What could we possibly discuss?
In this month’s chat with Edward Pickering, Deputy Editor of Cycle Sport Magazine, Fab’s moped, the upcoming Tour and the Floyd Landis grenade.
Bickering with Pickering, round 6
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[google-translator]
Pickering says that “Cycling needs catharsis.”
If Lance goes down,the sport will continue in Europe. In the US, pro cycling will be devastated. It is unlikely that the Tour of California or any other big pro races will continue. Continued showing of European races on Versus or other networks is also unlikely. Local racing will continue unless towns refuse to give permits which is unlikely but possible. NRC level races and team sponsorships will be hurting.
It would be interesting to get the take of the pro peloton riders. are they up in arms to get the cheat Armstrong out or do they see it differently.
But didn’t TOC and UCA Cycling do ok when Lance retired 1st time? There will always be great stories – let’s give the next generation a shot – Phinney, Craig Lewis etc…
Cycling will do just fine without Lance the liar. The internet will allow plenty of access to global cycling events on tv.
If Vs decides to give it up it’there fault for not nurturing enough alternate stories to LA stories in their coverage.
Sorry, LA going down would do nothing. It would be just like when he retired before.
In fact HTC, Garmin and Cervelo Test team all launched, oh the horror, during his holiness the uni-baller’s three year absence. And now we have BMC as well.
So four North American Pro Tour teams not including the Shack. You think they are all just going to fold their tents.
Ahh, not a chance.
Paul,
In the US, pro cycling will be devastated.
No way. Sponsors don’t support teams because of Armstrong. They throw as much as they want/can at it for a million different reasons. ex. Bissell/Jelly Belly all the way down to the local dentist’s logo on the club jersey.
Tour of California will go on as long as AEG wants to spend the money.
There’s more than Versus showing UCI feeds in the U.S.! Universal Sports does it too. I’m sure the UCI would switch to Universal should the Lance Armstrong channel find cycling unfashionable.
All of the regional racing will still happen without LA. It has been for decades. USA Cycling ignores them in favor of doing daily Lance Armstrong circle jerks. The conflicts of interests (yes, both plural) and benign neglect for race promotion at USA Cycling make U.S. boxing look like a transparent, well regulated sport. Meanwhile local racing will still happen.
if lance retires, that’s it. i’m taking up curling.
when a major cyclist is busted sponsors don’t take notice…at all.
If you believe that I’ve got some Phonak jerseys for you.
the Shack would absolutely drop out.
And Garmin and HTC will say, “see, our programs with all the transparency and team support of clean racing is the future.”
It is really unbelievable that people could think that Lance leaving the sport as a drug cheat will have the same impact as his retiring as a 7 time Tour champion.
That is the view of a racer with blinders on. Your view is so inside, you cannot see how the sport exists within a larger environment.
Lance is the personification of the sport to most Americans. Do you think that VS is the LA network just because they are idiots?
The sport has little standing now. Hockey on VS gets 700,000 viewers nationally for playoff games. That ain’t much and they preempted the TOC for a pregame show. Lance is actually bigger than the sport.
With Lance and the surrounding scandal there is no benefit for a company to tie into Pro Cycling in the US. The bringing down of Lance will show the rottenness from top to bottom of the sport. The leadership of USACycling as well as several teams will go down with Lance.
Pro level racing requiring multi-million dollar budgets will not withstand this. As it is the Tour of Mo. the 2nd biggest race in the US can’t get sponsors and the Tour of Ga. is gone.
Teams like Bissell and Jelly Belly are only a step or 2 above CRCA sub-teams. It’s generally a cycling enthusiast giving a donation to get close to the sport or helping friends. Except for the relatively low cost, it’s hard to justify the expense from a business standpoint. These teams are not even eligible for a Pro Tour TOC. Some level of NRC racing will continue.
BMC is doomed. Radio Shack is doomed. Garmin and HTC could survive and race in Europe.
I am not saying that lance should be given a pass and yes he is almost certainly guilty, I just don’t think that a cleaned up sport can continue to grow at the Pro Tour level in the US.
Lance going down won’t affect the hearts and minds of the amateur racer in the US – but it affect those locals and businesses that allow and support racing on their town streets. Those businesses forced Downers Grove to be lost this year because of finances – if you add the fact that the average Joe will now have more fuel to criticize the lycra clad junky racers the US will lose some local races. TV coverage will be dropped. The media will have a field day attacking cycling and will still fail to see that this is widespread in all sports and the baseballers will keep hitting the ball outta the park and footballers will keep running olympic times weighing 280lbs.
What really needs to come out of this is a connection between the medics doping cycling and high profile athletes in other sports – big time Balco.
it’s just a matter of time before garmin and HTC riders turn up as dopers, too. check that, it’s just a matter of time before HTC riders turn up as dopers–forgot about millar and zabriskie.
…is that no one wants to realize that extending the physical limits of the human body through means other than classic “training” not only will not stop, it will accelerate in the coming years. The majority of what we discuss here is tangential (at best) to the core issues.
There are many ways to manipulate the human body to perform better; diet, exercise and good genes – the mainstays for humanity’s existence – are (rapidly) becoming obsolete. Just as our ancestors could not fathom the way mechanical technology and engineering would have changed our lives in just a few centuries, we are completely unable to comprehend the advancements that will be made in bioengineering organic materials in the next 100 years. Our values with regards to “fairness” are already outdated, and not keeping up with our technological progress.
Complaints about “cheaters” and “doping” will sound very quaint 100 years from now; a bunch of candle-makers complaining about the advent of electricity. Athletics has never been fair, and it never will – choosing good parents has always been key. The backlash against doping – at its core – boils down to nothing more than man’s oldest fear: the fear of the unknown.
Talking about lycra clad jerseys and spandex, can someone clear up my confusion, but don’t football players where super tight spandex pants? Also, don’t elite skiers (ala Bode Miller and Lindsay Vonn) also wear spandex? Where is the hate against those people.
The average non-cycling joes just don’t think.
i’d like to see the olsen twins go down
To put it another way, imagine the “fairest” athletic competition you could. You are certain no one was doping. Individual athletic achievement would boil down to three key elements:
– training methods
– genes
– luck
Over a significant number of races, luck would cancel out, so we can ignore that as a factor. It it also implausible to think that a fundamentally better/proprietary training method exists that would only be known to several racers.
Therefore, the *only* factor relevant to who wins more races is – you got it – good genes. In our world, we view that as “fair” – that’s our value system. That’s “playing honestly.” Losing to the guy who was born with better lungs, stronger legs, and a more robust cardiovascular system that you could never match no matter how hard you trained or how much you loved the sport is “fair.” Losing to a guy who uses different methods to compensate for genetic inferiority though is “unfair” – that person cheated.
Years from now, that will no longer be the case. Athletes will be freed from the tyranny of the genetic lottery. Science will find ways to compensate for genetic factors that thus far in human history have rendered *every* single athletic contest unfair from the beginning. And it will be the supreme irony that in the future “doping” – through pharma, or gene therapy, or bio-engineering, or what have you – will actually make a fairer playing field for athletes than has ever existed previously.
If a pro rider could had their DNA altered so that their body simpy produced more natural epo is that cheating?
The science needed for that is not too teribbly far off.
Sports that are more tactical (that involve using strategy), level the unfairness of genetics; and that’s what makes them fun to watch.
it affect those locals and businesses that allow and support racing on their town streets. Those businesses forced Downers Grove to be lost this year because of finances
Hard times all around… One race gone, another one takes its place. This is the history of cycling in the U.S. in a nutshell.
The same doomsday scenario was laid out when Lance quit the first time and when LeMond quit before him. Cycling celebrities come and go! The UCI and USA Cycling have a good grasp of the formula required to create a celebrity that appeals to ESPN watchers. They are grooming lots of potential replacements for Lance. The UCI will keep trying for ‘mercun eyeballs.
The obsession with having ‘mercun Pro Tour teams/budgets will only end in tears for all of you because it’s got nothing to do with teams, very little to do with the races, and nothing to do with most racers in the Pro peloton.
There is no doomsday scenario people. None. Let the organizations be exposed for what they are, fiefdoms and hopefully something more transparent and less corrupt will take their place. In the meantime, enjoy local racing!
Jelly Belly’s are the most important kind of cycling in the U.S. Besides the vig paid to USA Cycling, they are as neglected as the rest of the membership. They’ve got a big enough budget to keep racers gainfully employed. They don’t earn so much they can afford doping programs.
it affect those locals and businesses that allow and support racing on their town streets. Those businesses forced Downers Grove to be lost this year because of finances
I’m sure the piss poor economy and an unemployment rate dancing around the 10% mark or even 15% in some of these hard hit rural/ rust belt areas, has nothing to do it, right?
Forget when he retired the first time, I’m sure a lot of the races I used to do almost 20 years ago folded up shop even before LA won his 1st TdF. But I’m also sure that these races were – hopefully – replaced by better races and more of a variety of types of races.
Sports that are more tactical (that involve using strategy), level the unfairness of genetics; and that’s what makes them fun to watch.
Also, and I know it sounds corny, there’s a lot to be said for the desire to win; ‘heart’, ‘toughness’, etc. Someone with less of a genetic edge who trains harder and races smarter may win sometimes, or at least become a ‘fan favorite’ also-ran type (Poulidor, Zooetemelk and maybe more recently, Ullrich, are examples)
“Sports that are more tactical (that involve using strategy), level the unfairness of genetics; and that’s what makes them fun to watch.”
Like chess?
chess is a game, not a sport
Not having any Pro Tour races in the US is not “doomsday” but it is the devastation of Pro Tour cycling in the US.
The TOC will not survive and there will be a few years with no major PRO Tour level cycling races in the US.
Difficulty in getting sponsors and the loss of major races was already happening. Lance’s fall will accelerate the losses.
Coverage of European races will be on the internet. Racing in Europe will be isolated to France,Italy,Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. Even teams in Europe might have increased problems getting sponsors. It’s already not good.
Teams with aspirations to do NRC level races will find it harder to find sponsors.
Races with aspirations to be NRC or UCI races will have a harder time. This level of the sport was a low priority of USACycling anyway.
On the local level it will be harder to create new versions of Sakonnet and Empire.
Yeah, it’s been cyclical with teams and races coming and going but with the sport never taking off on the pro level.
Even most people competing locally could not care less.
As long as racing continues in CP and PP there is no doomsday.
The worst possible imaginable things have already happened to cycling in the US so it is hard to see anything resembling Doomsday.
what is this, the debbie downer show?
what is this, the debbie downer show?
i could see pro yoga really taking off in the states
fit tv’s “namaste yoga” is best tv on earth.
Should never be associated with cycling and bike racing. We can all still wake up, get on our bikes and ride. Talk to the fisherman in the Gulf about “Doomsday”
Doesn’t sound corny at all, mikeweb. And I agree. It’s what we all like to believe. But it’s a myth – a nice comforting fairy tale we tell ourselves. We all know you don’t even come close to that level without winning the genetic lottery.
3:20, exactly. Defining cheating itself is close to impossible. For example, they started marketing sports drinks with protein in it a couple of years back. No one considers that doping, even though you are ingesting a new substance not used previously to benefit athletic performance.
Is it not doping because it doesn’t make a material difference in your athletic performance? Well, hypothetically, say it did – tremendously. Would it be doping then? Is doping then defined by the efficacy of the product, not the product / method itself?
Is it not doping because it’s not specifically banned? Many designer drugs are not specifically banned. Would people be comfortable taking those?
Or is it not doping because its just a normal, natural food substance. Fine. Suppose you find the leaf of a tree in the Amazon forest. Natives have been eating it for years. Increases your stamina and helps you win races. Not specifically banned. Is that doping?
How about compression socks?
Oxygen chambers?
The time has come to eliminate any ban on “doping”; have it all out in the open, medically supervised, with full consent from athletes of the risks they are taking (and do everything possible to mitigate those risks.)
The war on doping (like the war on drugs) is misguided, ineffective, backwards-looking, and naive. It’s the buggy-whip cartel imposing a tariff on car manufacturers. It’s standing in the way of technological progress, and if history has shown anything its that being against technological progress has always been a losing position. “Anti-dopers” can’t possibly win.
(This is *not* a defense of not following a code/rules you’ve agreed to. Just an argument that if we want to look at the root cause and potential solution to the “doping” issue – and not just its symptoms – we need to think a lot broader/deeper and candidly re-assess a lot of our pre-conceived values on the subject.)
According to whom? The International Olympic Committee recognizes it as a sport.
the ioc is also notoriously corrupt. if it’s even true they recognize chess as a sport, they probably took a bribe to do so. more importantly, who cares?
Bravo! That needs to be said and said more often. This phoney “War on Drugs” is a load of shit in our “sport” as much as it is in the rest of society. By the time the congenitally corrupt “powers that be” get it together to really enforce any anti doping agenda that’s effective the pros will be mixing gene therapy with nanotech. Only Cat 4’s will be using HGH and EPO.
I’d go a little farther and say that cycling is getting tarred with all of this “doping” crap because it’s an easy target and takes the heat off damn near every other sport. And what does THAT tell us?
Not having any Pro Tour races in the US is not “doomsday” but it is the devastation of Pro Tour cycling in the US.
This is where you and I disagree. There still would be domestic teams like Jelly Belly.
The TOC will not survive
Why is that so bad? Having a doped peloton visiting and then destroying non-doped riders is a bad thing…
Teams with aspirations to do NRC level races will find it harder to find sponsors.
I would argue that this has more to do with macro economic conditions and the benign neglect of USA Cycling. There were sponsored domestic racers after LeMond retired. There will be after Lance leaves….
Races with aspirations to be NRC or UCI races will have a harder time.
Are you a race promoter? The costs/difficulties of doing NRC and UCI races are not worth it to promoters now! That’s why there are so few on the road and off-road! A potential pharmstrong ‘official’ positive doesn’t change this.
This level of the sport was a low priority of USACycling anyway.
Agreed. And therefore not related to the potential impact of a pharmstrong ‘official’ positive.
So, we’ll still have Jelly Belly. Thanks. That’s like an iPod with one Nickelback song.
i say let excitable amateurs dope it up to the gills and tax the stuff, create new revenue streams.
and if as a result a dude grows some accidental boobies or a lady starts sportin’ a handlebar ‘stache, so be it.
live and let live.
some good points. but defining cheating is not that hard. well, it could be hard to write the idea down on paper, but people know intuitively when cheating is taking place. your protein drink example is good. but, the protein drink is commercially available to all, and frankly is really more a snake oil than a p.e.d. on the other hand, the pharmaceuticals these guys go out of their way to procure, and subsequently go out of their way to conceal their usage of–in a criminal manner, as they’ve no prescription for them i might add, is cheating. i.e., what would you think if you saw lance, millar, [enter name here], etc… drinking a can of muscle milk (great name for gay porn film if not already taken), whereas if you saw them in a clandestine location with i.v.’s, blood bags, and packets and vials of pharmaceuticals?
I agree – like pornography, you know it when you see it. That’s exactly the problem; we’re very biased in how we perceive different activities that achieve the same end.
Getting it down in words – that’s where the rubber meets the road. If it’s not defined objectively, it can’t be enforced. But my point was more that the current definition themselves are completely arbitrary, if you think about them.
For example, say you want to increase your lung capacity. Several ways you can do this.
Train at altitude: No one would consider this doping.
Oxygen tent: Almost no one considers this doping (although the practice was banned in Italy.)
Pharmaceutical: Everyone would consider this doping.
Natural herb (pretend it exists): Most (?) everyone would consider this doping.
Gene therapy: Most (?) everyone would consider this doping.
In each case, an athlete trying to achieve a particular end: increased lung capacity. If it was by popping a pill, he’d be a doper. If it was by an oxugen tent, he’d just be smart and training effectively. Right?
That makes absolutely *no* logical sense. In both cases, he’s manipulating the physiology of his body to achieve better athletic performance. I agree – one seens like doping to us, one doesn’t. That doesn’t mean oxygen tents are not cheating. What it means is that as humans/athletes in the 20th century we’re pre-disposed to see certain activities (pill-popping) more akin to cheating than others, even though they are the same in substance and designed to achieve the same ends. It only clearly highlights our own biases. And we are very biased against using pharma, bio-engineering, bodily modification, DNA therapy, etc. Why? Simply because it is new – no other reason. It has not been around, that’s all. It is different. We are afraid of the unknown.
My guess for the future is that – like any technology – it will be taboo. It will take time to take hold, and for people to get comfortable. And there will be tragic mistakes along the way. And endless Maginot lines – the war on doping! – which are futile and naive. But that is the direction we will move. And there is no reason to fear it, just like there was no reason to fear aerobars.
I think w
i guess the point is if you’re breaking the law, you’re doping. the real law (criminal code), not some uci/usada/uscf/whatever rule.
When did doping become illegal? I am not being facetious. There was no ban on cocaine, amphetamines,strychnine and all sorts of substances consumed by cyclists and other athletes over the years. Was it Simpson’s death that started the crackdown? Was it the introduction of steroids that changed the nature of doping?
If the purpose of outlawing doping was as much to protect the athlete as to prevent cheating does that still apply to the safe usage of many doping products?
there was no ban on child labor either.
Breaking the criminal law is no guide. Taking any of thousands of legal over the counter medicines or health food products will get you banned. There was nothing against the law about the DHEA consumed by Tyler.
that’s the point. what you know now–uci/usada/etc…, their banned lists are bullshit. use the criminal code of what it’s legal to possess for any given individual.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=howard/100528
Good take on how big it will be if Lance goes down.
My ipad and Champion System kit were made by child laborers making slave wages.
Is there any way to download this to my iPod?
…Never mind, I found the download link.
Although I never was a Lance fan, and I would love to see justice served, I hate that dethroning him would hurt the sport. Think about it: the impact will be inevitable. All the “fans” who watch the TdF to cheer for the “American Hero” will begin to doubt the credibility of the sport. I know that after Floyd won and the scandal was new, if I even so much as mentioned cycling people would jump straight to downing Floyd. Then they would switch to worshipping Lance. If they don’t want to experience the sport more than just cheering for the most popular American participant, there’s not much that can be done to change the image. They’ll only change it they want to.