Commentary, General News, Interviews 3

Vaughters’ Non-Admission Admission

By · On August 4, 2012

@sarcastitom is the Twitter handle of one of those “nom de plume” idiots sitting around on his arse and figuring out the stuff that the high-priced bone idlers can’t. He sometimes graces these pages with insight that is so startling in its simplicity, you have to wonder why you didn’t beat him to the punch.

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You know what I mean by “non-denial denial”.  In cycling, for better or worse, we’ve seen scores of them.  Especially since Floyd (Landis, not the barber or Abrams) spilled his guts about his old friends and teammates.  For example, there’s George Hincapie’s statement:

“I have been a professional on the circuit for 17 years — which is one of the longest careers in the peloton. During that time, I have earned the respect of my peers and a reputation for working hard, honestly and honorably,”

But George didn’t actually deny doping. He knows that and we know that and he knows that we know that. (I swear that’s grammatically correct).  It serves for most of us as tacit acknowledgement of his past.  But it leaves us as satisfied as a eunuch in a whorehouse. A couple of days ago, Vaughters did the opposite. He talked extensively about his (way past alleged but still not totally explicit) doping history without ever actually admitting to anything.  It started off with this innocent little incendiary device:

Stir the pot, JV.  Ostensibly when he retired he said it was to spend more time with his family.  Not to say that’s not true – his son Charlie was just toddling I believe – but it’s pretty rare that family is a reason all by itself.  “I want to spend more time with my family [and by the way my job is worse than self-impalement]”, or “I want to spend more time with my family [so the indictment doesn’t harm the company]” or something like that.  And obviously since he’s asked the question he’s not going to just say “for the family” and move on to shaving his sideburns into an argyle pattern. What followed can best be described as a Twitter interview.  Vaughters is known for his openness, but over the next several hours he answered questions with a frankness and general lack of dick jokes that surely meant he’d run out of wine.  So for the sake of maintaining a historical record, or perhaps just because I need to get a life, I’ve tried to present it all here. I went chronologically and weeded out some excess JV fluffing, because who wants to see that?

OK, that was JV-fluffing, but it’s nice to know he’s happy with his choice.

 

And according to his bio at SlipstreamSports.com:

In 2003, at only 30 years old, Jonathan decided to step away from a successful, but tough professional cycling career. He was perhaps young to retire, but clearly had maximized his abilities at a somewhat earlier age than most through ground-breaking training techniques, and extreme focus.

“…ground-breaking training techniques”?  Don’t worry, he’s not nearly so evasive as you get farther into this.

(And no denial of seeing others dope. Not a surprise, just sayin’.)

When I was younger I didn’t get that people like Kimmage who love to rattle their sabers aren’t doing it solely because it makes their sabers feel so good.  Their sabers are aroused because they’ve been privy to a dopers’ peep show that would curl a meth addict’s toes.

For comparison, when Landis left USPS at $230,000, he was hired by Phonak for $500,000 (probably Euros, but not positive).  I guess JV was more than just a pretty face with bee sting scars.

 

At which point some asshat on Twitter promptly made a snarky comment about JV having a book deal.  Oh wait, that was me.  Never mind.

No JV, she said “penance” not “Penzance.” We know how he loves musicals.

His staunch defense of both Agricole and Legaey comes up a few more times.

His beating about the bush is getting steadily closer to the bush.  Dude, close the deal.

 

Credit where Credit is due I suppose.

What’s the holdup?  It’s not like you need anybody’s Tygart’s permission to do that.

Ok already. Did Roger or Agricole sponsor your book deal or something?  And that’s the second time you’ve mentioned disappointing them.  Sounds a little slavish.

 

 

This is the bringing us pretty close to an answer for his original question.  And yes, we really get that you were very eager to please them.  What was your safe word?

Are  you trying to tell us something about how you feel about Credit Agricole?  I’m still not quite getting it.  And no, folks, for once “pressure from within” is not some kind of innuendo.

He’s talked about this before, not really a surprise.  The next one’s quite a bit more interesting:

Man.  It’s so hard to read between the lines here, JV.  You’re being so vague.  Does the puritan comment mean you slept your way to the top?  I’m just so confused. Yes, it’s not exactly news.  He’s made it pretty clear in the past that he’s used “product” that’s way beyond hair gel, but this is certainly one of the better examples of him talking about his doping very plainly but without the actual words “I doped.”

 

Again JV, this time with feeling.  And finally, we’re about to get something like an answer:

He won’t say it but I can.  His conscience wouldn’t let him go back to doping.  He had some major success due to the dope and became a high-paid blue chip rider for a team where he didn’t have to dope any more and made more money.  So for somebody who is not a puritan, but still maintains some qualms about his doping, he’s really found a “win-win” situation.  The only thing missing was an actual win. Basically he couldn’t perform because going off the dope left him somehow physiologically damaged at least for a while.  There’s no honor in wasting his team’s time and money failing to deliver wins, and no honor in lying to his team (risking their reputation) to deliver the wins he’s being paid for.  He did end up riding for a domestic team for half a year before totally throwing in the towel.

Well, Peter is being quite clueless.  But honestly, this is another brilliant non-admission.  It sounds like he’s saying “Yeah, I took dope to win,” but he leaves that nice lawyer’s loophole just to torture us – he can always claim he meant “Yeah, it does sound like that.”

 

 

So wait… not following this part.  Do you mean to say that when dopers are asked about their doping they might actually <gasp> LIE?

I think if we eliminated dopers from management and coaching, even I might become qualified for his job. This is also a good time to point out that he’s explicitly said there are no deals in place protecting him (then again we just found out he is a “known liar”). Apologies for the odd formatting that follows:

 

 

 

To me, his desire to keep his riders out of a similar situation also speaks to his hiring practices.  Basically he won’t hire someone with a known or suspected doping history unless that person is open and honest about their past and realistic about their expectations of future performance.

Is he making a dick joke, or …

Cyclevaughters: floyd has a photo of the thing

Dang, where did that come from? Twitter didn’t even exist back then… anyway. There’s a little more yada yada about his angst and his motiviation…

 

 

 

Well, I guess Twitter is a lot cheaper than therapy. Moving on…

And that’s the end of the show. Or is it? Well, there was one short followup after that:

So clean, they shine! So now he’s definitely done, right? Right? Maybe, a few hours later just one more person might have some questions? (And again, apologies for the tweet formatting).

 

 

 

This is perhaps an even clearer answer to his original question.

So  JV, does this mean transfusions or EPO or transfusions?

 

Well.  EPO then.

 

 

Or in other words, health concerns trump ethical concerns.

 

So that’s it.  All in all, there really was no jaw-dropping bit of unexpected information for the more cynical among us. This is very much what we might have expected.  Nevertheless, I’ll be the first to admit that my jaw was more than just ajar.  We’re so accustomed to the never-ending platitudes, the dodging of the question, the non-denial denials, that when we see someone go off the script, it feels like finding an ocean in the middle of the desert.

Jonathan Vaughters Lance Armstrong in 1999 at the pre-Tour medical check
Photo: © AFP Photo courtesy CyclingNews.com

 

Just yesterday, we found out that the UCI has been having a bit of a spat with USADA.  UCI had requested USADA’s case files on Lance et al, which USADA (rather bluntly) refused.  That’s a whole ‘nother thing that’s not directly related to all of this. But along the way USADA had this to say:

“If UCI is truly interested in setting up a special panel to deal with doping, it should not be for one case, rather UCI should ask (the World Anti-Doping Agency) to establish an independent body akin to a Truth And Reconciliation Commission, where the skeletons of doping in cycling can all come out of the closet, the many cyclists who have doped can come clean and cycling can go forward with a fresh start.”

Thanks to Mr. Jonathan Vaughters going off his meds (wine) for a day, we’ve got a glimpse of what that might look like.

Jonathan Vaughters (Credit Agricole) takes a turn on the front
Photo: Rob Karman courtesy of CyclingNews.com

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3 Comments

  • doolols says: August 7, 2012 at 7:26 pm

    Thank you for this. I saw parts of the conversation, but got lost somewhere in the middle.  

    Reply
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