What about McQuaid, Verbruggen and the UCI?

BikingBernie

So, now that it looks like the writing is truly on the wall for Armstrong, what will be the impact on the UCI, and will the nature of the UCI’s dealings with Armstrong become public knowledge as well?

From the evidence available so far the story reads something like this:

The Festina bust caused huge shockwaves throughout cycling, and it looked for a moment as if things, doping wise, might take a significant change for the better. However, the UCI were more interested in rebuilding the ‘image’ (that is, commercial value) of cycling as quickly as was possible. They were also looking for a way to undermine the power of the traditional cycling nations (the ‘Mafia European nations’ to use the term of Francophobe, Pat McQuaid) and to ‘Globalise’ cycling, central to which was developing the American market. (Which, if the UCI were also to gain control of the TV rights to cycling, might well make the UCI very wealthy indeed).

Then along comes a rider who had previously shown himself to be a very mediocre Tour rider, but has a fabulously ‘sellable’ image, the ideal rider to divert peoples’ attention from the Festina scandal. The UCI also desperately want him to win as he is both American and has the saintly halo of ‘Cancer survivor’, and as such offers a way to 'sell' cycling in the USA. To this end they give him ‘protected’ status and cover up for him when he fails doping tests, as with the 1999 Corticosteroids positive and that 2001 Tour of Switzerland Epo positive. (And as the labs only have code numbers to work with, with the UCI being the only ones to know which rider corresponds to which sample, this would surely be quite easy to do). Similarly, the UCI go out of their way to protect his image, with McQuaid often parroting Armstrong’s Anti-French rhetoric, Verbruggen commissioning the partisan Vrijman report when it is shown that his 1999 Tour samples contained Epo, attacking the ASO's decision to exclude Astana from the Tour after their 2007 doping bust and so forth. In return Armstrong both serves the needs of the UCI and ‘donates’ to their coffers, according to Sylvia Schenk of the UCI management committee as much as half a million dollars, although what actually happened to this cash is unknown.

As this is going on the head honcho’s at the UCI are doing all they can to sell the TV rights to cycling, even though they don’t actually own the rights to the major events such as the Tour. They attempt to do this by claiming that all the major events under fall under the UCI’s own ‘ProTour’ branding. One potential buyer of these TV rights who was in negotiation with Verbruggen was Wouter Vandenhaute of the Belgian production company Woestijnvis. However, ASO and others refused to let the UCI hijack the TV rights to the races they organise. The next the obvious step was for the UCI to try broker a ‘mutually beneficial’ buyout of the rights to the races themselves. Again, Wouter Vandenhaute was one party who was involved in the negotiations. Another was non-other than Lance Armstrong who headed a group of wealthy Americans looking to buy the Tour from the ASO group in what was described as being a joint UCI /Armstrong venture.

Time passes and Armstrong retires. Meanwhile Patrice Clerc becomes director of the ASO and shows a determination to address the doping problem in a robust manner. This makes him unpopular with the ‘See no evil’, ‘Speak no evil’ management of the UCI. Then, to use Kimmage’s term, ‘the cancer returns’ as Armstrong announces his comeback. For this to happen, and for Armstrong to be given his former ‘protected’ status, Clerc obviously has to go. Armstrong is reported as having meetings to discuss his comeback with McQuaid, McQuaid then arranges meetings with the ASO, and seemingly persuades them that it is their ‘best interests’ if Clerc were to be got rid of. This is duly done and McQuaid quips "All I would say [to Clerc] is 'goodbye,' and you can read between the lines if you like." For similar reasons, the UCI does what it can to keep Tour drug testing 'in house' and to prevent the AFLD from turning up anything 'embarassing'.

So, it seems that Armstrong, Verbruggen and McQuaid have all been busy trying to direct the sport in a way that serves their mutual benefit, often in a highly corrupt manner. If the full story of these dealings come out their position in the UCI must surely be untenable. What’s more, both McQuaid and Verbruggen are now on the committee of the equally corrupt IOC, so the implications spread far beyond cycling.

But will the likes of Verbruggen and McQuaid be held to account? In my book these are much bigger fish than even Armstrong. Also, what effect will there be on the ASO, whose willingness to play along with McQuaid leaves them looking very dirty. Will Patrice Clerc get his job back?

iainf72

I will take this as proof the rapture did happen yesterday

hotoph88

BB you have correctly identified a most critical factor. As it reaches back, the alleged UCI connection may well be the factor that prevents the outcome regarding Lance being the final and complete exposure, his alleged actions warrant.

Now I don't quite join up the dots like you BB and will not give the UCI and LA the credit for hatching the masterplan you describe. My opinion is that it came together as a confluence of similar interests. However, regardless of the "how", the critical thing is exposing the alleged backhanders from LA to the UCI for "co-operation" regarding failed drug tests. Is this true ?

As made by a poster on the other thread, with "nobody else to throw under the bus" some possible options to LA are:
1 confess now
2 confess in court
3 deny and trash everyone and everything in an attempt to confuse the jury, the public and unbiased press, with irrelevances and lies.

1 & 2 leave him open to the extensions being made back to the UCI. Therefore it becomes more than the fate of LA that depends on what stance he takes and what he says. Also I am not sure on the jurisdiction and therefore interests of the Federal investigation, as to at the point at which they cease to investigate. My uninformed opinion would be that questions relating to this aspect are non-admissible in the Federal inquiry. Then position 3 obviously becomes the "least worse" for LA. Deny, do the time - say 6 months in jail, 12 months community service (after all he has not killed or injured anybody) and come out the other end with some nice paybacks for keeping his mouth closed. Looks better than a confession and living the rest of his life like a leper ? After all, didn't Floyd make money from his book Positively False ? Plenty of fun to be had at everybody's expense touting the tale "I wuz robbed - they are all out to get me!" Speculation - pure speculation.

At every moment since it was identified that the official books for Lance's team showed big payments to the UCI it was possible to look at the accounts of the UCI and see what was "received". Not possible for Joe Public or a journalist, the UCI are in Switzerland and I believe the Canton of financial registration is one that allows officially filed year end accounts to remain confidential. But UK has a board member - Cookson who at any moment in recent years could have said - ok Hein/Patrick let's clear all this up. Let's publish the relevant year end accounts for the years in question. Then the World would see, $500.000 or whatever it was in the Team books and that amount in/not in the UCI books. Any disparity and the question arises - where has the money gone - please explain.

Now that option has always been open to Cookson and I am totally mystified as to why he has not stepped up to the plate and demanded the books be opened and made public. Either he lacks the moral fortitude or he is too ignorant to realise what he could do (unfit for role), or he is on the end of a gravy trail and likes the taste.

Weak GB officialdom, letting down those who pay to put them there ? We saw it in action this week with the FA. Pathetic, they don't deserve to be paid in washers.

Sadly, at the current time, I am not writing off LA's chances of smelling of roses 2 years hence and having quality time reminiscing with Patrick.

speshsteve

I am neither pro or against LA however was he really a below average rider before his post cancer return. Was he not an up and coming rider (well proven at tri) who had just won a stage of the tour and then was diagnosed with cancer?

Anyway who really cares, this stuff has been going on since the 1st tour let alone in the last 10 years!

amd-sco

Glad this is happening, but the problem isn't ant individual cheating rider, that is the symptom: it is the UCI that is the problem.Hopefully the implications of Hein & fatpat in all this will enable a thorough cleansing of the stables.

ddraver

amd-sco wrote:

Glad this is happening, but the problem isn't ant individual cheating rider, that is the symptom: it is the UCI that is the problem.Hopefully the implications of Hein & fatpat in all this will enable a thorough cleansing of the stables.

I agree. I almost hope all the worst possible scenarios are true so we can kick people who have always been up to their neck in doping out, Shock people into finally standing up and reforming the UCI (although hopefully not with a breakaway league) and start again (again!) with a clean slate.

i would nt mind LA staying as tour winners but with the caveat that we know that a major part of this was because he had the best doping program. After all, we know that an awful lot of hi competitors were up to the same so was the playing field really all that uneven?

mididoctors

BikingBernie wrote:

From the evidence available so far the story reads something like this:

In all honesty BB this reads like a plot-line from a substandard Tom Clancy novel.

the most surprising thing about the revelations so far to me is how "amateurish"/"un-professional" and bungling it all is.... even if the TdS bribery story is true its more "on the hoof" than deep conspiracy..

I'm a hater but I am not sure how much I buy into this Blofeld world order thing

the sad truth is its all so pathetic and grubby with the players with in it almost as clueless about whats going on as us looking in.

Kléber

BB, I think you're joining a series of incidents into a full story, it's more stumbling from one mess into another. But money, corruption, favouritism and more do form the backdrop for a lot of what's happened in the past 15 years.

We'll see. If there is further proof of a positive test from the Tour of Switzerland in 2001 being hushed up then that's the end of a few careers and quite possible the UCI will get blown out of the water. But that's a long way from happening, there'd have to be "smoking gun" evidence.

As for British Cycling, I spoke to officialdom a few years back about this saying I supported BC but asking what they were doing to ask questions about the way the UCI was running the sport, given the endless stream of bad news and inept leadership. I asked if they'd back McQuaid for another term. The response was that the UCI was great, that Britain didn't wan't to upset people before the Olympics, that McQuaid was doing a grand job and surprised tone that a mere member might ask this sort of thing.

squired

For me the question is what will happen if Lance is found guilty. Will he continue to deny and just say everyone else is trying to make money off his name. Or will he try to take as many people down with him as he can. Given his apparent ego I wouldn't be surprised if the latter happened.

Gazzetta67

Imagine if Christophe Bassons ever got the top job at the UCI or is that just plain silly

hotoph88

A particularly annoying article here.

http://www.cyclesportmag.com/news-and-c ... me-begins/

"Now is the time for cycling to unhitch its wagon from Lance Armstrong once and for all."

Just the sort of soft, candyfloss ideas that keep the rotten problem in place. Lance no longer rides, so now it is safe to come out of the bushes and say we want nothing to do with him. I loved the comment from the person who correctly stated what hypocrites Cyclesport are and just how many times have they had Lance on the cover and fallen on their knees before him.

Not a mention of getting to the top or shaking the BC rep out of his complacency so he asks his fellow UCI board members exactly the questions Kleber was putting to them. Once evidence is clear LA doped, the next vital step is to expose the link "Lance to UCI". Were they complicit in the cover up? If yes, then Pat and anyone involved has to go.

Monty Dog

LA is a sociopath, it doesn't even occur to him how other people perceive his action. However, there's likely to be some who realise the tide is turning, and perhaps those no longer on the payroll who'll start throwing some of the others under the bus for their own self-preservation. The likes of Fabiani, Bruyneel and Weisel will hang until the end as long as the cheques keep rolling in.
The most interesting comment from the articles in today's Sunday Times was that those running the Federal investigation had little difficulty in getting ex-riders to talk, but to stop them blubbing during their testimonies.

Gazzetta67

Has anyone a link from today's sunday times - I guess it's interesting reading. I wonder if Paul Kimmage has said anything regarding the latest actions ?

Tusher

If or when he's sent to gaol, what length of sentence could LA expect?

Gazzetta67

How many more riders "outing" this Myth is it going to take before the UCI do anything about it....Or are they just Sh***ing there pants at the outcome from Novitzskys findings.

iainf72

I am not sure what the UCI could or should do? Most of the offences fall outside the statute of limitations for doping issues

BikingBernie

speshsteve wrote:

I am neither pro or against LA however was he really a below average rider before his post cancer return. Was he not an up and coming rider (well proven at tri) who had just won a stage of the tour and then was diagnosed with cancer?

Armstrong was already an established pro, with a proven talent for one-day events, but he really showed no signs of having the making of a Tour winner. He packed in his first 2 Tours after losing the best part of 30 minutes on the big mountain stages. On his third attempt he managed to finish but still came in one and half hours behind the winner. In his pre cancer days Armstrong also said that he was specifically targeting the flat time trials, and yet each year he rode he them he still finished over six minutes down on the winner. Then he teamed up with Ferrari, and as they say, the rest is history.

BikingBernie

mididoctors wrote:

BikingBernie wrote:

From the evidence available so far the story reads something like this:

In all honesty BB this reads like a plot-line from a substandard Tom Clancy novel.

But all those things I mention are well documented (I will post some sources) and there is no need to propose that some sort of planned, 'deep conspiracy' was operating. Rather, the interests of the UCI and Armstrong reflected each other and each party consistently acted in a manner that promoted those shared interests.

VerwoodAsh

iainf72 wrote:

I am not sure what the UCI could or should do? Most of the offences fall outside the statute of limitations for doping issues

The UCI should also come clean. The whole story of Lance being the worst person in cycling history is completly wrong IMHO. What he was was a pawn in the bigger game of making cycling more money for those in charge. You need a poster boy and he was the right one at the right time..

The way how they are going after Lance reminds me of how George Bush declared they won the war on Terror when they got Saddam Hussain and the reason why they invaded IRAQ in the first place. We all know with hindsight it was about money - and the same will be the story here.

As for should he stay the winner - well we have plenty of know dopers or even suspects who are still classed as the winner - induarin, Coppi, LeMond etc. The UCI is rotton to the core - the whole sport needs to fold and only then a brand new administration built on modern day values can come into play.

Gazzetta67

All quiet on the western front from a certain Pat McQuaid - He`s usually quick to come out and support his blue eyed texan boy. Or is he in the Radioshack car along with his brother having a "Jolly" at the sponsors expense.

Monty Dog

VerwoodAsh wrote:

The whole story of Lance being the worst person in cycling history is completly wrong IMHO. What he was was a pawn in the bigger game of making cycling more money for those in charge.

Don't be taken in by the LA camp's "I was just a rider on the team" - he along with Tom Weisel and Bruyneel are the ring-leaders in this fraud and deliberately conspired to force riders on the "program". He then used this myth to then create the cult of Livestrong and drag more unwitting fools into the charade.

iainf72

Gazzetta67 wrote:

All quiet on the western front from a certain Pat McQuaid - He`s usually quick to come out and support his blue eyed texan boy. Or is he in the Radioshack car along with his brother having a "Jolly" at the sponsors expense.

The general perception is that Pat and co are trying to distance themselves from Bruyneel and Lance at the moment.

iainf72

VerwoodAsh wrote:

As for should he stay the winner - well we have plenty of know dopers or even suspects who are still classed as the winner - induarin, Coppi, LeMond etc. The UCI is rotton to the core - the whole sport needs to fold and only then a brand new administration built on modern day values can come into play.

Doping wasn't against the rules in the days of Coppi and no one aside from Lance has ever said anything about Lemond. Even the guy Lance attempted to pay off to say he'd seen Greg do something wouldn't play ball.

The UCI may be rotten, but a new organisation still have the same constraints. ie, the testing isn't that good and cheating brings big rewards. Anti-doping needs to be moved away from the sports governing body and they should just concentrate on the sport.

forward_loop

I also noticed the Sunday Times also seemd to set themselves up for opening their own case against LA, after the settlement of 2006. Twice it seemed to be implied that they were revisiting the original outcome. At the time it seemed everyone was bullied into drying up and the ST just didn't have quie enough collateral to take it all the way.

morstar

BikingBernie wrote:

speshsteve wrote:

I am neither pro or against LA however was he really a below average rider before his post cancer return. Was he not an up and coming rider (well proven at tri) who had just won a stage of the tour and then was diagnosed with cancer?

Armstrong was already an established pro, with a proven talent for one-day events, but he really showed no signs of having the making of a Tour winner. He packed in his first 2 Tours after losing the best part of 30 minutes on the big mountain stages. On his third attempt he managed to finish but still came in one and half hours behind the winner. In his pre cancer days Armstrong also said that he was specifically targeting the flat time trials, and yet each year he rode he them he still finished over six minutes down on the winner. Then he teamed up with Ferrari, and as they say, the rest is history.

I'm firmly in the Lance is guilty camp but you're agenda peddling. Your OP is fanciful. The situation evolved and was not a predefined masterplan as you tell the story. Also, finishing however many hours / mins down in early tour attempts says very little about a rider. Big Migs early performances were very uninspiring also. But that's off topic. Once you're over x amount of time down, it becomes irrelevant as you're not racing to win. Was he a future tour contender in 96'? Seems unlikely, was he below average? There is absolutely no evidence either way, he had not ridden for a GC position.
Look at Brad, we know his 2009 result was flattering but 2010 suggests he is about a 20'ish place rider. Where had he ever finished previously?

dougzz

morstar wrote:

'm firmly in the Lance is guilty camp but you're agenda peddling. Your OP is fanciful. The situation evolved and was not a predefined masterplan as you tell the story. Also, finishing however many hours / mins down in early tour attempts says very little about a rider. Big Migs early performances were very uninspiring also. But that's off topic. Once you're over x amount of time down, it becomes irrelevant as you're not racing to win. Was he a future tour contender in 96'? Seems unlikely, was he below average? There is absolutely no evidence either way, he had not ridden for a GC position.
Look at Brad, we know his 2009 result was flattering but 2010 suggests he is about a 20'ish place rider. Where had he ever finished previously?

You don't see a parallel between Mig and Lance? You think Mig was any cleaner?

BikingBernie

dougzz wrote:

morstar wrote:

'm firmly in the Lance is guilty camp but you're agenda peddling. Your OP is fanciful. The situation evolved and was not a predefined masterplan as you tell the story. Also, finishing however many hours / mins down in early tour attempts says very little about a rider. Big Migs early performances were very uninspiring also.

You don't see a parallel between Mig and Lance? You think Mig was any cleaner?

And don't forget to add Riis to the list of 'No hopers become Tour winners, 'coincidentally' yet another 'EPO era' rider

Then look at the sort of riders who became winners, and especially multiple winners, before the EPO era. Almost to a man they showed their potential the first time they rode the Tour, often winning the race first time out. For example, Merckx, Fignon and Lemond.

Oh, and as I have already pointed out, nowhere have I argued that there was a 'predefined masterplan', rather the whole mess arose because promoting / protecting Armstrong fitted in with the goals of the UCI, and one thing inevitably led to another.

BikingBernie

iainf72 wrote:

The general perception is that Pat and co are trying to distance themselves from Bruyneel and Lance at the moment.

So, there is no sign that they are paying someone to produce another dodgy 'independent report' to justify their actions?

BikingBernie

Pointless Pat on the UCI's goal to develop cycling in the USA.

http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/10-spe ... n-america/

McQuaid met with Frank Arokiasamy, the man behind the Tour of America, at the Tour of California. He also plans to meet with Michael Ball, another man with grand ideas. Ball is the owner of the Rock & Republic clothing line and the Rock Racing cycling team.

Ball has had some missteps, primarily the firing of nice-guy Frankie Andreu as team director and the signing of three riders implicated in Operacion Puerto doping scandal (Tyler Hamilton, Oscar Sevilla and Santiago Botero). McQuaid offered that Ball might have been better off going a different direction with his signings, but overall McQuaid likes what Ball brings to cycling.

“Michael Ball … comes in from a completely different industry with a completely different approach, but he creates media interest and livens up the whole thing,” McQuaid said. “More and more, the sport is being perceived as attractive, as sexy, as interesting and so forth for people to be involved in both as a participant and also as a viewer.

“There is a place for Michael Ball in the sport of cycling. I discussed it with some of his people as recently as four days ago, and I’m sitting down with him someday soon and discussing that. … He’s a guy who can bring a lot of color and a lot of energy to the sport and bring a new media and a new audience to the sport, but he needs to do that within the framework of the establishment that’s there.”

And that’s UCI cycling. The growth of professional bicycle racing in America is part of the UCI’s vision of a global sport, a vision that McQuaid says runs counter to the Euro-centric view among the organizers of the grand tours — the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana.

...“The UCI is determined to push forward this globalization, against the background of opposition in Europe,” he said. “Make no mistake about it. We’ll eventually succeed, because eventually the sport will become a global sport and not a European sport.

...The UCI has as its vision and its mission very much in the past couple of years to globalize this sport. However, we are fighting desperately against an attitude within Europe which is very Euro-centric and which is very traditional, very much dealing with historic cycling and not wanting historic cycling to be damaged or to be any way curtailed or any way overtaken by the development of cycling on a global basis. That’s exactly what’s going on.

Pat displays his xenophobia...

http://cyclocosm.com/2007/01/pound-mcqu ... de-rumors/

“There is a clash going on at the moment between two cultures, the Anglo-Saxon and what I might call the mafia Western European culture…The Western European Culture is a culture that has to some extent - I won’t say condones doping and cheating practices - but because of their culture in life, because of the way they deal with everything else in life they accept certain practices…”

http://www.independent.ie/sport/other-s ... 83523.html

Since his inception as president, the globalisation of the sport has been his most ardent mission statement. All the great races and most of the great riders had come from the same small knot of countries on the Mediterranean or in middle Europe: France, Spain, Italy, Belgium. McQuaid wanted change and, in threatening this hegemony, he knew he was treading on some powerful toes.

No surprise that the French have been his greatest adversaries. At the moment, McQuaid is engaged in a row with the French doping agency, AFLD, over the right to test at the Tour and other major French races. McQuaid is adamant he will win this one too. Under WADA rules, the international federation - in this case the UCI - is authorised to handle doping at internationally sanctioned events. The AFLD can make noise, but it will fall on deaf ears.

"The French?" McQuaid muses, carefully choosing his words. "They're an unusual race let's say. When it comes to cycling, they think they own the sport. They have this thing that France is cycling, cycling is French."

rick_chasey

Haven't seen you on the forum for a while bikingbernie.

BikingBernie

Rick Chasey wrote:

Haven't seen you on the forum for a while bikingbernie.

I have been 'off-line' for a while, and now I have got out of the posting habit I might not be posting that much in the future either. I also see that the true fanboys like Paul Cuthbert and Dennis don't seem to posting nowadays either, which sort of takes the edge off the fun.