Bettini

benjo maso said:

Bettini's victory was beautiful, great, exciting en and even
moving. In short, everything what a cycling race can be. Let's hope that the
WADA, UCI, etc. will quickly take drastic action.

dumbass,

the biggest recent doping scandals (apart from the landis and pantani
positives) have not been a result of WADA/UCI action, but have been
brought about by the police or in a few cases the press (eg. the '99
tour tests from LNDD, the andreu confession) and the gov. bodies have
been forced to deal with it.

when a rider tests positive, it's relatively easy to deal with it and
treat the person like an isolated rogue.

stings like the festina affair and operation puerto implicate dozens of
riders simultaneously. but they aren't doping cases in the usual
sense(riders have not tested positive or been caught with doping
products themselves), but the UCI has to deal with it or it becomes a
PR nightmare.

in cycling, only the race organizers understand how business works. the
TdF knew it was better to exclude the top stars (basso,vino,ullrich)
then to have a tour that was widely perceived to be dirty. despite this
landis tested positve and they still lost sponsorships and they risk
losing TV revenue.

In article
<[email hidden]>
,

Quoted message said:

benjo maso said:

Bettini's victory was beautiful, great, exciting en and even
moving. In short, everything what a cycling race can be. Let's hope that the
WADA, UCI, etc. will quickly take drastic action.

dumbass,

the biggest recent doping scandals (apart from the landis and pantani
positives) have not been a result of WADA/UCI action, but have been
brought about by the police or in a few cases the press (eg. the '99
tour tests from LNDD, the andreu confession) and the gov. bodies have
been forced to deal with it.

when a rider tests positive, it's relatively easy to deal with it and
treat the person like an isolated rogue.

stings like the festina affair and operation puerto implicate dozens of
riders simultaneously. but they aren't doping cases in the usual
sense(riders have not tested positive or been caught with doping
products themselves), but the UCI has to deal with it or it becomes a
PR nightmare.

in cycling, only the race organizers understand how business works. the
TdF knew it was better to exclude the top stars (basso,vino,ullrich)
then to have a tour that was widely perceived to be dirty. despite this
landis tested positve and they still lost sponsorships and they risk
losing TV revenue.

So, it is simply a chain of unfortunate events
compounding into a public perception that bicycle
racing is a swamp of doping; not surpassing
incompetence by the UCI et. al. pissing on anyone who
threatens their power and fiddling their fiddles while
organized cycling burns.

--
Michael Press

Michael Press said:

So, it is simply a chain of unfortunate events
compounding into a public perception that bicycle
racing is a swamp of doping;

until festina '98 happened cycling was moving pretty slowly in the
dopng fight. EPO had been kicking around since '89 (draaijer's wife in
1990 claimed he was using EPO in '89), but the 50% limit had only been
introduced that year.

it's only the police investigations in france, belgium, spain and italy
that have been implicating so many riders. if you take away those cases
the number of high profile doping cases left is small (landis,
hamilton/perez, heras).

the gov. body in a pro sport did not want to rock the boat. they were
obliged to take actions because of i) the police investigations and ii)
to be WADA compliant.

in pro sports it's relatively easy to convince outsiders that you've
got a handle on any doping....until there is intervention by the legal
system -- this is exactly what happened in baseball.

Quoted message said:

not surpassing
incompetence by the UCI et. al. pissing on anyone who
threatens their power and fiddling their fiddles while
organized cycling burns.

give me a concrete example of what you're talking about.