CIRC report

Pross

alanp23 wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

I am pleased that this report confirms my complete innocence
-Verbruggen

Yes, I heard him on 5Live (about 5.40pm) and that was pretty much the attitude he conveyed throughout the interview.

Yep, that was bizarre. He couldn't understand why Cookson suggested he should stand down from his honourary role and that the report had exonerated him :roll:

rick_chasey

alanp23 wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

I am pleased that this report confirms my complete innocence
-Verbruggen

Yes, I heard him on 5Live (about 5.40pm) and that was pretty much the attitude he conveyed throughout the interview.

What's he supposed to say?

slim_boy_fat

Rick Chasey wrote:

alanp23 wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

I am pleased that this report confirms my complete innocence
-Verbruggen

Yes, I heard him on 5Live (about 5.40pm) and that was pretty much the attitude he conveyed throughout the interview.

What's he supposed to say?

You're right. Nothing else he can say really. However, he could just slip out the back door, not say a word and live quite happily on the fortune he made from the sport.

thomthom

Pat and Hein.

disgruntledgoat

frenchfighter wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

I am glad they point out the TUE abuse. I think that is a serious problem and if riders want a TUE then it has to be published on a very accessible and searchable database.

Searchable by whom?

Would you like your health information to be available to all and sundry?

Anyone but there would be a filter on 'highly sensitive or too personal' data. If as a rider you are not happy for people to question your use of medication etc then you will think twice about putting something on there you know you are only doing for performance recovery enhancing reasons.

The gov bodies should also be much stricter on what is allowed.

DG, I have searched for it before and beget found it. If you have a link you can provide that would be great.

Its not searchable by the likes of you and I, I believe its a database within the UCI called ADAMS. Its mentioned within the report.

Just because somebody entertains you on a bike for a living doesn't mean that you have a right to their health records. There are probably riders, for example, managing depression or anxiety issues that their team perhaps not even aware of.

disgruntledgoat

My bad, its a WADA site and its here
https://adams.wada-ama.org/adams/

philbar72

RichN95 wrote:

Blazing Saddles wrote:

In other news, Lampre have announced they are keeping Diego Ulissi and dropping the MPCC. :roll:

They'll undoubtedly get a lot of flack for that, but I think they're right to do that. They're backing someone they believe to have been guilty of carelessness rather than malice in favour of keeping an increasingly meaningless badge. Particularly when Garmin can keep employing their array of dopers due to plea bargains and technicalities.

Totally agree. Well said.

iainf72

The cycling podcast have an interview with Brailsford about the CIRC. Pretty good

frenchfighter

Thanks for the link DG.

Further to the posts on here it seems that it is not the best way to go. Maybe then there needs to be more internal heavy handedness on this abuse.

frenchfighter

ddraver

Is there any particular reason that the CIRC 3 couldnt have been in the rest day town for each of the GT's, in a hotel in Gent/Oudenaarde during march etc?

Just an hour chat with most current riders would have been enough (Ok, Bertie no, Valverde no etc), they could have done 5 each day with pretty much no effort on the part of the riders

slim_boy_fat

ddraver wrote:

Is there any particular reason that the CIRC 3 couldnt have been in the rest day town for each of the GT's, in a hotel in Gent/Oudenaarde during march etc?

Just an hour chat with most current riders would have been enough (Ok, Bertie no, Valverde no etc), they could have done 5 each day with pretty much no effort on the part of the riders

Thats what Brailsford suggested in the Cycling Podcast Ian is talking about. He also suggests, when asked, that one way to run the 'doping' division from a UCI standpoint would be to place a qualified person into each tour team for the entirety of the the season. Let them stay with them, attend team meetings, rifle through riders bags, speak to doctors, see every prescription that is signed by a doc. Rotate them between teams, let them liaise with each other regularly. Seems like a good idea to me, who would pay for it and how it would be administered is the sticking point. So Brailsford may be saying that because he'd be genuinely happy to do it or because he knows it'll never happen but thinks it's the right thing to say. I'd like to think it's the former.

above_the_cows

ADAMS is the repository platform system containing all the aggregated data on athletes, whereabouts, biopassport data, test schedule, and TUEs. Each NADA and sporting authority works with it slightly differently but its supposed to be interoperable and multiplatform. In reality it sometimes goes wrong, you can access it via an app on your smartphone. There were some problems with the an ios 8 update last autumn for example, which could have lead to problems in updating whereabouts etc for some athletes. It's an amazing surveillance database, which is why various legal bodies concerned with privacy monitor its reach very closely. ADAMS is a step ahead in terms of what data it contains compared to some of the regular surveillance, risk management databases, such as the various API/PNR databases that exist for regular forms of say mobility governance because it has such a relatively small sample pool vis-à-vis the general population.

ddraver

Slim Boy Fat wrote:

ddraver wrote:

Is there any particular reason that the CIRC 3 couldnt have been in the rest day town for each of the GT's, in a hotel in Gent/Oudenaarde during march etc?

Just an hour chat with most current riders would have been enough (Ok, Bertie no, Valverde no etc), they could have done 5 each day with pretty much no effort on the part of the riders

Thats what Brailsford suggested in the Cycling Podcast Ian is talking about. He also suggests, when asked, that one way to run the 'doping' division from a UCI standpoint would be to place a qualified person into each tour team for the entirety of the the season. Let them stay with them, attend team meetings, rifle through riders bags, speak to doctors, see every prescription that is signed by a doc. Rotate them between teams, let them liaise with each other regularly. Seems like a good idea to me, who would pay for it and how it would be administered is the sticking point. So Brailsford may be saying that because he'd be genuinely happy to do it or because he knows it'll never happen but thinks it's the right thing to say. I'd like to think it's the former.

I ve just listened to that, but it wasnt what I meant really. I was just talking about talking to a good bunch of current riders. There must be an all@ProTour e-mail group they could have sent an invitation out with

slim_boy_fat

ddraver wrote:

Slim Boy Fat wrote:

ddraver wrote:

Is there any particular reason that the CIRC 3 couldnt have been in the rest day town for each of the GT's, in a hotel in Gent/Oudenaarde during march etc?

Just an hour chat with most current riders would have been enough (Ok, Bertie no, Valverde no etc), they could have done 5 each day with pretty much no effort on the part of the riders

Thats what Brailsford suggested in the Cycling Podcast Ian is talking about. He also suggests, when asked, that one way to run the 'doping' division from a UCI standpoint would be to place a qualified person into each tour team for the entirety of the the season. Let them stay with them, attend team meetings, rifle through riders bags, speak to doctors, see every prescription that is signed by a doc. Rotate them between teams, let them liaise with each other regularly. Seems like a good idea to me, who would pay for it and how it would be administered is the sticking point. So Brailsford may be saying that because he'd be genuinely happy to do it or because he knows it'll never happen but thinks it's the right thing to say. I'd like to think it's the former.

I ve just listened to that, but it wasnt what I meant really. I was just talking about talking to a good bunch of current riders. There must be an all@ProTour e-mail group they could have sent an invitation out with

It does seem like a no brainer doesn't. But it would appear that it was a you come to us scenario.

Macaloon

Thanks for the updates. Good read. Standing ovation for Brian Cookson. Good effort.

What about that splendid WADA slammer?

iainf72

Cookson interview on cycling news

He thinks the majority of riders are competing clean.

--

It will cause concern to riders in the current peloton who think that the percentage is lower rather than higher and I’m absolutely convinced that that’s the case. I want to support the riders and the teams in the current peloton who are determined to compete clean. They’re in the majority now but I’m not complacent because we need to continue our efforts because there are still those tying to cheat.

slim_boy_fat

The problem, as I see it, is that none of us actually know if people are doping or not and unless there is some way for the sport to prove it's clean the history of the sport means that the questions, accusations and suspicion will not go away. So should the burden of proof be on the UCI or the teams? And how do you go about delivering proof?

above_the_cows

The problem is you cannot prove a negative.

iainf72

Above The Cows wrote:

The problem is you cannot prove a negative.

That's right. The position of they're all doing it is lazy and cowardly, as you can't be proved wrong. Someone goes through career without and problems and they just weren't caught

And there is a tendency to fit evidence around their beliefs. Rather than let the evidence lead them to a conclusion. If you exclude data that messes with your theory you're doing it horribly wrong.

slim_boy_fat

Above The Cows wrote:

The problem is you cannot prove a negative.

Totally agree. And I can live without proof if what I see makes sense to me and as long as the UCI do the utmost to prove positives. However, there are so many people in and around cycling who don't subscribe to that point of view. So as far as I can see unless someone comes up with a miracle solution the current atmosphere of suspicion and accusation will continue no matter what the teams or UCI do.

timoid.

iainf72 wrote:

And there is a tendency to fit evidence around their beliefs. Rather than let the evidence lead them to a conclusion. If you exclude data that messes with your theory you're doing it horribly wrong.

Agree totally. This figure of 90% that has been thrown up is the opinion of one person involved in the sport. In any rigorous statistical analysis (if you can apply such a thing to people’s opinions), this would most likely be outside standard deviation for the study group and thus not a usable data point.

Instead it gets utilised by lazy hacks to hook a story from.

slim_boy_fat

Timoid. wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

And there is a tendency to fit evidence around their beliefs. Rather than let the evidence lead them to a conclusion. If you exclude data that messes with your theory you're doing it horribly wrong.

Agree totally. This figure of 90% that has been thrown up is the opinion of one person involved in the sport. In any rigorous statistical analysis (if you can apply such a thing to people’s opinions), this would most likely be outside standard deviation for the study group and thus not a usable data point.

Instead it gets utilised by lazy hacks to hook a story from.

Indeed. And then your average punter who doesn't follow cycling thinks, 'They are all at it.' When the truth is that cycling above all sports is doing the most to try and eradicate the malaise from the sport. Personally I think other sports have a much worse problem with doping currently than cycling but they haven't even begun the process cycling is currently on.

Cycling is the whipping boy of the sporting world where doping is concerned. And the CIRC report has only perpetuated that by foolishly reporting the 90% doping figure of one anonymous ex rider. No study would use the opinion of one person to prove or disprove anything. I'm really not sure why it was included, it does nothing to move the debate forward other than to give the general media a totally unrepresentative headline to latch onto and so make cycling problems seem much worse to the general public than they actually are.

smithy21

But if they excluded the 90% comment the cynics would be accusing them of a cover up. No win really.

above_the_cows

All of this makes cycling and anti-doping a fascinating case study for geeks like me who love this kind of stuff around, methods, knowledge, norms and governance.

Slim Boy Fat wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

The problem is you cannot prove a negative.

Totally agree. And I can live without proof if what I see makes sense to me and as long as the UCI do the utmost to prove positives. However, there are so many people in and around cycling who don't subscribe to that point of view. So as far as I can see unless someone comes up with a miracle solution the current atmosphere of suspicion and accusation will continue no matter what the teams or UCI do.

Yep. You see this in some other instances as well (reactions from some quarters about MH370 is a good case), the inability of some people to not be able to cope with 'not knowing', being able to except that there are limits to human knowledge and some of those are technical limits, others ontological limits while others are normative limits.

I work in critical security studies and you see this drive to prevent all forms of risk in security practice when what you really need is someone to be honest and say that 'shoot happens' and that nothing is ever 100% safe. In cycling, like in security practice, this is hard to do because of wider cultural factors.

iainf72

Classic

Kimbo tweets about only 10% of riders allowing samples to be used for testing new doping tests. Just after having a swipe at Sky / Froome

Froome tweets pic in response with his most recent form with box checked

Lolz

slim_boy_fat

iainf72 wrote:

Classic

Kimbo tweets about only 10% of riders allowing samples to be used for testing new doping tests. Just after having a swipe at Sky / Froome

Froome tweets pic in response with his most recent form with box checked

Lolz

At least Kimmage had the balls to retweet it. That's so often Kimmages problem, his heart is in the right place but he barges in like a bull in a china shop and makes himself look foolish.

Pross

iainf72 wrote:

Classic

Kimbo tweets about only 10% of riders allowing samples to be used for testing new doping tests. Just after having a swipe at Sky / Froome

Froome tweets pic in response with his most recent form with box checked

Lolz

Presumably the 10% allowing their samples to be tested are the 10% that are not doping. It all balances, now we have some correlation therefore evidence

RichN95.

iainf72 wrote:

Classic

Kimbo tweets about only 10% of riders allowing samples to be used for testing new doping tests. Just after having a swipe at Sky / Froome

Froome tweets pic in response with his most recent form with box checked

Lolz

I see that there is an accept box and a refuse box. I wonder how many of the 95% that didn't tick the accept box also didn't tick the refuse box.

frenchfighter

iainf72 wrote:

Classic

Kimbo tweets about only 10% of riders allowing samples to be used for testing new doping tests. Just after having a swipe at Sky / Froome

Froome tweets pic in response with his most recent form with box checked

Lolz

Good response from Froome, but where did he take a swipe at Sky / Froome?