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.

Blackwater troops being deployed in Aigle.

Citing the recent rash of internal UCI letters and memoranda reaching the general public, and the uprising of pockets of resistance to their globalization plans, president dictator Pat McQuaid reached out to the firm that provides security to many US-based assets, the group known as Blackwater.

“I am thrilled that Xe Services accepted our desires for tighter security measures to ensure our safety at the top of the cycling food chain,” praised McQuaid.

McQuaid continued to discuss the changes in the cycling climate, as the UCI business practices that have been entrenched for decades have recently come under fire, including alleged attempted coercion of cycling sponsors, and more recently this week charges from WADA at the Play the Game conference of an “inconsistent and flaccid doping programme.”

The UCI plans on deploying an armed security detail with every ProTeam at every WorldTour race in 2013, and a maintaining “strong presence” at the UCI Headquarters in Aigle. Plans have already been announced to install a concrete barrier around the cycling mecca, along with an inner security fence as a secondary precaution.

When asked about the dubious record of Blackwater Security, including alleged human rights offenses in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and the United States, McQuaid fired back with a sputtering soliloquy, highlighting the fact that these alleged offenses were the result of a “bleeding-heart left-wing media agenda against those who have earned business profits from their God given ventures determined by Divine Right to Rule.”

ProTeam managers who were asked to comment on the program refused to go on record, citing significant differences of opinion and a lack of intestinal fortitude to express their opposition to what many feel is a “hijacking of the sport at the expense of the masses,” a quotation that none of the team managers, owners or sponsors were willing to attribute themselves to whatsoever.

However, Gerard Vroomen, founder of Cervélo, was unafraid to mince words, “I’m still astounded that this supposed governing body, operating with a smaller revenue stream than ours [Cervélo’s], can sway the collective billion-dollar cycling industry to its will.”

In response to Vroomen’s comments, McQuaid concluded, “We’ll see how small our revenue stream will be in 10 years with the help of Xe Services, Itera, and others who have united to create a galactic cycling empire.”

This is my throne. This is my Sport. Live from Copenhagen.

The victory against this war has been clouded this week by the fact that my brother “helped” Richmond with their winning bid for the 2015 World Championships after the attrition of Quebec City last year. Ignore the fact that Muscat dropped at the eleventh hour during an in-person meeting where we offered the moon in order to secure the winning Richmond bid. That means nothing. It’s only insolent bloggers who are over-hyping the fact that Darach played a very insignificant, and therefore, minor role in securing the bid. There was a host of individuals who were intimately involved in making Richmond happen. In fact, I might be persuaded to consider that Darach was a freeloader. Well, he’s been a freeloader since birth, but that’s for another conversation at another time. I love the little fooker.

Happy Richmonders

Ignore that insignificant tripe. It’s unimportant. Winning the war against doping is all that matters, for at least the next 7 days or so, or until I change my mind. Yet again.

Our efforts have made the dopers run scared. We’ve broken the ringleaders of the effort to corrupt our sport. We have rid them from the ranks of the professional peloton, we have rid them from levels of team management, we have extracted them from the support folks that act as drug mules, and we have caused the arrest of the ring of doctors who supply these parasites with their products.

Yes, it is all the work of Alexander Kolobnev.

You see, Kolobnev is the only positive test this year in the professional peloton. With well over 500 target tests that were done this year, only one rider was found to have broken the rules. Therefore, based on our logic here in Aigle, he is the ringleader of doping efforts for the entire professional peloton for 2011. We are almost certain that he acted alone. Furthermore, the fact that two former riders were found with doping paraphenelia prior to the Tour is of no consequence to cycling. There was zero proof that those products were destined for use by any cyclists of any kind. This has been borne out by the fact that everyone has dropped their inquiries into the status of the “arrests” of both “drug mules.”

With that said, our rationale of the situation calls for only one conclusion. It has to revolve around the one dirty scoundrel that we outed this year. Never mind the fact that the test was one that the AFLD completed for the Tour, and that Kolobnev hadn’t had a Passport Programme test done in the 11 months prior. He’s the one bad apple in the pie that we forked out prior to him tainting the remainder of the pie. I love apple pie. It’s rather tasty. Especially after one wicked hangover.

Our biological passport programme has rendered the numerous individuals involved in the variety of doping rings that have been operating since the late ’80s to reconsider and recant their decades of profits and tainted performances. That single decision by us in Aigle is strategically the most brilliant tool ever created by any sporting organization.  What other rational explanation can be offered up as the poster child for success? This has to be a glowing example that we are bit-by-bit winning the war against doping in cycling.

As Francesca Rossi was allowed to point out at the World Championships on Saturday during her brief appearance in public, we are doing what we now refer to as “Intelligent Testing” in conjunction with our biological passport programme. What does IT stand for? Well I think that the concept is certainly above analysis by the simple folks involved in our sport, so instead, I believe I will just state, in point form, what Intelligent Testing (or IT for short) is NOT, as implied by all the useless bloggers and conspiracy oriented media types:

• IT is NOT a campaign to help the WorldTour teams understand where their riders should be in order to partake in threshold maintenance for systematic doping protocols.
•  IT is NOT a tool to arbitrarily punish those riders who may question our authority, or fall outside our wishes.
• IT is NOT a tool that allows us to extract cooperation of those that can help further our clandestine UCI objective
• IT is NOT a tool that prevents Team Managers from speaking out against what they call ludicrous decisions, like our Tour of Beijing (sorry, Danielson is positive *wink, wink. nudge, nudge*)
• IT is NOT a tool to help us promote certain riders to become our global spokespeople after a miraculous string of wins after years of almost brilliance.

Those are just a few of the many things that this programme is not.

Many high-profile “Oliver Stone” types (yes you, Gerard Vroomen), have cited the fact that we have dropped the amount of BPP (Biological Passport Programme for you dimwits) tests and have questioned why we have done this. You see, with our Index of Suspicion, one of the tools in the Intelligent Testing Umbrella Programme, we have been able to perform more target testing for those that we feel are the more dodgy part of the peloton, which in turn reduces our costs and increases our profit margin. The spectre of being tested has proven to be more than enough of a deterrent to those shifty-eyed dogs of the professional peloton to reconsider their pattern of behaviour.

Welcome aboard, my new friend. Officially.

This leaves us with more money to develop programmes like the certified clothing programme that we are developing after the rousing success of our bicycle certification programme, which will have a new name shortly – “Frame Safe by the UCI.” However, I’m digressing. Let’s just finish this doping success – er anti-doping success –  by saying that we’re winning. Winning. Winning. Winning.

My week in Copenhagen was one of pure joy. It was about igniting a formerly stale cycling nation into an army of Cav Clones, jumping on their bicycles with their aero helmets and one piece skinsuits to decimate the field of a road race with a team time trial. Bradley Wiggins did a better version of Fabian Cancellara. Speaking of Cancellara, how do you like being on a Bruyneel team now, eh? Be prepared for a year of heartache, Fabian, you’ll be the loser in many more photo finishes. *chuckle*

We also were able to begin our work on the athletes commission, which is an exciting proposition, creating a new format to keep the professional peloton in check while giving them the idea that they are “involved.” I was able to express my feelings on the fact that women’s cycling isn’t developed enough at all, and don’t look at me as being the reason for it as I’m just the president of the governing body that may or may not take care of that. You see, we have many other initiatives on the go, and really, women just aren’t a priority right now. However, I did thoroughly enjoy the armada of podium gals in bright red and blonde tones. It was pure joy.

Bruyneel affects the result of Fabianese. *chuckle*

Lastly, Copenhagen saw me begin a new spirit of cooperation with the latest and greatest member of the UCI management committee, Igor Makarov. I welcome him with open arms, and a Teflon vest underneath my shirt from Harrods. Thankfully our detente has led to Tchmil publicly saying, as he did to Alberto Celani last week, that he’s NOT running for the UCI presidency, and that he’s Katusha president. Let’s just say that those profits from the reduction in BPP testing are also being reallocated to another programme related to G6 safety. Just in case.

When the UCI published its press release as a response to Gerard Vroomen’s Biological Passport blog post, I couldn’t help but feel that there were a few questions that remained unanswered.

Vroomen said that he had not heard of any riders being tested from the end of the 2010 Tour De France until April 2011. He also suggested that this may have been because of legal fees incurred when riders, such as Franco Pellizotti, have gone to court to prove their innocence.

In the press release the UCI said that 1074 tests were conducted from 1st of July 2010 (excluding urine tests and Tour De France 2010) and 1577 completed for the period to the 30th April 2011. It also refuted the aforementioned claims that the funds were used for fighting legal cases.

So, that’s fine then. Isn’t it?

Well, no. By concentrating solely on the period that Gerard Vroomen mentions and throwing some numbers somewhat belligerently in his direction, the UCI have, unconsciously or otherwise, completely side-stepped the issue that Vroomen was trying to highlight. As he said in the follow-up post:

I did not say there were zero tests, just that I’ve heard from riders and team managers that they haven’t seen tests being carried out, while nobody told me the opposite. And that’s a stark contrast to say 12 months ago. Obviously I did not check the 1000+ pro riders all individually.”

All the UCI have done is point to the fact that there were some tests carried out. They have said nothing regarding whether the total number of tests has risen, fallen, or been consistent since the commencement of the biological passport programme.

And if Gerard Vroomen’s anecdotal evidence isn’t enough, how about Michael Ashenden, one of the leading experts in anti-doping? Speaking to Cyclingnews.com, Ashenden said:

It’s correct that the observation made by Gerard Vroomen matches with my experience. I have noticed a significant gap between tests in some of the profiles I have reviewed. It’s definitely not in every single profile, but enough to have left an impression on me.”

Somewhat worryingly, what both Ashenden and Vroomen assert is true. The number of tests have fallen.

When Anne Gripper gave her presentation on the biological passport to ANADO in the autumn of 2008 she stated that the target number for testing in 2009 would be in excess of 11,000. The actual number for that year was 10,603. The number of tests carried out in 2010 fell to 8,342.

I asked the UCI why this would be. Spokesperson for the UCI, Jane Moraz told me:

The success of the biological passport has allowed us to better target riders rather than blindly test across the board.

A relatively high number of tests must be carried out to establish a rider’s biological passport, but fewer tests are required to maintain the passport once it has been established. Only those riders whose passports give cause for concern will be tested more often.”

It seems to me that the thinking here is flawed. Potentially fatally. A high number of tests at the beginning of the programme should continue to be a same high number of tests throughout the programme. The whole point of the biological passport is to provide continuing data for all riders. It was devised to monitor biological markers of doping over a period of time. But the UCI’s targeting policy assumes that these other riders deemed not worthy of their continual attention aren’t up to no good in their absence. It wouldn’t take much for a rider to notice that he isn’t being tested quite so much or as often as he was the previous year.

Going back to Anne Gripper’s presentation, where she also stated that there would be “anonymous public release of the data each quarter,” this simply has not been done.

When asked about the failure to meet this promise the UCI told me;

It is true that it was stated at one point that there would be an anonymous public release of results each quarter. However, in the light of our experience with the biological passport we realised that this measure would not be particularly useful, especially as an anonymous report would carry little weight.”

Fair enough, except that some people are more than a little geeky and have nothing better to do with our time but pore over the resultant chemical analysis gleaned from months and months of a pro-cyclists pee! If you are indeed one of those people, I can only apologise on behalf of the UCI that they cannot assist you with your chosen pasttime.

That being said, I was assured by the UCI that cycling’s main stakeholders – the teams – were receiving regular updates of anti-doping tests and statistics. This information, the UCI said, was not being sent out to the media.

However, sources from three teams have confirmed that they only receive anti-doping data once per year. Certainly, you can’t argue that sending data to the teams once every 12 months constitutes regularity. But is it in the spirit of the word’s definition? I don’t think it unfair to suggest that the statement I got from the UCI would lead me believe that “regular updates” was something more substantial than yearly. I wouldn’t consider getting a Christmas card from someone as “regular” correspondence – even if they include an typed A4 piece of paper detailing how little Johnny was doing at school and how they spent their holidays in Mexico this year (Lovely place, you should try it –can’t recommend it highly enough. Oh and the food…!). Regardless, if the amount of data represents all that the UCI have collated, yearly is a world away from regularly.

This is not what you and I believed would happen and it’s not what the teams signed up for. Elite-level teams are paying €120,000 each year in contributions towards the biological passport. Did the UCI make it clear that this figure would remain constant while the number of tests undertaken would fall?

Indeed it is not only that the price the teams have to pay is to remain constant. In March this year a letter was leaked to the nyvelocity.com website. The letter was written by Jonathan Vaughters in his role as President of the AIGCP and was sent to UCI President, Pat McQuaid. Vaughters was responding to UCI demands that Pro Conti teams should receive a €20,000 increase to their biological passport bill from the €60,000 that they previously paid. As the AIGCP President pointed out, the teams support 70% of the biological passport annual budget and the increase represents in excess of a 33% price hike. The UCI only contributes 14% to the budget and saw its bill rise by a meager one percent in 2011.

Interestingly, in the leaked letter, Jonathan Vaughters also points to teams noticing a “significant drop in unannounced spot checks to their riders since the the start of 2011…”*

What is clear here is that the UCI are not using the biological passport in the way that was intended at its inception. The teams are being asked to pay significant sums of money yet see the number of tests to their riders fall and only receive notification as to the biological passport analysis once per year.

Is it any wonder that some are asking what on earth the UCI are doing, and if their implementation of the passport is nothing more than a feel good PR exercise aimed more at calming the nerves of sponsors, than actually catching dopers?

*original French text from the leaked letter: “équipes s’étonnent paradoxalement d’une baisse significative des contrôles inopinés auprès de leurs coureurs, depuis le début de l’année 2011…”