ACE go under

iainf72

According to CFA they've run into financial difficulty.

Garmin and Columbia are looking at doing something themselves - Conflict of interests, what conflict of interests?

So as it stands, Astana, CSC and Rock Racing can claim the moral high ground.

LangerDan

Last week one of their 3 websites (ACE, Agency for Sports Ethics and the Cycling Ethics foundation, IIRC) was off line. Now all their homepages are down. The ACE site had very little in the line of press announcements of new jobs - in fact their last announcement was in June about the joint venture with Don Catlin and his Anti-Doping Sciences Institute, Inc. ("ADSI"). Wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Catlin has been appointed as Lance's personal pharmacological conscience?

Kléber

A shame. They were trying to do something positive but any business that sets itself up as a guardian of ethics is going to face a tough time. I don't think Columbia and Garmin have anything to fear, remember most teams have no testing regime whatsoever. But it will be interesting to see how Garmin manages its testing programme now.

GroupOfOne MkII

How about Garmin do Columbia's anti-doping and Columbia do Garmin's?

disgruntledgoat

GroupOfOne MkII wrote:

How about Garmin do Columbia's anti-doping and Columbia do Garmin's?

Like a pub-quiz when you mark each others answers?

stagehopper

disgruntledgoat wrote:

GroupOfOne MkII wrote:

How about Garmin do Columbia's anti-doping and Columbia do Garmin's?

Like a pub-quiz when you mark each others answers?

Only if mobile phones are banned.

iainf72

More info here

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/cycling/n ... id=3683023

Anyone else wondering whether it was worth anything at all this year?

Jez mon

iainf72 wrote:

Anyone else wondering whether it was worth anything at all this year?

Yes!

Especially when the tour testing indicated that CSC were somewhat suspicious, and when the Amigo d Brillo stuff turned up, and when McQuaid said that idiotic stuff and when Ricco tested positive, and when...

I guess what I'm trying to say is, this year has been a bit of a disappointment. The situation seemed to be getting better, but to be honest, I'm not so sure.

I'll still trust Garmin (as much as you can trust any team), because It truly seems like they have instilled a good ethic in their riders (though as I'm writing this, I still have the thought "it could all be PR" in the back of my mind). But Columbia, I'm just not sure, I so want them to be clean, but Ian isn't so sure and i generally find he has a far better knowledge of these things than I do.

At the end of the day, I think cycling did take a few steps forward this season. They caught a few bad guys, righted a few wrongs. BUT there were far too many leaps backwards and I still feel that we should be able to rely on the UCI/WADA for testing, this whole "internal" testing is a bit rubbish.

DaveyL

Mr Kimmage, of all people, might argue it was worth something.

iainf72

DaveyL wrote:

Mr Kimmage, of all people, might argue it was worth something.

Was that not the ethical position rather than some (possibly) pointless testing?

DaveyL

It was, but as Vaughters put it, the testing was the "back-up" for all the other stuff and would be used to re-inforce the team standards and ethics. If that *hadn't* been in place, I can imagine what some of the more cynical folks on the forum (not you of course, iain....) would have said about the programme, especially given VDV's stellar perforamnce at the Tour.

DaveyL

iainf72 wrote:

DaveyL wrote:

Mr Kimmage, of all people, might argue it was worth something.

Was that not the ethical position rather than some (possibly) pointless testing?

Why was it (possibly) pointless?

iainf72

DaveyL wrote:

Why was it (possibly) pointless?

Could a small company with severe financial problems have provided a service which was worth anything?

DaveyL

Mr Ashenden thought so!

iainf72

DaveyL wrote:

Mr Ashenden thought so!

Was there any external audit of the work they did? I think that's something Damsgaard does.

I'm not saying they're evil and just gave Ashenden any data that would look clean but what's the first thing companies with cash flow problems do is? Cut corners.

DavMartinR

How much do these tests cost? With the teams paying six figure sums?? Is it really that expensive?

I mean they are only taking urine and blood to check for abnormallites? Or is it the cost of paying local labs to carry out the tests in the riders home counrty?

DaveyL

iainf72 wrote:

DaveyL wrote:

Mr Ashenden thought so!

Was there any external audit of the work they did? I think that's something Damsgaard does.

I'm not saying they're evil and just gave Ashenden any data that would look clean but what's the first thing companies with cash flow problems do is? Cut corners.

They could also be operating at a professional level until they no longer had the money to do so. I guess it's hard to be sure without knowing the details of their finances and what procedures they were following.

iainf72

DaveyL wrote:

They could also be operating at a professional level until they no longer had the money to do so. I guess it's hard to be sure without knowing the details of their finances and what procedures they were following.

Indeed. It's hard to be sure. The strong impression I got when Strauss posted here was that ACE were a bit belt and braces. I think I might have even mentioned the lack of transparency being worrying and not giving a good impression.

donrhummy

I wonder how ACE went essentially bankrupt when they'd been fine BEFORE getting three teams to pay for them to do testing. It makes no sense and makes me think something is up there.

iainf72

donrhummy wrote:

I wonder how ACE went essentially bankrupt when they'd been fine BEFORE getting three teams to pay for them to do testing. It makes no sense and makes me think something is up there.

If you're not doing testing etc, you're not incuring any costs so you could run on a very small budget.

When you start testing team A give you budget X which has to pay for collection, testing, analysis, storage, providing feedback to teams etc etc.

Kléber

Who knows? Maybe the business worked on a spreadsheet when they assumed credit was cheap but now the banks will only lend to them at a higher rate? Maybe they made other bad assumptions and the business plan didn't work out?

But given there's a growing demand for this testing, I wouldn't be surprised if some slimmed down version appears, after all the teams and sponsors are desperate for this kind of validation and scandal-prevention and will pay a good price for this.

iainf72

Kléber wrote:

But given there's a growing demand for this testing, I wouldn't be surprised if some slimmed down version appears, after all the teams and sponsors are desperate for this kind of validation and scandal-prevention and will pay a good price for this.

I'm not convinced it's something you can turn a profit doing. Damsgaard has said he's only doing his bit until the passport scheme is fully functional.

Take a team like Columbia. If we assume 30 riders. Lets assume we test them once per month so over the course of a year that's 360 samples. Urine EPO test was quoted as costing €400 a while ago which is €144K. And that's without sample collection cost, ongoing storage, administration. Add in the blood profile work etc and it's not going to leave you much profit margin out of a half a million.

According to a comment on CFA, Slipstream had to give ACE a cash injection when they first started out.

What worries me more is that successful businessmen like Bob and Doug didn't look closely at ACE and figure out it was an unsustainable business model. Poor old Bob is 2 for 2 in bad choices WRT anti-doping partnerships. :roll:

LangerDan

I'm not sure there is a growing demand. It is quite costly - at least at the level the top teams carry this out - and its not mandatory. The only teams to have used this are those with big budgets (e.g. CSC, Astana, Columbia) or those that are underwritten by some benevolent individual (e.g. Garmin, Rock Racing). For many other squads, an annual bill of six figures is very hard to swallow when it could be 1-3% of the team budget.

And, of course, most other sports don't give a rats ass. (I could be wrong but I can't recall seeing announcements on the ACE / Agency for Sports Ethics / Cycling Ethics Foundation sites about uptake of their services by other sports.)

So it appears the market is practically limited to ProTour and top-level ProContinental teams, say 20 now that CA and Gerolsteiner are gone. Of those, several don't have an image problem that justifies an external testing - the French teams, for example. Other teams such as Liquigas will brazen it out as long as possible. You are now left with a small number of squads who may pay for independant testing but given that there are others in the game - Damsgaard, Catlin - there may not have ever been much opportunity for any one company to have more than 3-6 teams on the books. Six teams might give a fee income of less than million dollars. Even with a healthy profit margin, that sort of income isn't going to go very far.

I think the only way that private, independent testing could work is by pressure from the team sponsors on the management of all teams to undertake these programmes as a form of risk reduction.

iainf72

Do keep up Dan, Liquigas are on the Damsgaard programme.

LangerDan

iainf72 wrote:

Do keep up Dan, Liquigas are on the Damsgaard programme.

Yup - for 2009. They weren't exactly early -adopters. And according to CFA, they had been in negotiation with ACE in September.

DaveyL

For me, ACE will have been a success in 2008 if their testing has been accurate and reliable. They will have been a failure if it hasn't been. I'd like to hear from someone who is in a position to comment on whether the company's finances have had an effect on that or not.

iainf72

DaveyL wrote:

For me, ACE will have been a success in 2008 if their testing has been accurate and reliable. They will have been a failure if it hasn't been. I'd like to hear from someone who is in a position to comment on whether the company's finances have had an effect on that or not.

I doubt we'll ever hear. They seem to have some kind of omerta going on about the internal workings of ACE.

Did they have any external audit in place? LangerDan must know being ACE's #1 fan

DaveyL

I think their big problem was their name. If they had used Agency for Cycling Management Ethics then they'd have been OK. From extensive viewings of the Road Runner cartoons, I know that ACME have been around for years and have their fingers in many pies - especially dynamite and jet-pack production.

iainf72

I've been musing on this problem (as you do) for a while now and how I'd do it. My engineering brain tells me that for complex things off the shelf products never do exactly what you want them to. It looks very much like ACE were trying to provide a turnkey anti-doping solution and perhaps this is not a workable business model as well as not delivering the required service.

So, to me, the sensible thing to do would be to build a best of breed solution and reduce the risk of single points of failure. So you break it down into discrete components.

- Sample Collection
- Sample Storage
- Analysis
- Administration
- Audit

etc. And then you deal with a couple of entities in each area (aside from audit and admin I suppose). Ok, more steps means more chance of problem with chain of custody but that's where audit comes into play. And because you're not tied to a single provider underperformance can be resolved by switching providers.

I'd also like to see the inclusion of dodgy "control" samples to make sure the testing is working and showing anomolies.

This way would cost more for sure and I'm not sure if you could turn a profit.

DaveyL

iainf72 wrote:

II'd also like to see the inclusion of dodgy "control" samples to make sure the testing is working and showing anomolies.

Is that what Liquigas are in there for?

LangerDan

iainf72 wrote:

So, to me, the sensible thing to do would be to build a best of breed solution and reduce the risk of single points of failure. So you break it down into discrete components.

- Sample Collection
- Sample Storage
- Analysis
- Administration
- Audit

Take those portions of the operation and add a couple of additional items such as design of testing program and interpretation of results. Then look at who carries them out:-

- Sample Collection - (Contract testing agency)
- Sample Storage - (Contract testing agency
- Analysis - (Contract laboratory service)
- Administration - (ACE)
- Audit (If this happens, needs to be independent)
- Design of testing programme - (ACE)
- Interpretation of results- (ACE)


So out of the 7 activities above, 4 of them are outsourced to other commercial organisations.

Cue July 2008 and the announcement that the Agency for Sports Ethics (sister company of ACE) have teamed up with Don Catlins Anti-Doping Sciences Institute (ASDI) where, to quote the press release "The relationship provides for ADSI to advise ASE on its overall program design, review and interpret laboratory results of athletes participating in ASE programs, and other consulting services intended to enhance the effectiveness of ASE's anti-doping programs"

At this point, 6 of those 7 activites involve external resources and ACE starts looking increasingly like the raison d'etre is the administration and co-ordination of testing programmes. That in itself is necessary - last year Anne Gripper spoke of the logistical problems in trying to organise the blood passport sampling programme across hundreds of riders. However I'm not sure it will produce a substantial profit when most of the fee income heads straight back out the door to pay for the other services.