Millar: The Buck Stops With The Teams
David Millar, who knows a thing or two about doping, has told VeloNews something I find very interesting: that if you want to stop doping, you need the teams to step in. His plan would follow the T-Mobile model of not only controlling the riders' lives more but screening them before they sign on. Teams have a good idea of what riders are up to, and can wield the power of the checkbook to force change.
This might be the most useful idea in existence right now. Let's face it: the judicial process is a mess, not only because it's poorly set up, but doping positives are simply hard to pin down as a scientific matter. The cat-and-mouse game of masking makes positives difficult to get even when the rider is cheating. Worse, the positives that are found are being challenged as false, or unexplained, or perhaps subterfuge... and IMHO the challenges raise enough troubling questions to make me and others throw up our hands. Or our lunch.
But turning it back on the teams... this can work. Teams can deal in innuendo. They don't need a positive test; they can just choose not to sign (or re-up) a rider over whom there are serious questions. This has a guilty-til-proven suggestion to it, so the power of the purse should be used as fairly as possible. But at least if the teams show they won't take suspicious riders, it places a great deal of pressure on riders to stay clean and above suspicion.
The ultimate solution to the doping problem is to create an environment where there is more pressure to be clean than there is to dope, and riders will be forced to clean up the sport. Passing the responsibility onto the teams beats waiting around for the judicial process or the UCI to command changes, because it shifts that pressure... maybe not right away, but the message to the next generation is that if you want a job, steer far away from even the taint of drugs. Over time, this just might work.
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My suggestion all along
....of course there's always the risk that no company larger than Tinkoff credit systems would ever get into cycling...
by Mr Van P on
Mar 29, 2007 9:06 PM EDT
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YES
by Brandontw9 on
Mar 30, 2007 1:07 AM EDT
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Definitely a problem
Yes 2003 was a simpler time, Britney still had her hair, The US wasn't embroiled in a never ending war... er...
I'm rewatching the 2003 TdF--Kelme was still around, and that was when we had the famous Manzano collapse by the side of the road.
I felt like I lost contact with my own body. I realised they had cut my jersey open in the ambulance and were giving me an injection and electrocardiagram tests.
"When I got back to the hotel the team made me do interviews [to explain things]. But I didn't abandon for the reason that some people have said, it wasn't because of the sun."
I think part of the problem, again, is the lack of cohesive authority in the sport. So you can have teams that are clean, and teams that, perhaps, aren't clean at all. I am sure there are teams that are still using systematic doping, blood doping + hormones to prepare their riders.
by KevinK on
Mar 30, 2007 12:06 PM EDT
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That's a bit along the same lines
Why not intervene (by UCI) and place qualified independent doctors inside the teams as well? They should be on the pay-roll of the teams, which wouldn't cost the UCI anything.
Yet, the pre-training of the doctors should be in tracing of doping as well, apart from the usual medical training.
By the same token: The UCI should have doctors on their pay-roll as well, to doublecheck on the work the teamdoctors do. In that way you at least get inside info on what every team is up to, any suspicious result can be checked even before races start, hence solving possible problems during races as well.
Of course, the team(s) would now be accountable for the behaviour of its riders, not just the riders themselves. That would provide enough leverage in itself, i imagine.
You may never get rid of doping altogether, yet, the image of cycling would be the benefactor with this approach.
by DZI on
Mar 30, 2007 9:08 AM EDT
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Is it just me or
by Clydesdale on
Mar 30, 2007 9:14 AM EDT
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Been wondering
I'm not a doctor, nor a manager of some sort. Just someone who loves this sport, without being an active cyclist because of a bad knee.
Yet, common sense should dictate solutions. All those organisations, riders and teams are so deep into cycling that there's no helicopter view present, i imagine.
by DZI on
Mar 30, 2007 9:42 AM EDT
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Emphasis on "seemingly"
Couple more Millar points worth mentioning: (a) the riders don't like the pressure to dope, and (b) a lot of the pressure comes from the team management, the "win at all costs" mentality.
Just like any other vice embedded in a culture, the ultimate solution to doping has to come from within the culture, not from without. Ramping up the punishment ala WADA will have little effect.
by ghisallo on
Mar 30, 2007 10:04 AM EDT
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i just wish Millar
by Jens on
Mar 30, 2007 1:22 PM EDT
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The newspapers would love that
by ghisallo on
Mar 30, 2007 2:44 PM EDT
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The Landis case is a good example
by Jens on
Mar 30, 2007 4:08 PM EDT
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Current managers and directors and etc.
the sport has always been based on exploiting the riders--which is why you have a system set up so that Lefevere or whoever can pull an Inspector Renault if one of their riders turns up positive "Le Dopage . . . in my team, why I had no idea!! Round up the usual suspects!!"
Making the holding companies who own the teams--and NOT directly the sponsors--responsible for doping infractions and for maintaining transparent records of riders' health records would go a long way towards cleaning up the sport. Something of this has already happened with Saiz--
by R Mc on
Mar 30, 2007 10:01 AM EDT
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