The cyclist, her drugs, her boss, her underwear and her coach

elbowloh

Pross said:

MattFalle said:

salsiccia1 said:

It's almost like every case is different and doesn't bare comparison to others

You race under UCI rules

You break those rules

You suffer the penalties under ICI rules

If UCI rules say life ban, thats what it is no matter how many clubbies pull the jingoism card

end of.

Why is a former chemical company's rule book being used to dish out penalties to cyclists?

Isn't Ineos essentially what ICI became?

salsiccia1

MattFalle said:

salsiccia1 said:

It's almost like every case is different and doesn't bare comparison to others

You race under UCI rules

You break those rules

You suffer the penalties under ICI rules

If UCI rules say life ban, thats what it is no matter how many clubbies pull the jingoism card

end of.

Other than the life ban business, you're correct. Who's disputing it?

I know what you're getting at. People have been questioning Sicot's excuse/reason and you've pulled Millar out of your @rse as some sort of shite comparison, because some people have accepted his contrition and moved on, and you can't accept that's for any other reason than he's British. That says more about your prejudices than anything else. Maybe, just maybe, people don't think somebody who cheats at sport should be hung, drawn and quartered and maybe they actually believe he's genuine, regardless of his nationality.

Me, FWIW, I don't know or even really care about Millar's honesty, but someone bringing up unrelated 20 year old cases is either totally radicalised by cycling's past or is trying to troll. Or both.

bobmcstuff

elbowloh said:

Pross said:

MattFalle said:

salsiccia1 said:

It's almost like every case is different and doesn't bare comparison to others

You race under UCI rules

You break those rules

You suffer the penalties under ICI rules

If UCI rules say life ban, thats what it is no matter how many clubbies pull the jingoism card

end of.

Why is a former chemical company's rule book being used to dish out penalties to cyclists?

Isn't Ineos essentially what ICI became?

Not exactly, it's a company that owns a lot of ex-ICI assets though

bobmcstuff

Pross said:

kingstongraham said:

Pross said:

Am I missing the people who have said Millar shouldn't have been banned or is someone building a straw man ready for bonfire night?

He's a tv commentator, still taking work from clean riders.

But who are these people supporting him because he is posh and British? He gets criticised for his past regularly on here. I don't even think he's a good pundit as some on here say.

I think he's a reasonable pundit myself.

I prefer Blythe now though as a more recent rider.

bobmcstuff

I also don't think having done a naughty thing once should preclude you from ever doing anything else connected ever again. Just in general.

m.r.m.

bobmcstuff said:

I also don't think having done a naughty thing once should preclude you from ever doing anything else connected ever again. Just in general.

Sick pickup line there, Bob! 😜

RichN95.

bobmcstuff said:

Pross said:

kingstongraham said:

Pross said:

Am I missing the people who have said Millar shouldn't have been banned or is someone building a straw man ready for bonfire night?

He's a tv commentator, still taking work from clean riders.

But who are these people supporting him because he is posh and British? He gets criticised for his past regularly on here. I don't even think he's a good pundit as some on here say.

I think he's a reasonable pundit myself.

I prefer Blythe now though as a more recent rider.

I agree. I think there's a few coming through (on commentary too) like Matt Stephens and Dan Lloyd as well who understand that this is supposed to be fun. It's entertainment. I think Osi Umenyiora and Jason Bell showed the way on the NFL show

davidof

cygnet said:

It's not hard to decipher.
She climbed 15400m. To climb that far she rode 187km uphill.

Yes, I copied the km figure without thinking.

Pross

bobmcstuff said:

Pross said:

kingstongraham said:

Pross said:

Am I missing the people who have said Millar shouldn't have been banned or is someone building a straw man ready for bonfire night?

He's a tv commentator, still taking work from clean riders.

But who are these people supporting him because he is posh and British? He gets criticised for his past regularly on here. I don't even think he's a good pundit as some on here say.

I think he's a reasonable pundit myself.

I prefer Blythe now though as a more recent rider.

I used to think he was OK but the last time I heard him he was predicting tactics, something else would happen and he's say "there, you see that's what I was just talking about" when it clearly wasn't. Blythe has certainly raised the bar, he has the knowledge but is also an enthusiastic cycling fan who seems as in awe of what the top riders can do as the rest of us mere mortals.

larkim

Maybe I'm not a passionate enough fan of sports, but I apply the same logic to sports people that I do to life in general. If you've committed a crime, you do your time under the rules and regulations that are around, and thereafter you've got the chance to rehabilitate and change.

I've not seen anything in Millar's behaviour that would say that either a) he didn't deserve the full weight of punishment for the "crimes" he committed and that b) anything post his conviction in terms of contrition, rehabilitation and fundamental change in behaviours that leads me to think he is in any way a fake or a fraud *today*. His ban for 2 years looks pretty paltry by today's standards but that's a function of the time.

I understand the jealousy that some will feel either personally or on behalf of those pro riders who always were and who remain clean; the widespread acceptance of his volte-face on drugs and his active campaigning against doping has seen him get into a position where he has earning power and potential that most other ex-dopers don't get into. But that's no different to "white hat" cyber criminals working for cybersecurity businesses, or convicted violent criminals working in inner city projects to combat gang violence. Rehab happens, on balance society benefits from it, and that's no different whether that "society" is pro cycling or the community at large.

Trolling around about someone's behaviours from 20 years ago and making comments that apologies or changes in behaviour are fake is just childish nonsense.

MattFalle

Why is someone have a differing opinion from you or Salsiccia "trolling"?

Tbh, you could be "trolling" in your post above in some people's eyes. Definitly patronising, but also maybe trolling.

kingstongraham

Jealousy? I don't think so.

MattFalle

Re-reading his post?

Jealoysy - don't think so
Patronising - very much so
Over use of hyperbole - definitly

salsiccia1

I consider it trolling because you're only bringing up a long-gone case to mock people, not as a genuine counterpoint. No-one sensible objects to a different opinion.

MattFalle

I don't because its the classic argument for "foreigner dopes hang them but dopey millar the doping cheat is british so lets forgive him and buy his overpriced clothes"

those who ignore history....

not one element of trolling at all.

TheBigBean

TheBigBean said:

Pross said:

Am I missing the people who have said Millar shouldn't have been banned or is someone building a straw man ready for bonfire night?

I think the strawman is that people only dislike Armstrong because he doped.

Definitely this strawman.

RichN95.

MattFalle said:

I don't because its the classic argument for "foreigner dopes hang them but dopey millar the doping cheat is british so lets forgive him and buy his overpriced clothes"

those who ignore history....

not one element of trolling at all.

I'm not sure anyone is "Hanging the foreign doper". People like or don't like riders for other reasons.

Personally I don't like the old dopers who cast aspersions on the current peloton despite not having been anywhere near it for over a decade.

salsiccia1

MattFalle said:

I don't because its the classic argument for "foreigner dopes hang them but dopey millar the doping cheat is british so lets forgive him and buy his overpriced clothes"

those who ignore history....

not one element of trolling at all.

We'll agree to disagree then. But putting Millar's case in this thread appears to be shoe-horning to me.

larkim

kingstongraham said:

Jealousy? I don't think so.

You don't think that some other riders of Millar's generation under achieved because they were competing against cheats are jealous of Millar's ability to leverage his story of salvation from the evils of doping?

Millar is only raised because he still has a very high profile. If he'd doped, been sanctioned and disappeared off to stack shelves at Tesco for the rest of his life he wouldn't raise the ire he does with some. It's only because he has that high profile and is still earning his crust from cycling that he is a problem figure to some, like MF above, surely?

Jealousy isn't everyone's motive for disliking Millar, probably far from it, but it will be part of it.

larkim

And as for why Millar. From my perspective as someone who is disconnected from the sport (I don't even ride a bike much, I'm a runner and care for athletics as a sport more than pro cycling) Millar is on my radar simply because he broadcasts at me on TV or via podcasts in the language I speak.

If Millar was Italian or French or Dutch I'd treat him in the same way, for me at least it's nothing to do with his nationality as to why I'm happy to rehabilitate him and balance off what he does and says now vs what he did in the past. If I could be convinced that Armstrong was properly contrite and properly engaged with clean cycling I'd even have the same view about him. But I'm not, so he remains in the non-rehabilitated camp for me.

davidof

A sad end to this sorry tale

‘I'm sorry I cheated, I lied, I sullied my sport’, said Marion Sicot, 32, before the criminal court in Montargis (Loiret).

Sometimes moved to tears, with her bike tattooed on her right arm, the sportswoman said she had ‘not been able to say no in this quest for performance’. ‘I wasn't doing well, I took the easy way out’. Until now, Marion Sicot had only publicly mentioned an injection of EPO, after testing positive in June 2019 at the end of the French Road Championships. She initially denied the facts in their entirety, before admitting them in March 2020.

This test initially earned the athlete a two-year suspension, a sentence increased to four years by the Conseil d'État after a procedure lasting almost three years. On the stand this time, she admitted all the doping facts revealed by the investigations carried out following her test, in particular various doping protocols using erythropoietin, but also clenbuterol - a product intended for horses - between 2016 and 2019. ‘I wanted to reveal part of what I had done, that I had cheated, without taking full responsibility,’ she explained.

Marion Sicot had also previously motivated this injection by the hope of putting in a performance and regaining the confidence of her manager, the Belgian Marc Bracke, of the Doltcini-Van Eyck team, from whom she hoped to detach herself by obtaining a good result. Bracke, against whom she had filed a complaint for sexual harassment in August 2022, which was dismissed, committed suicide in October 2022. ‘At that time, I wasn't doing well. I was in my bubble and cycling was my whole life. I could see that my level was declining and, mentally, I wasn't there any more’, she also confided.

The former cyclist, now a member of the triathlon club in Châteauroux (Indre) and a self-employed sports coach, has repeatedly insisted that doping was ‘an integral part of the sport’. But for her, ‘there was no professional benefit’. She described her fear of disappearing from the sport and her three years of professional cycling, a level that ‘cost her money’ because of her low pay, without doping enabling her to compete with the best in her sport.

‘Sport and the law have a common foundation’, summarised the prosecutor Jean-Cédric Gaux, pointing to “half-admissions” and statements that sometimes “take away responsibility”. He called for a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of €5,000.

‘Marion Sicot has already paid a heavy price for this suspension, which cost her her sporting career’, argued her counsel, Mr Grignard. At the end of the hearing, she said she was ‘relieved’. ‘I'll be able to turn the page and get on with this new life’. To dope herself up, Ms Sicot obtained supplies via the internet or from a close friend, in return for payments of between €500 and €1,200. This friend, a former semi-professional cyclist who was also called to testify, admitted importing, administering and possessing doping products.

‘It saddens me that she found me in her path’ to dope herself, he said, indicating that he had acted out of financial interest. A third defendant, a doctor suspected of illegally issuing prescriptions for EPO, denied the charges.

Suspended sentences of 18 months‘ imprisonment and a fine of €10,000, and 18 months’ suspended imprisonment and a fine of €20,000, together with a two-year ban on practising as a doctor, were sought respectively against the other two defendants. Sentencing is scheduled for 22 January 2025.