So how would you clean up pro racing?

[dellzeqq]

at times like these it's worth reminding ourselves that however crap the UCI is.........

it's not FIFA http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/27052011/58/world-cup-fifa-opens-blatter-probe.html

 

[Flying_Monkey]

they do it in body building

Pick a serious sport for comparison, why don't you...

 

[rich p]

they do it in body building

 

[Ludwig]

Bike racing is almost spotlessly clean, very stricktly tested and it is almost impossible to get away with things with increasing surveilance, dna and foresic science. You can see crimes being solved many decades later due to the minutest dna evidence and that is no different in cycling.
I believe bike racing is much cleaner and has an honour and integrity that you don't get in many other sports.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

UCI don't seem to agree, given they maintain an index of suspiscion

 

[Noodley]

Well, I would not let this twonk go into management for a start:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/di-luca-three-or-four-more-years-before-turning-to-team-management

 

[BJH]

Short of having a japanese keirin school style approach with the UCI presiding over hotels, doctors, chefs and food used ( which would mean teams going to the TdF would probably having bookings in a hotel in Hungary owned by a UCI committee member and a waiter acting as team doctor) it will never go away completely.

It looks like they have plenty enough initiatives in place, now they need to make them stick.

A ban should be a ban, period involved has to be more financially hurtful than what the rider might make by having some big wins by cheating.
To come back they have to name all names - not allowed to hide.
No rider who has ever been banned allowed in team management.
Reduce the term that UCI leaders are allowed in power for, US Presidents can serve more than 2 terms.

They would do me for starters.

 

[Scruffmonster]

Hit the sponsors. Bans the team sponsors for a set period and have them indelibly linked to the drugs. You think that any company is going to drop masses of cash into a team that does not promote it's product in a positive light?

A switch of tact would be needed. Every official news source would need to read 'Saxo Bank drug cheat Contador banned from Tour', rather than omit the team name as it so often does now. Get that sponsor name front and centre.

I guarantee that the next round of negotiations would be something like;

"We'll pay £xx,xxx,xxx.xx up front, and the remaining 50% will be paid incrementally year on year for 5 years on the condition of no failed drug tests"

The teams need to be taking the stance on this. At the minute it's ass backwards. Teams need to be enforcing laws, not evading them. Make it in their interests to and they will.

If a team is 100% transparent it sends out a message. First up, they may 'lose out' for a few seasons as they will be running clean, but the team sponsor will be happy, if anything paying more to back a team, safe in the knowledge that it's reputation, and (due to the above financial clauses) financial interests are safer.

Over time this would surely send a message to young cyclists coming through the ranks that sure, they could go faster and dope their way to a pro team, but that they also have another route.

This change of tact could bring about a change in the sport. Riders coming through aspiring to be on a clean team, a clean team being rewarded financially for getting it's house in order, and ultimately, everyone sh1t scared of stepping out of line as they could lose their principle sponsor.

I know measures are being taken, some teams are already going above and beyond the call of duty, but the moment you hit the money, link them to drugs, ban sponsors for a set period... then things would get traction.

It would represent a sort of Panopticon of cleanliness.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

It would represent a sort of Panopticon of cleanliness.

Well, the Panopticon is more like it has been, with the concentration on monitoring riders, whereabouts requirements, testing when you least expect it etc. But in practice, panopticism doesn't work, even in the situations of confinement that Jeremy Bentham originally proposed. So doing something indirect like hitting the sponsors, or bypassing any concerns about riders behaving better and just going straight for what their bodies tell us (biological passports) are both ideas that have come up to supplement the panoptic surveillance measures.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Hit the sponsors. Bans the team sponsors for a set period and have them indelibly linked to the drugs. You think that any company is going to drop masses of cash into a team that does not promote it's product in a positive light?

You'd end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater doing that. Cycling needs sponsors more than sponsors need cycling, there are plenty of other sports with prime time TV coverage who would happily grab any available sponsor with open arms.

I think you also mis-understand the root of the doping culture in cycling. I'm sure that commercial organisations like US Postal, Discovery and every other sponsor who puts money into a team for a financial return wouldn't touch one where they knew organised doping was taking place, the bad publicity would undo any gain from their considerable outlay. The problem is that when Scruffmonster Industries or Smoking Joe PLC decide to sponsor a cycling team they have to hire experienced professionals to organise and run it for them, it is not a job the average Human Resources Department could handle. And as the experienced professionals are steeped in the doping culture they bring it in with them, and I doubt very much whether they boast about it to the Board of Directors of the sponsoring enterprise.

The problem is purely a cycling one, and it is the riders and ex-riders who are still involved in the sport who are the cause of it, no-one else.

 

[Scruffmonster]

You'd end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater doing that. Cycling needs sponsors more than sponsors need cycling, there are plenty of other sports with prime time TV coverage who would happily grab any available sponsor with open arms.

I think you also mis-understand the root of the doping culture in cycling. I'm sure that commercial organisations like US Postal, Discovery and every other sponsor who puts money into a team for a financial return wouldn't touch one where they knew organised doping was taking place, the bad publicity would undo any gain from their considerable outlay. The problem is that when Scruffmonster Industries or Smoking Joe PLC decide to sponsor a cycling team they have to hire experienced professionals to organise and run it for them, it is not a job the average Human Resources Department could handle. And as the experienced professionals are steeped in the doping culture they bring it in with them, and I doubt very much whether they boast about it to the Board of Directors of the sponsoring enterprise.

The problem is purely a cycling one, and it is the riders and ex-riders who are still involved in the sport who are the cause of it, no-one else.

Therein lies my point. Cycling needs sponsors. Sponsors do not need cycling. If you put teams in a position whereby they will lose money/the ability to participate by allowing, endorsing and supporting a doping culture within their team, they would be more inclined to do something about it.

At the moment, riders are (barely) punished individually, team bosses run teams however they like and the cycle is never stopped.

If you lost 30% of teams from the peloton over a 5 year period, new teams would start up, that void would be filled as you would still have an abundance of riding talent coming through. Coming through clean, looking to ride for a clean team.

Clean teams would start to become a majority, not a minority, doping would become a black mark, riders would be empowered to make the right decision, or at least have a viable alternative to the wrong decision.

Testing is not a deterrent, bans are not a deterrent, they've been tried for so long. They're not working.

It wouldn't take long to reverse the tide. You just need to make the system police itself. As a team director, if you are forced to stake the future survival of your team on your riders practices, you'll start paying attention. You'll ask what that syringe was in the toilet and why the team cook is injecting the fillet steak. If you started seeing the latest talent signing to a team with a better drugs policy you'd get your own house in order. You'd stop zarking cheating basically.

 

[Will1985]

Looks like the Italians have assumed the stance of the BOC to prevent dopers from representing their country, but have taken it a step further by banning them from riding in the national championships.

It probably isn't much of a deterrent to some people though.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Denial and feelings of victimization are big problems here too: Ricco is still claiming that his hospitalization was simply kidney failure that could have happened to anyone... as opposed to anyone trying to tranfuse doped blood that they'd kept in their fridge for a month!

 

[raindog]

Don't know if this fits exactly in here, but it's quite interesting. Cervelo's Gerard Vroomen.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/vroomen-on-doping-the-media-basso-and-schleck

 

[oldroadman]

Hit the sponsors. Bans the team sponsors for a set period and have them indelibly linked to the drugs. You think that any company is going to drop masses of cash into a team that does not promote it's product in a positive light?

A switch of tact would be needed. Every official news source would need to read 'Saxo Bank drug cheat Contador banned from Tour', rather than omit the team name as it so often does now. Get that sponsor name front and centre.

I guarantee that the next round of negotiations would be something like;

"We'll pay £xx,xxx,xxx.xx up front, and the remaining 50% will be paid incrementally year on year for 5 years on the condition of no failed drug tests"

The teams need to be taking the stance on this. At the minute it's ass backwards. Teams need to be enforcing laws, not evading them. Make it in their interests to and they will.

If a team is 100% transparent it sends out a message. First up, they may 'lose out' for a few seasons as they will be running clean, but the team sponsor will be happy, if anything paying more to back a team, safe in the knowledge that it's reputation, and (due to the above financial clauses) financial interests are safer.

Over time this would surely send a message to young cyclists coming through the ranks that sure, they could go faster and dope their way to a pro team, but that they also have another route.

This change of tact could bring about a change in the sport. Riders coming through aspiring to be on a clean team, a clean team being rewarded financially for getting it's house in order, and ultimately, everyone sh1t scared of stepping out of line as they could lose their principle sponsor.

I know measures are being taken, some teams are already going above and beyond the call of duty, but the moment you hit the money, link them to drugs, ban sponsors for a set period... then things would get traction.

It would represent a sort of Panopticon of cleanliness.

Utterly the wrong target. Teams are NOT run by sponsors, but by management companies who contract to the sponsors. Riders contract to the management company. The target to go for is the management company (e.g. Riis Cycling, Tailwind Sports, not of course implying anything about them, but simply as examples of companies that have run teams under all sorts of sponsor names). If the management company and it's senior directors were banned for a period, plus heavy financial penalties, then just maybe things would start to change. But always remember when the rewards are big enough, chancers will always be there, trying to beat the system.

Re: the comment "sponsors will come along to fill the void". They won't, there is a very competitive world out there and banning sponsors will simply drive their money elsewhere, possibly into far less regulated sports. Is that what you want? I think not, as it will simply cause a reduction in teams and some riders/managers will take even more desperate measures to get a slice of what money is still left!