Guilty until proven innocent

[Alpe d'Huez]

Love the Rasputin reference, that was amusing.

Surprised no one commented on the video that turned up of Rasmussen training when he was in "Mexico". Here it is.

Seriously, this is a sport, with a set of rules. It's not a court of law. The whole innocent/guilty thing doesn't apply in the same way. Ras was guilty of violating the sporting rules, simple as that.

 

[unsheath]

That's what I was thinking when I read this junk. 'Stealth' probably means I'll create an account in October and won't use it until well after I've been banned for the 10th time.

which means he's probably got another 20 user-names up his sleeve.

 

[icefire]

Seriously, this is a sport, with a set of rules. It's not a court of law. The whole innocent/guilty thing doesn't apply in the same way. Ras was guilty of violating the sporting rules, simple as that.

Not sure what you mean in your first sentences. Sport has its rules and the innocent/guilty must be applied according to them as it is done in a court of law. Otherwise sport rules become arbitrary rules, which equals no rules.

Sport rules say that lying on your whereabouts or missing doping tests makes you guilty, so Ras was guilty.

 

[Escarabajo]

...

Surprised no one commented on the video that turned up of Rasmussen training when he was in "Mexico". Here it is.

...

I loved it. LOL. Thanks Alpe for the good laugh.

 

[al_pacino]

i think he failed to go to 3 in a row a la ohurughou (spelling?), and everyone was like, oh hes busy all the time, honest mistake... ha. yeah

(sry for d-post)

No, that was ages before that was being used.

 

[fatterboy]

NOt quite true.

Ullrich tested positive for amphetamines in 2002 and was suspended for six months.

He has never been banned for Operacion Puerto. He was suspended and released by his team, and retired, but he has never been officially sanctioned, although the Swiss cycling federation claims to be still working on an investigation.

Susan

I stand corrected the positive test was after a night at the disco and he wasnt racing at the time ,think he smashed his car up too.
and I think there was some sort of band after puerto ,he was going to help some team out with technical advice but it was stoped by the swiss federation .please correct me if Im wrong I may be mistaken it maybe another rider.It was a while ago

 

[Susan Westemeyer]

I stand corrected the positive test was after a night at the disco and he wasnt racing at the time ,think he smashed his car up too.
and I think there was some sort of band after puerto ,he was going to help some team out with technical advice but it was stoped by the swiss federation .please correct me if Im wrong I may be mistaken it maybe another rider.It was a while ago

The car crash and the disco pill-popping were two entirely different episodes. If I recall correctly, the car crash was on May 1, and the disco episode was in June.

After Ullrich retired, Team Volksbank said it would hire him as a consultant, but it never happened. No reason was ever given, and since Volksbank is an Austrian team, it seems unlikely the Swiss had anything to do with it.

Susan

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Not sure what you mean in your first sentences. Sport has its rules and the innocent/guilty must be applied according to them as it is done in a court of law. Otherwise sport rules become arbitrary rules, which equals no rules.

Sport rules say that lying on your whereabouts or missing doping tests makes you guilty, so Ras was guilty.

You and I are in agreement. What I am stating is that people use the "innocent/guilty" theory as an application to state that because someone hasn't been convicted of breaking the law, or hasn't been convicted of cheating, to keep them from racing is somehow un-American or something.

The fact is, the rules stated Rasmussen needed to tell the truth about his whereabouts, and he failed to do so, more than once. He broke those rules, and was punished accordingly. It matters not whether he failed a doping test, as that is a different rule from the one he broke.