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Bassons: The most eloquent perspective...

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May 26, 2010
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DirtyWorks said:
You keep going around and around on this with nothing gained.

1. There's just no way to define the tipping point. You have the luxury of 20/20 hindsight to call the tipping point. I see this so often and it's a fatal assumption. It's as if history happens in a safe continuum. It doesn't. If not a Festina, then some other team would have finally gotten busted. And then, you would have the same false confidence only using a different team as the tipping point. That's not how life works.

2. Again, you are ascribing a feature 'anti-doping crusader' to Bassons that he may not agree with and I certainly don't. You completely ignore Armstrong's role in Basson's promotion to your 'anti-doping crusader' pedestal. If Armstrong did/said nothing, the story likely would have evaporated in chaos in this forum. Bam! no more pedestal.

See you on page 23 when you are still trying to make a point that is not valid.

i was going to make the second point that you made but thought better of it. Enough posters have already pointed out to velocity he is in a minority with his views and left him to them. But well done for your post. Well made.

There is no way Bassons considers himself an anti doping crusader.
 
Sep 10, 2009
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DirtyWorks said:
You keep going around and around on this with nothing gained.

1. There's just no way to define the tipping point. You have the luxury of 20/20 hindsight to call the tipping point. I see this so often and it's a fatal assumption. It's as if history happens in a safe continuum. It doesn't. If not a Festina, then some other team would have finally gotten busted. And then, you would have the same false confidence only using a different team as the tipping point. That's not how life works.
er, of course we see it in 20/20 hindsight. See, there's this thing called "time" which tends to move unidirectionally into the "future", thereby allowing us to look back into the "past".

And of course there was a tipping point - the Festina bust, where it first came to light that Bassons was a clean rider. WIthout that, there's no newspaper column, no confrontation with Armstrong, etc.
2. Again, you are ascribing a feature 'anti-doping crusader' to Bassons that he may not agree with and I certainly don't.
I wasn't the one who started calling Bassons an "anti-doping crusader" and if you understood what I was talking about, you'd understand that posters referring to Bassons as an "anti-doping crusader" is why I started posting about circumstance vs choice in the first place.
If Armstrong did/said nothing, the story likely would have evaporated in chaos in this forum. Bam! no more pedestal.
er, well, yeah. In other words, the pedestal was given to Bassons as much by fortune, destiny, circumstance, fate, whatever you want to call it, as it was personal choice.
 
Bzzt! Wrong

VeloCity said:
...And of course there was a tipping point ...

This tidy narrative business has to stop because it is used to prove anything your heart desires.

In hind sight there is ALWAYS a tipping point. It's an accident your tidy narrative is created. Nothing more. But you give it full force the equivalent of manifest destiny and try to reinforce it with a personal attack.

Here's an example from right now. Some more law enforcement activity happened in Italy over the last day or two. Is it a tipping point? No one knows. But a year or two from now you and others will use the a tidy narrative created from today's circumstances as a fulcrum to make a point. It's not valid.

VeloCity said:
In other words, the pedestal was given to Bassons as much by fortune, destiny, circumstance, fate, whatever you want to call it, as it was personal choice.

At first, you agree, then take it all away by adding Basson's 'personal choice' as a vaguely defined factor that cannot be debated. Nice, tidy narrative and infinitely defensible by attributing all kinds of things to the guy.

I know you'll keep grinding away at this, but you are using circular logic to make your failed point. See you on page 24.
 
Bassons still on his MTB

4th in French MTB marathon championship

http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2011/04/17/1061149-Thomas-Dietsch-Champion-de-France.html

Le classement hommes : 1. T. Dietsch (Bulls) les 85 km en 3h54'37; 2. G. Pascal (VS Romanais) à 8'40; 3. A. Grosjean (BH Suntour) à 9'27; 4. C. Bassons (Artigues) à 11'27; 5. S. Lefèvre (Bazancourt) à 15'42; 6. R. Laffont (Bagnères de Bigorre ) à 19'48; 7. F. Frech (Team MB Race) à 20'21; 8. R. Cléret (Team Profermetures) à 20'39; 9. J. Buchot (Clic VTT) à 20'43; 10. V. Legastelois (GT Skoda Chamonix) à 24'11...

just for the fun
 
Listening to the Paul Kimmage interview posted here: http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showpost.php?p=996512&postcount=1
where Kimmage mentions Christophe Bassons being run out of the '99 Tour as being a truly "sad day" for cycling (which Kimmage believes was a far more sad day than Lance loosing his 7 titles), I searched for a little more about Bassons.

These old articles are certainly eye opening! :eek:

Bassons won the final stage of the 1999 Dauphine, while Vinokourov won the overall on GC.
Both Vinokourov and Bassons are part of a new generation of riders that provide a fresh image in the face of the doping scandals.
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/1999/jun99/dauphine997.html
(Many more interesting quotes from the 99 Dauphine are there, including Vaughters about his stage 3 ITT win on Mt. Vontoux.)


From July 18, the day Bassons cracked and left the 99 Tour:

Jean-Marie Leblanc estimates that EPO has almost or perhaps disappeared from the Tour... " I will not sign a paper that guarantees that Armstrong is completely clean but the experienced cycling observers can see what the riders are doing and their performances."
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/1999/jul99/jul18.shtml


From July 20, London Times on Christophe Bassons:

Dr Leon Schattenberg, of the UCI's medical committee, said... "I met Hein Verbruggen [the UCI president] the other day," Vayer said. "We spoke for over an hour. He said he was head of 171 federations and I said: 'Stop your s**t, your only duty is to stop doping, that's all you have to do'."
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/1999/jul99/jul20.shtml

It's very interesting to read those old articles from 99 and realize the Tour has come around again and done the exact same thing. (Private) doubts from many journalists about Armstrong, the one day classics rider's astonishing performance then, same as Wiggo, the 1km track pursuit specialist's astonishing performances now...

It was said Armstrong's (Wiggo's) victory in 99 (2012) that the Tour was the cleanest in many years... Jean Marie Leblanc, the Tour organiser, said that cycling needed "a new morality" and that the 1999 (2012) race would be "the Tour of Restoration".... :eek:
 
May 14, 2010
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lightclimber said:
Listening to the Paul Kimmage interview posted here: http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showpost.php?p=996512&postcount=1
where Kimmage mentions Christophe Bassons being run out of the '99 Tour as being a truly "sad day" for cycling (which Kimmage believes was a far more sad day than Lance loosing his 7 titles), I searched for a little more about Bassons.

These old articles are certainly eye opening! :eek:

Bassons won the final stage of the 1999 Dauphine, while Vinokourov won the overall on GC.
Both Vinokourov and Bassons are part of a new generation of riders that provide a fresh image in the face of the doping scandals.
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/1999/jun99/dauphine997.html
(Many more interesting quotes from the 99 Dauphine are there, including Vaughters about his stage 3 ITT win on Mt. Vontoux.)


From July 18, the day Bassons cracked and left the 99 Tour:

Jean-Marie Leblanc estimates that EPO has almost or perhaps disappeared from the Tour... " I will not sign a paper that guarantees that Armstrong is completely clean but the experienced cycling observers can see what the riders are doing and their performances."
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/1999/jul99/jul18.shtml


From July 20, London Times on Christophe Bassons:

Dr Leon Schattenberg, of the UCI's medical committee, said... "I met Hein Verbruggen [the UCI president] the other day," Vayer said. "We spoke for over an hour. He said he was head of 171 federations and I said: 'Stop your s**t, your only duty is to stop doping, that's all you have to do'."
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/1999/jul99/jul20.shtml

It's very interesting to read those old articles from 99 and realize the Tour has come around again and done the exact same thing. (Private) doubts from many journalists about Armstrong, the one day classics rider's astonishing performance then, same as Wiggo, the 1km track pursuit specialist's astonishing performances now...

It was said Armstrong's (Wiggo's) victory in 99 (2012) that the Tour was the cleanest in many years... Jean Marie Leblanc, the Tour organiser, said that cycling needed "a new morality" and that the 1999 (2012) race would be "the Tour of Restoration".... :eek:

Good catch. You should post this in the Sky thread.
 
frenchfry said:
in LeMonde:

http://www.lemonde.fr/sport/article...ard-virenque-dans-les-cotes_1751911_3242.html

"In the winter, I was ahead of Virenque on the climbs"

LeMonde is a festival of negative articles about Armstrong these days.

great great article/interview.

my favorite points (among many) that he makes:

1. the team doctors are not there for health but to optimize performance. he only had his personal medical doctor and the race doctor in case something happened in the race. this is what it was like pre-epo. there was no need for a "team doctor" let alone doctors.

2. he regrets the lack of importance that "fatigue" plays. what is the point of racing three weeks if fatigue is never going to be a factor.

so true. the very element that a grand tour is supposed to test -- recovery over three weeks -- has been taken out of the equation. lemond used to say that he knew that to win a tour he depended on being the strongest in the third week as he recovered better than others. with epo and blood doping the "bad day" was taken out of the equation, saving strength for the next days was taken out of the equation. the very reason to watch a grand tour, the very element of drama that a grand tour provides, the sudden collapse of a major contender and the reversal of fortunes was taken out of the equation.
 
May 14, 2010
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VeloCity said:
Hold on a sec - while I do believe that Bassons was clean, it's not entirely true that he "took the high road" and quit cycling of his own accord because of doping - as I recall, he wanted to continue racing but was basically forced out of cycling after being ostracized by the peloton and his own team (FDJ at the time), then signed with the comparatively minor Jean Delatour team because no other French team would sign him. Nor was he very popular with his teammates to begin with - see Bourguignon's comments about how Basson's wasn't a very good team rider and mostly rode for himself.

I admire Bassons courage in speaking out about doping both when he was a rider and ever since and wish there were many, many more like him, and there's no question that his career was ruined by the doping culture, but let's not sugarcoat his history to make him into something he wasn't.

I always took Basson's exit from the sport as him having been drummed out - that is, shunned. Shunned and shamed, straight out of the peloton. And the man behind that was the peloton's patron, Lance Armstrong, doing what patrons do. Once he gave the word, that was all she wrote for Bassons. Of course, much of the peloton didn't need to be told to hate Bassons or shun him for breaking Omerta, because that's how Omerta works, and that's why it works. But once the call went out, calumny was the order of the day regarding Bassons, and it still is. Which means you have to take every negative comment about Bassons with a grain of salt, if it comes from the peloton.

Glenn_Wilson said:
Nahh I would say that Floyd is above any other anti-doping crusader.

When things got tough Bassons just quit. If he was on the playground he would have been called a ??? ????. Or joined the High Road as you all say. :rolleyes:

When things got tough Floyd just stuck another syringe into his body. Pretty hard to twist that into "above any other anti-doping crusader". Then he got busted. Busted and blackballed from the sport. So, anti-getting-busted, anti-being-blackballed, those he definitely was; but as for the doping, he says he still doesn't feel bad about it. He got the ball rolling, that's for sure, when it comes to breaking Omerta - he shattered it along with his Tour de France trophy, and for that he deserves the gratitude of a great many. But it would be wrong to characterize this as being an "anti-doping crusader".
 
Maxiton said:
I always took Basson's exit from the sport as him having been drummed out - that is, shunned. Shunned and shamed, straight out of the peloton. And the man behind that was the peloton's patron, Lance Armstrong, doing what patrons do. Once he gave the word, that was all she wrote for Bassons. Of course, much of the peloton didn't need to be told to hate Bassons or shun him for breaking Omerta, because that's how Omerta works, and that's why it works. But once the call went out, calumny was the order of the day regarding Bassons, and it still is. Which means you have to take every negative comment about Bassons with a grain of salt, if it comes from the peloton.

Not doping probably was considered being a bad teammate at the time, since you are not the best you can be. In a twisted way, in a world were doping is the standard, it's the same as being lazy and not training hard. I don't doubt Bassons was unpopular even in his own team.
 
Jul 25, 2011
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Doping is always a response to a void, a need – whether it’s for money, or success, or love, or something else. That’s why it’s a mistake to fight the war on doping in terms of health – because, if you actually analyse it, doping responds to a need there too, because you can be healthier doing the Tour de France on drugs than without anything

A void? What about a reaction to .. it's not a one way traffic to filling a void.
Some guys were put with their back's against the wall, take it or leave the sport, I don't see any void filling in there.

Healthier? Maybe, but this is completely off topic. It's about a level playing field. Allowing doping won't provide that. Where do you draw the line where it start's to get unhealthy in a general consensus? You can't due to the individual nature of doping (one person to another).

Everyone has their own sense of legitimate and illegitimate, which is different from what is licit and illicit.
Exactly, that's why the licit and illicit is explicitly stated (i.e. cycling rules), there can be NO MISCONCEPTION, I can't believe how obvious this is ...
 
Apr 20, 2012
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Big Doopie said:
so true. the very element that a grand tour is supposed to test -- recovery over three weeks -- has been taken out of the equation. lemond used to say that he knew that to win a tour he depended on being the strongest in the third week as he recovered better than others. with epo and blood doping the "bad day" was taken out of the equation, saving strength for the next days was taken out of the equation. the very reason to watch a grand tour, the very element of drama that a grand tour provides, the sudden collapse of a major contender and the reversal of fortunes was taken out of the equation.
Totally agree. When was the last time a GT contender had a bad day? Do we have to go back to Zulle - Giro in 1999 or do we count Contador's 2 minute loss last year as a bad day at the office?

When you read Bassons 'carreer' it is sickening to the bone. Just like Gilles Delion. Still grazie a the alchemists :mad:

Critérium du Dauphiné 1999
1. Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz) Casino 30.25.19
45. Christophe Bassons (Fra) La Française des Jeux at 40.09
46. David Moncoutie (Fra) Cofidis at 42.42
 

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