More good news today for the Radio Shackstrong crowd.
First, in The New York Times, another former teammate has detailed “some of his own drug use, as well as the widespread cheating that he said went on as part of the Postal Service team,” all of it allegedly performed with the “knowledge and encouragement” of Texus Maximus his own bad self.
Second, at VeloNews.com, former Gerolsteiner honch’ Hans-Michael Holczer — who is pimping a book, “Guaranteed Positive” — charges that Levi Leipheimer was blood doping during the 2005 Tour de France. Holczer said he would have pulled Leipheimer from the race but feared losing his title sponsor, otherwise known as his meal ticket.
“I was caught between a moral obligation and a legal threat,” Holczer said. “After (Danilo Hondo’s positive) we were sitting on an economic landmine. I was facing total bankruptcy.”
Neither Big Tex nor Leapin’ Levi seems eager to discuss these latest allegations with the press. They know that when the phone rings, it’s not some hack calling to ask how nifty it feels to win a bike race, because they’re not doing much of that sort of thing these days. It’s either Juliet Macur, Jeff Novitzky or one of their lawyers, and who wants to chat with that lot?
Or it’s some executive veep for marketing over at The Shack calling to ask, “Say, remind me, can you, exactly why the fuck did we get into this sport again?”
• In other news: Gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes (R-Batshit) is getting plenty of attention following his dire warnings about the Hammer and Cycle transforming Mile High into Mao High. Uh, Dan — they’re laughing at you, not with you.
Mad Blog Media 
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/darpas-inhaled-drugs-to-boost-troops-at-extreme-altitudes/
I’d just hate to be the pro cyclist who didn’t want to dope to succeed.
“…In other news, Lance Armstrong has formed a private partnership with Case Western to develop athletic “training aids” based on Case Western’s military funded research into boosted oxygen carrying capacity…”
Fuck it Man! Let the team with the best drugs win! Let ’em all fix, store blood, drink kitty’s urine, whatever! Eventually some of them will start croaking like poor old Tommy Simpson or offing themselves ala the Pirate, if I remember correctly the French (as a whole) never believed LA was clean because they knew/know in their heart o’ hearts that everyone is doping! Here in the PNW we have local douche bag pros who dope, I drink extra coffee before my CX races, fucking drugs rule! Eat it, shoot it, lick it, smoke it, drink it, read it, write it, … just don’t get caught because then we’ll all turn on you like hypocritical dogs.
We lost the war on drugs a long time ago. Some rational, defensible, and enforceable boundaries need to be set up to protect riders from the worst health effects of doping.
But really. It is illegal to blood-dope, but what if someone just spent the summer up here in Bomb Town at 7,000 feet and then went down to sea level to race? Same net effect. I am slow as a turtle, but I flew back to Honolulu a couple years ago for a meeting and thrashed all my old friends. They must have wondered what I was on. I was on the side of a 10,000 foot mountain, 24/7, soaking up red blood cells.
Interesting TED Talk on technology that touched on the future of doping:
What you’re watching is a design of a robotic red blood cell, and it does bring up the issue that our biology is actually very sub-optimal, even though it’s remarkable in its intricacy. Once we understand its principles of operation, and the pace with which we are reverse-engineering biology is accelerating, we can actually design these things to be thousands of times more capable. An analysis of this respirocyte, designed by Rob Freitas, indicates if you replace 10 percent of your red blood cells with these robotic versions, you could do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath. You could sit at the bottom of your pool for four hours — — so, “Honey, I’m in the pool,” will take on a whole new meaning. It will be interesting to see what we do in our Olympic trials. Presumably we’ll ban them, but then we’ll have the specter of teenagers in their high schools gyms routinely out-performing the Olympic athletes.
I used to say “let ’em dope” too until my wife (always the smart one, right Patrick?) pointed out
a) everyone with a racing license agrees NOT to dope, just like they agree NOT to use a motorcycle in the bicycle races
b) lots of young people, still too young to make an educated and informed choice would decide if dope was OK for the pros, it certainly should be OK for them.
Perhaps they can create a new category like pro-wrestling where it’s just for entertainment purposes and nobody cares what you’re on. No betting on the outcome, no Olympic medals or rainbow jerseys – just whatever you can make from WORLD CYCLING ENTERTAINMENT — they could ride bikes over fire pits, fire-breathing dragons, Sarah Palin, have chain-saw death matches — whatever would sell tix and TV ads. But leave the anti-doping rules in the SPORT of bike racing and try to enforce them, even if (UCI?) it might make the sport look bad for awhile. Cleaning it up and punishing all those who benefit from cheating is the only way forward. If anyone currently thinking about cheating thinks that guys like BigTex and Mr. RoadID cheated and got away with it, is it any wonder that they’ll likely cheat too?
Lifetime ban if you’re caught, with lesser penalties for ratting out the rest puts everyone in the “nothing left to lose” category like Floyd Landis. Once the cheaters are in the minority the rats will be welcomed back into cycling rather than shunned and called whacko’s as they are now.
The noose is tightening around BigTex’ neck but I think he’ll end up like OJ…out there on the triathlon or MTB circuit, looking after the “real dopers” — the evil ones who made ALL of his teammates dope in order to help him win all those TdF’s. I doubt they’ll find enough on him to convict him in a court of law and even if they do, there will be plenty of folks who will never believe their hero cheated— as long as he continues to deny it.
If he ends up like OJ, Tex and OJ can swap lies in the Lovelock Resort and Spa. Tragic.
Re: Maes [isn’t that the name of a handlebar style? Coincidence?!]- BikesnobNYC has the perfect perspective on that subject in today’s column. I recommend it…
I heard a soundbyte from a chamois sniffer today. I was driving, listening to local sports talk radio–Richard Justice (writer for the Houston Chronicle). Justice was sure The Narcissist was clean and this was all just sour grapes from the French. But today’s NYT article made Richard sad. He really believed in the American Hero, but now, not so much. He thinks this is the worst story in professional sports because “L—- is such a great guy and he’s done so many great things and I really wanted to believe. But now I don’t know.” He got really quiet and sounded upset.
Awh.
For a professional journalist who’s covered MLB for 20+ years, I thought Justice could have sensed something was amiss years ago. But he doesn’t cover cycling. So, like everyone else who doesn’t follow cycling, he bought the BS. Love stinks.
I’ve been thinking that they need to do cycling like car racing. You got your Stock and your Super Modified classes. God help me, even though I know they “might” be doped to the gills, I’m still going to watch.
That other News Source, The Onion, has a Big Tex career retrospective up –
http://www.theonion.com/articles/lance-armstrongs-tour-de-france-career,17814/
“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
-Groucho Marx
“b) lots of young people, still too young to make an educated and informed choice would decide if dope was OK for the pros, it certainly should be OK for them.”
So when all those pro athletes start bitching and moaning about ‘I never wanted to be a role model’ what do you tell the kids? Is that when you pop the bubble about Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Boogeyman?
I don’t have kids, but if I did then it is my responsibility to teach them the “right” from “wrong.” Passing that off to TCWSNBN, Kobe, A-Rod, Canseco or even Barroid is criminal in my opinion. Yes, your kids can idolize them for their athletic talents but the last time I checked they are still human. If you want your kid to grow up living their lives “like Mike (or TCWSNBN or Kobe or Tiger or whomever)” you are going to be footing a very large medical bill when little Johnny or Janie discovers that they are not Mike (Tiger, Kobe et al).
The reality is that the stars we idolize are just like the rest of us in every way, shape and bad hair day. They are not perfect. So to put them on a pedestal is just asking for trouble down the road.
“The power of the federal government is being abused to pursue dated and discredited allegations, and that’s flat-out wrong, unethical, un-American, and a waste of taxpayer dollars.” You know things are heating up with BigTex’ lawyer says stuff like this — maybe those COMMIES are behind this investigation? I chuckled when the guy said BigTex has passed all the tests…except for the MLB-style one that found EPO of course, but no mention of that. This guy will dismiss all the testimony from former team members with some malarkey about “a sweetheart deal to change previous testimony” but I don’t follow that logic. Is he going to claim they all lied before, denying any doping, but now suddenly will decide to “confess” to things that are not true (according to BigTex) and destroy their reputations in the process? WHY? I guess we need newly-minted lawyer Charles Pelkey to explain the logic behind this idea — it sounds a lot like Repuglicans making a case against lesbians getting married and having abortions!
The role model thing is simple…if guys like BigTex seem to get away with doping, kids getting into cycling figure you need dope to compete. They think because high-profile guys do it and suffer no penalty/sanction it must be OK ie it’s NOT CHEATING, everyone does it. This comes before they’re mature enough to understand the risks of doping, and being kids, if some dope is good, more must be better — and soon enough you have kids waking up dead when their blood’s too thick to circulate, etc.
“…The reality is that the stars we idolize are just like the rest of us in every way, shape and bad hair day. They are not perfect. So to put them on a pedestal is just asking for trouble down the road….”
No kidding.
I read Ty Cobb’s ghost written autobiography as a kid and idolized him. Only later did I read the “unabridged” version about what a notorious racist he was. Likewise, I played schoolyard and intramural baseball modeling myself after Pete Rose, running out every lousy ground ball in the hope of generating a bad throw and an error, and stretching crappy little hits into extra bases, making up for a weak bat with sprinter’s speed. I don’t think that competitive instinct is bad. This may sound corny, but I really was furious when I found out Rose was a crook. On the other hand, there were people like Ernie Warlick, who played backup tight end for the Buffalo Bills back when you needed an off season job to be a football player. Good, down to earth guys who worked for a living. Jack Kemp graduated from quarterback to become a decent Congressman who never forgot his roots. Kemp was a good man.
There are few heroes any more and lots of assholes. Or maybe they always were assholes but we didn’t know in times past how many went home and slapped up their wives or buggered their Congressional pages. Perhaps cynicism in small doses is better for today’s kids than idolatry in large doses followed by the crash of reality.
Ty Cobb: I have trouble getting upset with anyone for racist leanings who was born before dirt was invented. Hard to tell how much of that was his internal wiring and how much was environment. Didn’t Ty send checks to down and out teammates long after he had retired? Just hard to judge folks through a modern lens
I could be persuaded to join the “let ’em do what they want” crowd, except I watched my high school football buddies drop like flies after the new coach instituted his newfangled “training” techniques. It’s not a victimless crime when kids are copying them, regardless of whether anyone asked to be copied.
Down to earth guys: Emmitt Smith has resurfaced just about every high school football field in the FL panhandle, and after one of the more recent hurricanes (Ivan? Charlie?) he wrote a check to A&P to have them divert truckloads of food heading elsewhere and sent them back home. Emmitt had a mom and dad who never let him forget where he came from and how lucky he was to get a paycheck to play a game.