by EPO and cortisone, that the mental strength was enhanced by Prozac, and that the strategy and tactics were impacted by doping doesn’t seem to matter. And while Riis does say that he regrets doping he doesn’t say whether that regret is based on the morality of the issue or simply a product of the problems doping and his denials caused him with the media. The latter seems to be the case, as Riis firmly believes that doping was simply “part of the job, and the way to reach your ambitions.”

One of the biggest weaknesses of Stages of Light and Dark – of too many cycling autobiographies – is the issues that are omitted. For instance, through his account of the 1994 season with Gewiss Riis has nothing to say of Michele Ferrari’s injudicious comments about orange juice and the impact they had on the team. Riis himself was not using Ferrari’s services; he’d had to choose between Ferrari and Cecchini when he joined Ariostea and once he made his choice he stuck with Cecchini. But Ferrari’s comments were important, both within Gewiss and the sport as a whole.

More importantly, though, when it comes to considering what happened in 1997 Riis omits to mention the introduction of the fifty per cent haematocrit limit and what – or even whether – that played a role in his less-than-stellar performance in the 1997 Tour.  The simple fact is that once Riis was forced to compete on more or less the same level of playing field as others (albeit one still elevated by EPO use), he was not the rider he was during that 1996 Tour. Doping may have been just one element in Riis’s performance but it seems to have been the crucial element.

Most of his poor performance at the 1997 Tour Riis credits to the Telekom team turning against him in favour of Jan Ullrich:

They said they were working for me, but it was clear that there was something going on and that it was in fact Jan who was being set up for overall victory.”

 

And then there was the state of his marriage. After the 1996 Tour ended, Riis headed off to Atlanta for the Olympics. There he met the Danish handball player Anne Dorth Tanderup and the two shared a kiss in a taxi:

Even though we’d only got to know each other for a relatively short time, it had made me want to know more about her. There was no doubt about it that she was good looking, but I knew that there was a lot more to her than that, which also attracted me.”

What happened in Atlanta didn’t stay in Atlanta and rumours soon caught up with Riis back in Denmark. The Danish media had got wind of a story and tried to stand it up. When one magazine published a story saying that Riis and Tanderup were an item, he contacted her. One phone call turned into another and the magazine’s story became true. The affair was afoot and Riis’s marriage was heading for the rocks. By the time the 1997 Tour came around Riis and his wife were in very choppy waters. Throughout that Tour it was to Tanderup that Riis turned for moral support, phoning her in the evenings. By the end of 1997 Riis’s marriage was over.

The 1998 Tour turned into a watershed for the sport. Despite all that had been happening over the previous few years, people still managed to be surprised that doping was widespread in the professional peloton. As soon as the Tour reached France after its Irish grand départ rumour spread that the gendarmes were going to hit the team hotels (something the Irish gardaí had chosen not to do). Riis immediately flushed all his EPO and got rid of his syringes and any other evidence of his own doping. Quizzed by the media as the first week of the race ended, Riis had this to say:

If this continues, there will be a number of riders who’ll simply want to go home. I’ve ridden for so many years that I’d rather stop with good memories than have to ride the rest of my career with rumours hanging over me. It’s not that fun to be a bike rider at the moment, as when people think about Festina, they immediately lump all the rest of us with them, and that’s not fair.”

Again here we should consider one of the issues omitted from Stages of Light and Dark: despite mentioning Festina’s systematic team-wide doping programme, not once does Riis mention Telekom’s own internal doping programme, which had been in existence pretty much from the formation of the team in 1989 (as the Stuttgart squad), and had started systematic use of EPO as early as 1993. There being no index to the book I can’t tell you exactly how many times Andreas Schmid, Lothar Heinrich, or the Freiburg University Hospital are mentioned in Stages of Light and Dark, but my rough tally is a big fat zero.

When the 1998 Tour ended the Dane had time to think about his own doping and ponder the imponderable: to stop, or not to stop. The biggest thing stopping Riis from stopping was that everyone else was going to carry on. Many riders came to the same conclusion and so, inevitably, doping continued unabated. Ultimately the decision was taken out of Riis’s hands: at the 1999 Tour de Suisse Riis crashed and broke his elbow. He was already giving serious consideration to retiring from cycling when his contract with Telekom ran out at the end of the season – he was by then thirty-five – and now he had the opportunity to draw a line under his pro career. Throughout his professional career Riis had been paying for personal injury insurance. In the previous year alone that had cost him 240,000 kroner (£21,000). Which is about twice his annual bill for EPO. Once Riis was able to prove that his broken elbow was career ending he left the sport with a golden parachute of more than 10,000,000 kroner (£900,000) courtesy of his insurance company.

* * * * *

Riis, of course, didn’t leave the sport. It would be worth taking the time to go through the story of Riis as a manager, but maybe not here. This section of the book is as up-to-date as it can be, ending in April 2012 and the news that Saxo Bank’s World Tour licence was not going to be withdrawn. It’s well worth reading, both for what Riis says and what he doesn’t say. Even when not revealing facts, Riis is revealing something about his own character and the issues that are important to him.

The most important issue Riis fails to deal with in this section of the book is the difficulty fans and media have with believing him today given that he denied his own doping for so long. For the most part, it would seem, Riis doesn’t really care. As he explains at one point:

I do understand it, yes, but I have put my own past behind me now and have other responsibilities.”

 

 

Funnily, this comment comes just a couple or three pages after Riis talks of having “talked a good game” during the 2008 Tour when it came to denying publicly the internal strife between Carlos Sastre and Fränk and Andy Schleck. And a couple of dozen pages before he talks of flatly denying to a journalist being in protracted negotiations to sign Alberto Contador, negotiations which Riis has just spent the previous few pages discussing.

Here of course is a problem with all sports books: athletes are expected to lie. They are expected to bend the truth in order to talk a good game. They lie about feeling weak, they lie about feeling strong. There is little or no room for honesty in sport. Honesty is a weakness and athletes must be strong. Of course, yes, there is a world of difference between talking a good game and denying doping. But the two are part of the same continuum. If you can trace a link between an athlete’s first B12 injection and their willingness to pump themselves full of EPO, then you can also trace a link between talking a good game and talking bullshit about doping. At the end of the day it’s all about providing the fans with the right amount of spectacle to keep them hooked on sport, hiding from them things that might spoil their enjoyment of the spectacle.

Riis at UK book launch (Photo: Roz Jones, courtesy of Vision Sports Publishing)

Which, of course, calls into question the point of reading Stages of Light and Dark. Of reading any cycling autobiography, especially those written by the ones who have doped and lied about their doping. I guess that depends on why you read sporting autobiographies, on what you hope to get out of them. Here it is important to stress that Stages of Light and Dark is not without its merits: within the spectrum of sporting autobiographies it is actually a good book. It adds to the store of knowledge about what was going on in Gen-EPO, even when Riis is wilfully avoiding having to deal with specifics. It adds to our understanding of what went on in Saxo Bank over the last few years, with Sastre and the Schlecks. And, of course, it’s a good read.

Lars Steen Pedersen – the ghost in the machine of Riis’s autobiography – has done a sterling job in telling Riis’s story. Pedersen is an experienced sports journalist who has ghosted other autobiographies before turning to Riis, including the boxer Johnny Bredahl and the footballer Stig Tøfting. Pedersen has managed to pull off the tricky task of making you somewhat sympathetic towards the taciturn Dane. From the off Pedersen wrong-foots you by offering a story from shortly after Riis’s May 2007 confession, a story which makes you realise there is a real person behind the façade.

Riis at UK book launch with Ellis Bacon (Photo: Roz Jones, courtesy of Vision Sports Publishing)

At the end of Stages of Light and Darke the picture that emerges of Riis is that of a proud and pragmatic man whose ambition has allowed him to fight his way to get to where he is today. Riis’s pride allows him to accept full responsibility for all that he did and not paint himself as a victim of a sport out of control, a sport in which fans, media, participants, sponsors, and governors all tried to pretend that doping was not a problem. His attitude to doping, both as a rider and a manager, has been pragmatic.

Stages of Light & Dark itself is a mix of pride – Riis still cherishes his Tour victory – and pragmatism. That pragmatism allows Riis to talk about things fans want to know – his own doping, his relationship with the likes of Sastre, the Schlecks and Contador – but that should not cause you to confuse this with a confessional autobiography: Riis is still keeping an awful lot of his story back. And, in many ways, there is more darkness than light in Stages of Light and Dark.

* * * * *

Riis: Stages of Light and Dark, by Bjarne Riis, with Lars Steen Pedersen, translated by Ellis Bacon, is published by Vision Sports Publishing (2012, 341 pages) (Originally published in Danish in 2010 as Riis, updated 2012).

Cavendish, Contador, and Evans at the Tour unveiling. (photo courtesy of AFP via cyclingnews.com)

“We are sorry that our exorbitant salaries were averaged in to the UCI’s figures to completely misrepresent what is truly happening with wages in the professional peloton. We feel that the governing body of the sport has purposefully pitted the ‘haves’ against the ‘have nots’ in order to prevent us from forming a union that would protect the interests of all in the sport,” declared the three superstars of cycling at a joint press conference in Monaco.

In fact, according to our sources inside the UCI, when you average the salaries of the peloton after factoring out earnings of the top and bottom 50 athletes, the salary figure barely approaches 100,000 euros. One Pro-Continental rider, speaking to Cyclismas on the basis of anonymity, stated that he was the top earner on his team at the equivalent of 80,000 euros. He also stated that the situation wasn’t any different at the WorldTour level, except for the “lucky two or three” stars on each of those teams.

The UCI was quick to jump on the challenge issued by the superstars of the sport.

“If we want to grow cycling and make more money, these idiots have to play by our rules. Sure, most of the peloton actually only makes a quarter of the stated average, but we’re all about giving them something to aspire to. What’s wrong with dangling the carrot? If the grist for the peloton mill – or domestiques, as we call them – has a problem with the 1% who are making too much money, that’s just too fooking bad,” responded UCI president Pat McQuaid.

Gerard Vroomen, former owner of Cervelo, has offered his assistance to the pro peloton to combat what he calls, “exponential unstainable growth in cycling revenue.”

“After spending time with my former partner [Phil White], I became familiar with his hero, David Suzuki, the Canadian environmental crusader. His concept of exponential growth is pretty much on the money, and we need to create a ‘plateau’ for cycling, rather than this ridiculous growth model. McQuaid and the UCI have knocked our sport out of equilibrium,” stated Vroomen via phone.

When asked if he was going to run against McQuaid during the next UCI election, Vroomen was terse, “I think a trained monkey would do less damage to cycling than McQuaid has. I mean, what kind of sport do we have when teams are given regular cars instead of estate cars at races in Malaysia? How do you get raincoats out of the boot at 110 kms per hour? I just may run against him.”

Former professional cyclist and French TV pundit Jean-Francois Bernard offered his professional opinion on the subject, “This so-called ‘average annual salary’ could feed a small Spanish village for a year.”

Contador, Evans, and Cavendish are considering donating 60% of their earnings to the formation of a riders union, whose first order of business would be to establish a salary cap and also a team spending cap.

It remains to be seen if the three amigos will be inspired to invoke Zapata and lead the pro peloton to strike for fair wages following their viewing of Ocean’s 13 at Thor Hushovd’s Monaco enclave during his annual classics season kick-off party.

McQuaid responds to the UN Human Rights Council

The McQuaid-led organization was one of two that were named for infringing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In particular, the commission found McQuaid’s most recent transgression to be in violation of Article 19 of the charter. This is in reference to his lawsuit filed against journalist Paul Kimmage; it has been determined that using his position within the UCI to violate the charter was even more reprehensible than the recent actions of the US Department of Homeland Security.

“Mr. Kimmage has the right to state his opinion, and to state the facts he has garned as a citizen of our planet, and especially since he is an accredited journalist who has shown his ability to impartially report on the happenings of the sport. It is deplorable that any organization of influence that is supposed to operate on behalf of a very broad constituency would conduct themselves in this manner,” stated Pillay.

Delegates at the special session were gobsmacked by the violations of the human rights charter that were documented in the press, not to mention the evidence gathered by special investigators commissioned in July of last year after complaints from Alberto Contador, Alexander Kolobnev, Franco Pellizotti, Ezekiel Mosquera, Alejandro Valverde, and Jonathan Vaughters.

McQuaid himself was shocked at the allegations.

“Look, I don’t understand what the issue is. There are those who have power, and then there’s those that are oppressed. Everyone works hard to be powerful and escape the oppression. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, the UN is pure rubbish. They should stick to their meetings and declarations and stay out of my world. Officially, though, I really have no comment on this, as there is no case yet, nor have I received any notification of any kind pertaining to these bullshite allegations,” commented McQuaid.

When reached for comment, Kimmage’s only reply was, “They’re 20 years too late to the party, typical.”

The special session passed a motion to investigate and make recommendations to Swiss parliament on the “dissolution of the UCI and the return of the sport to the grassroots of the federation.”

Expert opinions were mixed on the move by the UN.

“I’m not sure anyone really cares about what McQuaid is doing since he’s been allowed to do it since 2006. I doubt the UN will have any impact other than getting the tongues of the bloggers and the Twitterati wagging,” commented Eurosport commentator David Harmon.

Noted blogger and internet conspiracy theorist @Velocentric was less than complimentary.

“This is a great move by an organization with some weight behind it. Let’s just hope that the Americans don’t scuttle it with a filibuster to protect the corporate interests known to have the ear, the mouth, and the entire body of Pat McQuaid, along with the rest of his crooked cronies,” fumed the tweeter known to be “73% faster than a turtle on sand.”

Pillay’s next step is to forward the UN research, conclusions, and recommendations to the European Court. Cyclismas will be staying abreast of the developments as they occur.

It's back to basics for the RadioSchlock team. Maybe that's a good thing. (photo courtesy of RadioShack-Nissan-Trek)

Best of the Week

Numero Cinco

Greipel blazes to early-season victory in Australia

I waxed the philosophical on this topic during my 2012 season preview with Neil and Dan on @TourChats two Sundays ago.  While other pundits were discussing Goss, Renshaw, Cavendish, and the rest of the usual suspects, I’d been having some conversations with those close to the Lotto-Belisol team. These gents have long ties to the former HTC sprint train, and above all, actually enjoy working together. Henderson hadn’t been able to contain his excitement about his move to the team since the ink was barely dried on the contract last last summer, and was privately and publicly thrilled to reunite with the Gorilla after a year of anonymity at Sky in spite of stellar performances. While many are saying that it’s premature to discuss who will be successful in the sprints for 2012, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Lotto-Belisol team will be the benchmark.

Numero Cuatro

Cycling Australia issues a “suspended” fine to Chloe Hosking

A fitting end to this story. Nice to see that the highly-political organization decided to avert a mutiny in the ranks by issuing a quasi slap on the wrist. Privately, there were  legions of the Aussie brass quietly applauding Chloe’s outspoken attitude towards the UCI. It would seem that the politicos at the federation level have noted the shift in the winds away from the “top” and are aligning with those at the “bottom.”

Numero Tres

Contador and Basso to testify at Operation Puerto Trial

We can analyse this in a variety of ways, but said trial could reveal some truths surrounding the actions of the doctor known as Fuentes and his dealings with the pro peloton. While everyone is distracted by one of the items on my worst list, this is going to be the revelation of 2012. Expect some interesting stories – that many of us behind the scenes have known for years – to be revealed, including links to CONI, the Giro, and ultimately the UCI.

Numero Dos

O’Grady accused of assault

Why is this on the best list? Because finally someone outside of cycling has experience and reported what O’Grady has been guilty of for years. Look, Stuey is a great rider and a very nice guy on the bike and around the bus. However, you put alcohol into the gent and it’s game over; he does have an alleged tendency to be an angry gentlemen when tipsy (that’s an understatement). He’s had some interesting run-ins over the years with members of the media and also billets. There was an episode where he grabbed one journalist by the throat after he’d had five beverages too many following the final stage of the 2008 TDU. How about  the rumours of O’Grady assaulting one of the house parents at the AIS when GreenEDGE assembled their camp in December? Or how about Delgado’s comments to another journalist that he was gobsmacked that O’Grady was able to start one of the stages at the 2007 Vuelta in spite of the fact he’d been on such a bender the night before? And what about the Schleck incident? There’s no doubt in my mind O’Grady’s reputation has been protected by the cycling inner circle due to his abilities on the bike. What happens when he retires? Mel Gibson anyone?

Numero Uno

35 Women’s teams are registered for 2012 

What a great story for women’s pro cycling after the questionable demise of several top women’s teams, including the Garmin program. This represents an increase of eight teams, amplifying the voice that was somewhat muted for a number of years. My appreciation goes out to those corporate citizens who have joined the ranks of sponsors in women’s cycling.

Worst of the Week

Number Five

Barracuda

Oh, Vaughters. Great you have a title sponsor. Great that you explained how it couldn’t save the women’s program. It all makes complete and total sense. Yes, the metrics may not justify supporting women’s cycling (not that you ever cared to), but if folks relied on that sort of thinking, the personal computer would never have been created. That’s just one example of unconventional thinking creating something outstanding to benefit society as a whole. However, in honour of Barracuda, I leave you with this video.

Number Four

GreenEDGE courts controversy by throwing their weight around at Aussie TT championships

Nothing like being the rich kid who abuses his playground power to ensure getting the honours he bought and paid for. GreenEDGE takes the top two podium places, utilizing race radios after exerting pressure on the commissaire. Look, gents, winning at all costs went out two years ago. It’s a hollow victory. You should be haunted by the fact that you exploited officials in order to profit. Shame, shame.  How about the UCI ignoring any investigation? *Chuckle* nothing like a new holiday home in Melbourne courtesy of Gerry Ryan, GreenEDGE rich kid.

Number Three

Australians whinging about pro peloton nature breaks

TDU boss Mike Turtur is a horse’s arse. Public urination has been a tradition in professional cycling since the dawn of time. Rider are on a bike, nature calls, they need to stop. Everyone pisses. The fact that Turtur says, “It’s illegal to urinate in public – full stop” is about the most ludicrous thing he could say to the press outside of declaring that it’s illegal to block traffic for races. You’re the guy running the show. And a warning to those watching the sport for the first time, if a rider stops and whips it out, look away and go about your business. We all have pee pees and hoo hoos and when nature calls, nature calls. If you’re going to have a UCI-level race, you better goddamned make sure you’ve done all your homework to allow these boys to race without getting in shite for something like that. It’s not like they whizzed on someone, or a team car, or an official’s car. *chuckle*

Number Two

Aussie Cricketer wins world’s worst person award – Australia edition

My good mate Bridie O’Donnell said it best. Click on the link for her take. Brilliant read, my dear. Let’s hope Karma pays a visit to this douchebag.

Number One

Radioshack-Nissan requires remedial bike handling/cornering programme

I will give Johan full credit for realising that a certain members of his troupe are really uncomfortable on their bikes in most situations, naming no names.  However, it’s completely embarrassing for them that you would do this sort of PR stunt to “raise” the profile of your team. It’s like demonstrating to a football club the basics of offside, or a to a hockey player the finer points of stopping on skates, or to an American football player how to throw a ball, after they’ve been signed to the professional ranks. So, the question is, again, was this a really bad PR stunt by a blundering team, or was it a smokescreen cover up of a team that has no idea how to ride or race outside of climbing (Fabs and Jens excluded)?

This is my throne. This is my sport.

The efforts that I have personally made in order to give the fans of the sport the illusion that the peloton is clean came to a beautiful climax on Thursday, where the ingredients to our recipe coagulated on the highest conclusion of any Tour stage on the legendary slopes of Galibier.

The face French housewives dream to see

Voeckler, the reluctant champion, choice of housewives all over France, gasping for air at the finish, channeling the spirit of Jean Francois Bernard on Ventoux, or Stephen Roche at the conclusion of any stage was the image of the day. The sight of Cadel Evans at the base of the climb throwing down the gauntlet to the pretenders to the Tour throne only needed a Pantani bandana to be tossed off his melon as he accelerated out of the saddle. There was Andy, who silently prayed for the finish line with 200 metres to go, while Frank took advantage of a tired Evans, and showed a clever hand by SmartOPard™ (thank you @Vaughters).

Yes, we saw glimmers of these performances in the last two editions of the Giro, but none featured the face of Contador saying “No mas.”

We in Aigle are in our glory. The scourge of the cheats has given way to glorious pain and suffering. Finally. Our plans, in conjunction with the ASO, have given us the sporting spectacle we have wished for since Verbruggen and Armstrong went out to pasture, thank Jaysus Christ.

This has been all due to the fact that the ASO does an amazing job of administering terristrial video rights for the Tour. They manage them better than most entities on the planet, hence the sporting event is viewed by more people around the world than any other. Yes, we tried to get our hand in that cookie jar a couple of years back, which almost precipitated a cycling civil war of decimating proportions. Alright, alright, I went about empire building the wrong way.

"Not happy with Vaughters Comments" Cold Blue Steel Look.

Rule #1 about dealing with the ASO –DON’T TRY TO FOOK WITH THEIR TV EMPIRE.  They will bitch slap any takers harder than China has spanked Obama economically.

It took me relocating Verbruggen from the management committee to his SportAccord ivory tower to atone for that rookie blunder of mine. Thankfully, after I truly realized how much reach these Frenchy Frenchies have in the world of cycling, I thought it best to make the peace and build events for them to run. Worked like clockwork so far.

However, while on this subject, lo and behold, what do I read Tuesday via our friends at www.cyclingnews.com? Vaughters on Revenue Sharing. And to quote our illustrious and well-read friend, who spoke with Cyclingnews.com:

Cycling is one of a few professional sports where the athletes aren’t part of the revenue sharing of television rights. The business model for teams has got to change in order for the sport to change and become successful in the long term and that means the teams becoming partners with the race organiser and not necessarily just their minions.

There is a certain responsibility required when you are in a position of authority that states unless you are drunk on Guinness or Whiskey, throwing around glib socialistic-style quotes (even though you are in France and really feeling that Voltairian leftist influence) isn’t necessarily the best career choice by a team owner.

Does that article make the sponsors backing the WorldTour Teams warm and fuzzy? No! It says to me as a big shot, “Hey thanks for giving me millions of euros and believing my pitch on the long-term viability of my venture to bring a public relations windfall to your firm, but hey, unless I get a 10 million euro cash ejection Hail Mary from the Lords of the Tour, you just wasted your fooking money.”

The Good Old Days.

You see, while you would THINK that those quotes would be soothing to your sponsors, it’s not. It just makes them think that you’re a crack whore with a methadone addiction who’s looking for another hit, and blames the system for the addiction while failing to take responsibility for the fact that you caused yourself to be a crack whore.

Still not seeing it? Pretend that you go to the bank saying that you need a loan to buy a house. In the process of acquiring that loan, the bank asks your income, and then asks you to estimate the utilities for the home. In an effort to confirm your loan, you fudge a little on the income part, and you outright lowball the utilities. Then once you’re in the home, your salary goes down and the utilities go up. So you go to the bank looking for help to pay the utilities, and they (the bank) look at you like your a fooking two-headed alien love child, and you can’t understand why.

Everyone has tried to compare models in the sporting world to cycling, but my beloved sport defies that comparison, as major team sports and their models have evolved in a very different manner from professional cycling. What everyone forgets is that the nature of the sport is very nomadic and unstable. It has been this way since the beginning of time in cycling.

In fact, riders ARE the minions of the ASO, and have been since 1905. They are interchangeable, the are replaceable. The beauty of cycling is no one really cares how fast these blokes finish the stage, they are more interested in the battles and the spectacles that occur between the stage start and finish. Anyone actually care how fast it takes them to a finish a stage? I certainly don’t give two shites. Or three. So, we could throw some amateur French lads in there to duke it out, and many will just not give a flying crap that Contador isn’t there (well they’d probably be pretty fooking happy at this point).

The Good Old Minion Days

The prime example of this is the French housewife hysteria around Thomas Voeckler. Best. Thing. For. The. Tour. In. A. Very. Long. Time.  You see, the Professional Cycling business probably most closely models that of the entertainment industry. Think of the professional cyclists as the ensemble cast of a television program. Think of the producer of the show as the equivalent of a team owner, and the network purchasing the show as the ASO. Producers can browbeat the talent to conform to the wishes of the network, the network can offer up concessions or pay raises to those working in the cast, but unless the talent collectively rises up to say “fook off” to the network, it ain’t happening, no matter how hard the producer may try.

I like to use US television programmes as this benchmark, because they’re all fooking crazy. Like Charlie Sheen. Good Example of a “talent” failing to understand the reality of his situation, and finding himself outside the “team” and also outside the “network.”

Or an example of a positive effort to force revenue sharing upon a network was the collective work of the ensemble cast of Friends. They determined their entire careers, agreeing to be paid the same throughout the years, standing by Matthew Perry and his drug issues, and ultimately deciding when they were done, in spite of the network’s pleas for one more year. This means that I’m coming back to the same conclusion I always do: the “producer” (i.e., Vaughters) can whinge as much as he likes about what the “network” (ASO) is doing, but until the “talent” (pro peloton) gets off their arses and collectively barks, we will have the status quo.

So what am I trying to say? The ASO taint going to fooking share their money unless they are given a very fooking good reason to do so. Don’t look at me to fight that battle, because it got me absolutely nowhere.

@theJensie modeling the big fussy fuss – the little radio.

Speaking of the ASO and the UCI, did you like how we outmaneuvered the AIGCP on the race radio walk-out/protest/pout for the Tour of Beijing? Do you like how I brought in Verbruggen to stall off Vaughters long enough so I could finish my negotiations with the ASO and hand them the Tour of Beijing on a silver platter? Sorry JV, best of luck trying to line up the ASO on anything, and you should always know that I have an endgame and a long-game that is being played, and our two organizations are pretty much thick as thieves now.

Speaking of thick as thieves, anyone cast any money on a Basso/Evans alliance for Alpe d’Huez? Anyone? Evans still has several cards to play, so be careful jumping on that Schleck bandwagon, lest you forget what happened to Laurent Fignon in Paris back in ’89. Vive Le Tour.