The implosion of Verbruggen
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I am enjoying it vastly0
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http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/verbrug ... -armstrong
He's started to back track, this could just be the start.0 -
Its great to hear him verbally cr*****g himself. The chickens come home to roost. How long will it be before he starts implicating others in the UCI?0
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This could be the start of the real clean up in cycling.0
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David Millar @millarmind
I hope Hein Verbruggen, not @lancearmstrong, will be remembered as the poster boy for professional cycling at the turn of the 21st century.
You re gonna have to help us out there Dave....We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
- @ddraver0 -
oh....
David Millar @millarmind
All Verbruggen had to say back in the '90s was, "Cycling has a massive doping problem. I don't know what to do to fix it." He CHOSE not to.We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
- @ddraver0 -
oh....
David Millar @millarmind
All Verbruggen had to say back in the '90s was, "Cycling has a massive doping problem. I don't know what to do to fix it." He CHOSE not to.We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
- @ddraver0 -
How would you fix doping at that time? It's like the teams had Verbruggen over a barrel, they were openly telling Verbruggen that they doped. Verbruggen was just scared to upset the teams and lose the financial revenue and tarnish cycling's already dodgy image regarding PEDs0
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I suspect Armstrong's rise gave HV a very easy ride, filled his coffers and we know that it brought in lots of sponsorship through the raised profile.
The chickens have come home to roost.0 -
ddraver wrote:oh....
David Millar @millarmind
All Verbruggen had to say back in the '90s was, "Cycling has a massive doping problem. I don't know what to do to fix it." He CHOSE not to.
But yet HV didn't take EPO to recover from all those late nights gladhanding, did he Saint Dave of Caught With His Hand in the Cookie Jar?0 -
A lot of riders like to paint the picture that "I had a choice to make and it was dope or go home" as if they were faced with a decision like they were put on the spot and had to come up with an answer. Like it was a scene in a film, where they'd only just been presented with this 'absolute quandary' as if it was told to them in that one moment as new information. They all get to paint this picture and cling to the 'poor me' even more as if they 'ummed and panicked and said yes in the heat of the moment', that, is mostly crap.
I'm not sure Millar is one of those that this applies to, and maybe he's one of the riders who describe the decision making process this way in order to coerce people to empathise. Because of this it is sometimes difficult to take on board anything he says... maybe his twitter soundbite is a reflection of an in depth and informed opinion he has that HV was a big 'baddy' in the doping saga though. I'm sure regardless we're going to see HV unravel in the next weeks and months. No matter how people spin the system though LA in the general public's eyes will take the biggest hit.
I'd like to see all the other guilty parties take a massive hit, not 'dilute the hit across lots of individuals because there were a lot of them'. Cheats are cheats.0 -
Jorg Jaksche is the worst for that. He's frequently said he had to dope to keep his job. He won Paris-Nice FFS. That's a little more than keeping his job. What he means is he had to dope to keep his $500k job as opposed to a $50k job.mfin wrote:A lot of riders like to paint the picture that "I had a choice to make and it was dope or go home" as if they were faced with a decision like they were put on the spot and had to come up with an answer. Like it was a scene in a film, where they'd only just been presented with this 'absolute quandary' as if it was told to them in that one moment as new information. They all get to paint this picture and cling to the 'poor me' even more as if they 'ummed and panicked and said yes in the heat of the moment', that, is mostly crap.Twitter: @RichN950 -
RichN95 wrote:
Jorg Jaksche is the worst for that. He's frequently said he had to dope to keep his job. He won Paris-Nice FFS. That's a little more than keeping his job. What he means is he had to dope to keep his $500k job as opposed to a $50k job.mfin wrote:A lot of riders like to paint the picture that "I had a choice to make and it was dope or go home" as if they were faced with a decision like they were put on the spot and had to come up with an answer. Like it was a scene in a film, where they'd only just been presented with this 'absolute quandary' as if it was told to them in that one moment as new information. They all get to paint this picture and cling to the 'poor me' even more as if they 'ummed and panicked and said yes in the heat of the moment', that, is mostly crap.
Yes, another example... it's typical how people have fallen for the generalisation so much that it becomes the default picture to paint for so many cyclists. It doesn't wash for the vast majority of them, well, not to those of us who think about it, it's just a no-brainer for them to 'pull the wool over most people's eyes' as to their reasoning when it has been accepted by so many as an over-simplified 'excuse'. A coward's/liar's way to narrate it really.0 -
You know guys, if you are one of the best but everyone else is stealing a march and affecting your career, it's hardly surprising that you join them. The UCI were responsible for implementing the 50% rule, for covering things up, for threatening others to appease LA etc etc. They ultimately have to carry the can for many deaths, for many bouts of depression, for ruining the careers of riders such as Bassons, for cutting short careers such as LeMond and for effectively legalising doping as an all-pervading culture.
I personally can't see how you can blame a rider when 99% of the peloton are doing it. It is a simple choice, do EPO & transfusions and whatever else or lose your career.0 -
Joelsim wrote:I personally can't see how you can blame a rider when 99% of the peloton are doing it. It is a simple choice, do EPO & transfusions and whatever else or lose your career.
Well, your opinion here seems to me to be an example of people I think are over simplifying it. I think it's easy to reach a conclusion when it is over simplified as it concludes something, and whilst doing so seems to contain the implied logical tick boxes even if it hasn't. I don't think it works that way, you're back to supporting the simple film scene scenario I was hinting at. Just my opinion.
I think it was Vanessa Redgrave who once told of an actor who said to her that if you want to be great you need to read a role and not think of 'what you would do in that situation' but 'what you would do in that situation based on you having a personality nothing like your own', something like that, blah, blah, blah.... anyway, my sort of relevance being these are people of completely different personalities all hiding under the same 'umbrella of simplified decision' even if their individual circumstances and pressures were different.
However, it is easy for them to paint the same 'poor me, no choice' impression. It's also easy for them to paint a picture that they then took a pill and walked off, it's crap, a mile from the truth. This is people undertaking programmes of doping, sticking needles in themselves to a structured schedule, having blood taken out and re-infused, blood monitoring, paying out for more and more knowledge they didn't have and the advantages that go with it. All with a mix of knowing it was cheating, breaking morals they knew were wrong from the age of 2, probably breaking the law, deceiving the public, fans, press, and in some cases family and friends too. Hardly 'it was take it or not, so I took it'.0 -
Joelsim wrote:I personally can't see how you can blame a rider when 99% of the peloton are doing it. It is a simple choice, do EPO & transfusions and whatever else or lose your career.
Brailsford decided 'No'. It needed one brave man to publically take the decision and actually promote the concept. Those who abhorred doping had their leader.'Performance analysis and Froome not being clean was a media driven story. I haven’t heard one guy in the peloton say a negative thing about Froome, and I haven’t heard a single person in the peloton suggest Froome isn’t clean.' TSP0 -
I'm not solely blaming the rider, but I'm also not absolving them of responsibility as they wish. Many of them could have made a perfectly decent living riding clean. Bassons said that he was offered two contracts - one clean and one with EPO worth ten times as much. He chose the lower option - which was still a good wage. Others like Jaksche took the riches and now claim they had no option.Joelsim wrote:I personally can't see how you can blame a rider when 99% of the peloton are doing it. It is a simple choice, do EPO & transfusions and whatever else or lose your career.
Jon Vaughters wrote a decent piece in a magazine soon after he retired explaining the choices that a rider faces after making many sacrifices. It made sense. But more recently he has admitted to secretly doping at Credit Agricole - the original clean team.
When I was graduating Uni, I went to the careers fair and talked to anyone that would be interested in a engineer. The ones that offered the most money were the arms industry. The ones that struggled to recruit the most were the arms industry. It wasn't for me - one of many. I don't judge those that went for it, but I would if they said they had to to feed their family.Twitter: @RichN950 -
Bo Duke wrote:Joelsim wrote:I personally can't see how you can blame a rider when 99% of the peloton are doing it. It is a simple choice, do EPO & transfusions and whatever else or lose your career.
Brailsford decided 'No'. It needed one brave man to publically take the decision and actually promote the concept. Those who abhorred doping had their leader.
Or it needed another cowardly man who couldn't face another doping scandal and wanted to make sure the blame didn't fall near him?
Sorry Bo; just being facetious. I agree with you...
The aspect in all this that seems to get forgotten is that many of the riders have historically been in their twenties and know no other life than the demands of cycling: the prospect of "another life" defies so much of what their experience informs them. Everyone is different in terms of their personal development and maturity.
Rich - you should count yourself lucky that you've had the "consistency of fortitude" to feel coherent in your path from such a relatively young age: I suspect I'm a similar age to you, yet I doubt I've ever had a sense of the "right way". And that only says anything about me: not you.
For young athletes, they chose cycling as a vocation - it's quite a daunting thing to change direction once you've done that (it is at any age - but if it's all you know....). But for the older characters like Verbruggen, McQuaid, Saiz, Bruyneel, Riis and to some extent Armstrong, there is less excuse because they'd already had their chance for redemption and realignment, yet plowed on regardless - into the the moral abyss, looking for a professional edge.
The influence of the rave scene is often neglected, to my mind. Since the late 80's, when many of their mates were giving it large in the clubs on E, coke and more latterly ketamine, many young cycling pros would've been simultaneously introduced to social drug taking at a time when they were being coerced into it professionally.
It was only a matter of time before someone made the courageous step forward of drawing a line in the sand as Brailsford has (probably) had his arm twisted into doing...0 -
Thousands of people have to face that. And not just wannabe athletes. Very few get to realise their dreams.OCDuPalais wrote:For young athletes, they chose cycling as a vocation - it's quite a daunting thing to change direction once you've done that (it is at any age - but if it's all you know....)
If a cyclist has to dope to keep a job at low wages, then he needs to stop kidding himself. He's got maybe five years if he's lucky. So then what is he going to do? Few make enough money not to have to work again. At 30 he'll face the exact same scenario he had at 23, but now he's got a wife and kids.
One day a doper will come out and say he could have done it clean but he was greedy and wanted to be rich. When he does I'll respect him and he will be worth listening to. (Millar was the closest to that, but still far short). Unless they say that, everything they say is self-justification and abandonment of responsibilty.Twitter: @RichN950 -
Yes, but that's all retrospective and benefits from hindsight: you can tell a thousand 18 year olds that they could become one of a thousand 21 year olds who dope, and you'll probably get a thousand teenagers say "yeah, but not me..."RichN95 wrote:Very few get to realise their dreams.
If a cyclist has to dope to keep a job at low wages, then he needs to stop kidding himself. He's got maybe five years if he's lucky. So then what is he going to do? Few make enough money not to have to work again. At 30 he'll face the exact same scenario he had at 23, but now he's got a wife and kids.
And they are now the 41 years olds telling the world how it was for them.
As I said, good for you that you had what it took at such a young age to be righteous - many don't.0 -
OCDuPalais wrote:The influence of the rave scene is often neglected, to my mind. Since the late 80's, when many of their mates were giving it large in the clubs on E, coke and more latterly ketamine, many young cycling pros would've been simultaneously introduced to social drug taking at a time when they were being coerced into it professionally.
I don't know how you are making that link, did recreational drug use suddenly become something masses and masses of people did whereas pre 'rave culture' it was a lot lot less that did it?0 -
mfin wrote:OCDuPalais wrote:The influence of the rave scene is often neglected, to my mind. Since the late 80's, when many of their mates were giving it large in the clubs on E, coke and more latterly ketamine, many young cycling pros would've been simultaneously introduced to social drug taking at a time when they were being coerced into it professionally.
I don't know how you are making that link, did recreational drug use suddenly become something masses and masses of people did whereas pre 'rave culture' it was a lot lot less that did it?
Yes.
There were obvious pockets of social 'acepted' drug use post the 60's and pre-rave such as amphetamines in the Northern Soul scene but the rave scene coincided with the availability of new drugs that didnt suffer the stigma of what were considered hard drugs.Coach H. (Dont ask me for training advice - 'It's not about the bike')0 -
Ulrich was caught with party drugs. E's and coke I think. But big Jan knows how to parrrrtaaayy0
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RichN95 wrote:Try as I might I can't quite picture Chris Boardman pilled up dancing to the Happy Mondays at the Hacienda.
Although cycling jerseys were popular with the rave crowd.
"What do you mean the club doesnt even OPEN till 11? Well thats no chuffing use, have to be in bed by 9.30. I've got to turn our back room into a heat chamber with some cling film first thing tomorrow"0 -
Coach H wrote:mfin wrote:OCDuPalais wrote:The influence of the rave scene is often neglected, to my mind. Since the late 80's, when many of their mates were giving it large in the clubs on E, coke and more latterly ketamine, many young cycling pros would've been simultaneously introduced to social drug taking at a time when they were being coerced into it professionally.
I don't know how you are making that link, did recreational drug use suddenly become something masses and masses of people did whereas pre 'rave culture' it was a lot lot less that did it?
Yes.
There were obvious pockets of social 'acepted' drug use post the 60's and pre-rave such as amphetamines in the Northern Soul scene but the rave scene coincided with the availability of new drugs that didnt suffer the stigma of what were considered hard drugs.
And do you think this had an affect that more cyclists were likely to take doping drugs?0
