Velodude said:
Direct eye witness evidence that has been corroborated a number of times over sucks?
Let us see if Bruyneel will cobble together sufficient rebuttal witnesses to refute the 20+ witnesses of the USADA Reasoned Decision. Don't hold your breath.
I can recall reading Armstrong claimed the 11 former team member witnesses for USADA were only a small fraction of those employed by his teams over the years.
The inference to a reader could be that only a small fraction came forward (to dishonestly prostitute themselves for their future cycling career) and/or the majority refused to support a wrongdoing.
The problem is of course, most of those statements establish that almost all of the the riders were career dopers who did not start doping because of bruyneel, and did not stop doping when moving on then to different teams. Indeed such as Jaksche claim all 6 teams he was involved in were doing same or similar thing. Doping was endemic before the Bruyneel era as the cases of Riis and many others prove, and it did not "magically stop" when Armstrong retired either first or second time - take the revelations about Rabobank up until 2007
In conclusion almost the whole sport was at it , continuously, yet cycling "injustice" seems to want to blame Bruyneel for the ills of an entire sport.
It may make people feel better somehow to blame and scapegoat one person, because that way you can pretend the problems have left with the person blamed when removed.
It is neither justice, nor will it clean up a sport.
UCI have tried the "scapegoat" route on and off for a decade.. It does not work.
Pick a rider to see how much "bruyneel is to blame"
Questions.
Did Hincapie start doping because of Bruyneel. no.
Did Hincapie stop doping when beyond teams in which Bruyneel was involved. no.
Did Hincapie source drugs or were they given to him? Whatever happened later, Hincapie started by getting them in Switzerland.
Did Hincapie supply to others? Read the testimonies of such as Landis and Hamilton, and see all the riders were giving them to each other on occasions.
Did Hincapie pay for his doping programme? Yes.
Did Hincapie put the drugs into his own arm, or did someone else do it for him? He did it himself - by which I mean, nobody pinned him to a bed and "forced" him against his will.
Did Hincapie condone the cheating? Clearly he did.. He did it for many years.
Did Hincapie have moral qualms about the treatment of Emma and Betsy? No. He stayed silent.
Did Hincapie lie about being a doper? Yes.
Did Hincapie benefit from the Joint "criminal" enterprise. Yes. Probably similar order to Bruyneel, most of what he owns and has consumed originated there. The proceeds of cycling "crime"
Painting riders as "victims" worthy of reduced sentences is complete errant nonsense. And trying to blame the rest of the machine for the actions of the riders is not only nonsense, it is judicial nonsense.
The defence of "the boss told me to" does not exist in law. Rightly So.
It did not work for Nazis at Nuremberg and has failed ever since.
Bruyneel was a cog in a machine. A disgraceful machine, but little or no different to other similar machines in cycling. He was one part of that machine, which relied on many others.
The main distinguising factors were
(a) The lengths Armstrong went to (and UCI) to crush truth tellers.
(b) That Bruyneels teams won.
(a) Is pure Armstrong modus operandi for which he deserves special sanction. (b) Winning is not a crime. Doping is. It does not matter whether you come first or last, doping should be punished the same. The results are immaterial.
The history of cycling for the last decade or more, has been to scapegoat someone as the proof that cycling has cleaned up its act, leaving the core of the problem festering in place.
The pattern continues.
The "Unreasonable decision" has done little to address that.
Other than prove the cycling authorities do not give a **stuff** about justice.
It paints riders as mindless morons who lamely do what the boss tells them to do, so it is the boss at fault.....As if.
That kangaroo stunt of putting all of the evidence against Bruyneel in public domain prior to hearing, does nothing but prove (a) Tygart is not fit to run any quasi judicial organisation and (b) cycling justice is was and seemingly will remain a joke.
Does a DS of a doping team deserve sanction? Sure. Similar to the rest of the team.
It would not matter how much a DS said - "go talk to this doctor" if all the riders said Nein! No! Non!. Then there would be no doping in cycling. In the end the riders are to blame.
In summary there is a wholly disproportionate sanction between the core riders and team officials.
There is also a false focus on those teams who won. Doping is the crime , not winning.
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