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Make Your Voice Heard

21 Feb

The UCI (International Cycling Union) has posted a survey they would like all of cycling’s "stakeholders" and fans to take. This is your chance to make your voice heard directly by the UCI. I encourage you to complete it, please give this some time. We need to make our voices heard.

I read Tyler Hamilton’s book last night, “The Secret Race”. The book was an eye-opening read into the world of professional racing, and not a pretty one. The doping problem in cycling was worse than I ever imagined – and like any serious fan, I knew it was bad. I blame the UCI more than the individual cyclists. Yes, the riders are responsible too, but without UCI allowing doping, the doping culture could not have been. Instead we would have isolated doping not the wholesale doping that Hamilton speaks to.

I for one am not convinced professional cycling is much cleaner now. Whether cycling will be (mostly) clean in the future remains to be seen; in large part it depends on whether the anti-doping mechanism is taken away from the UCI and given to an entity without any conflict of interest in the sport of racing.

The survey is probably just a marketing ploy by UCI, but what the hell, fill it out. It can’t hurt. 

http://www.aspectmr.co.uk/snapwebhost/surveylogin.asp?k=136079311931

Letter to the UCI

25 Oct

The International Cycling Union’s (UCI) management committee meets tomorrow. I sent the following letter to the US representative, Mike Plant. Follow this link to find your representative.

Please consider sending a letter.

Mr. Plant,

I am a longtime fan of professional cycling. I suffered through Festina, but became hopeful afterwards that sincere efforts were being made to bring doping under control. When a test was developed for EPO and later the biological passport, I became more confident that the testing procedures were in place to catch anyone doping. Over the last several years, even the most positive cycling fan had become suspicious of many riders and teams competing in the sport. We watched races like the Tour with the underlying question always present: “were they doping”.

Fast forward to now and the recognition by fans that we had no idea how pervasive doping was in the professional ranks. Further, we have no idea how prevalent doping still is. To make matters worse we have cycling’s governing body failing to do its job – police cycling.

I am waiting to see what UCI does before I make the decision whether or not I will continue to participate as a fan in the sport. In my opinion, UCI must remove both the president Pat McQuaid and honorary president Hein Verbruggen. At best, they are inept in overseeing the sport of cycling.

Moreover, equally critical is to remove the promotional aspect of the UCI’s mission. Mr. McQuaid stated on Monday that he saw no problem with accepting “donations”. This must not continue! It is impossible to police and promote the sport within the same entity; it is an inherent conflict of interest.

Please take fans concerns seriously and do what you can to save our sport and reestablish some integrity to it by taking the necessary steps specified above to restore integrity to the UCI.

Sincerely,

What’s ahead for cycling?

25 Oct

In my mind there are two predominate issues occurring in the sport of cycling right now: Lance Armstrong and the future of professional cycling.

The larger population is focused on Armstrong in light of the 1000 pages of testimonies and facts in the USADA report. If you haven’t read the USADA report “Reasoned Decision” including the affidavits and other supporting evidence I encourage you to do so. As we used to say at work, “you can’t make this sh*t up”!

Armstrong fans shake down into two main camps: believers that continue to support him and those that did believe but can’t any longer in light of the mountain of evidence against him. My last post Armstrong’s Doomsday told you which camp I fall in to.  If you read my post Lance Armstrong from February of this year, you’ll know I haven’t been in this camp that long.

My larger concern however is for the sport of professional cycling. As a longtime fan, I want to go back to following the Tour de France and posting about it here, and following the many other races throughout the season. As it stands right now, I’m not sure I can.

As reported in my last post, the International Cycling Union (UCI) was complicit in the doping that occurred in the Armstrong era (including the more recent Armstrong years). Under the current leadership of president Pat McQuaid and “honorary” president Hein Verbruggen that will not change as evidenced in their press conference Monday October 22. At the heart of UCI’s complicity is the dual mission to both promote and police the sport. No agency or individual can both promote and police anything. It is a basic conflict of interest.

The international cycling community is pressing for new leadership within the UCI, most recently former Tour de France champion Greg Lemond in an open letter to McQuaid. At a minimum, the UCI leadership must go and their “conflict of mission” changed.

I hope that the move to clean house at the UCI will continue to build momentum and that McQuaid and Verbruggen will have no choice but to step down. I’ve wondered since they burned Armstrong will Armstrong turn the tables on them – he has enough dirt on them to do so. But then that would require he admit what he’s done and that doesn’t seem to be on the horizon although I don’t believe Armstrong will go down quietly. He’s just figuring out what his best strategy is.

Without the required change within UCI I see more of the same for cycling. We went through this in 1998 with Festina and now again. Both times the powers-that-be told us the sport is clean now and we must move on. Moving on without fixing the glaring deficiencies will just give us more of the same – been there – done that and don’t want to go through it again.

The credibility of cycling is hanging on by a thread – and that’s for those of us that are fans. The general public thinks cycling is a complete and utter joke. Armstrong has done so much damage it’s hard to pick the worst, but the damage to cycling’s credibility particularly in the US is one of the worst of his crimes.

For cycling to be a viable and respected sport, it must have strong anti-doping measures and the policing entity(s) to enforce them. As cycling’s governing body UCI needs to step up and make the necessary changes. Penalties must be tougher when doping occurs and no one gets a pass regardless of how big they are.

I want cycling to move forward, but only with the right players and system in place to ensure a cleaner more fair sport. Otherwise, if I watch cycling it will be with the understanding that what I see isn’t real – sort of like watching professional wrestling.

Come on cycling get your act together while there’s still time.

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