Omerta then vs. Omerta now

[sniper]

Back in his days of glory, LA definitely was the patron of the peloton in the broadest sense.

Considering how he handled Bassons and Simeoni, one of his aims/tasks seems to have been upholding, safeguarding and consolidating the Omerta.

Since he's gone, I wonder, who is/are really in charge of the peloton, and, particularly, who see(s) to it that the riders respect and honor the Omerta?

#An example: If the young and talented Roche decides to openly criticize Contador, who or what does he have to be afraid of? What consequences could he be facing?
Who will drive up to him in the peloton to tell him to shut up or else..?

 

[roundabout]

Wiggins

On a more serious note, Pozzato is still riding

 

[Sanitiser]

Cancellara on behalf of Andy.

 

[BotanyBay]

Back in his days of glory, LA definitely was the patron of the peloton in the broadest sense.

Considering how he handled Bassons and Simeoni, one of his aims/tasks seems to have been upholding, safeguarding and consolidating the Omerta.

Since he's gone, I wonder, who is/are really in charge of the peloton, and, particularly, who see(s) to it that the riders respect and honor the Omerta?

#An example: If the young and talented Roche decides to openly criticize Contador, who or what does he have to be afraid of? What consequences could he be facing?
Who will drive up to him in the peloton to tell him to shut up or else..?

Pre-merta: "We're all clean, mostly clean, few bad apples, etc"

Post-merta: "Don't talk about fight club."

No one will drive-up and tell him anything. He'll just have fewer future opportunities. Omerta team directors will treat him like he does not exist. And anything that goes wrong with HIS future tests will not be given the benefit of doubt by the UCI. Because he talked about Fight Club.

And there isn't always a "Boss". Only a jerk takes (or thugs-into) that job. And it doesn't mean there always needs to be one.

 

[Benotti69]

Back in his days of glory, LA definitely was the patron of the peloton in the broadest sense.

Considering how he handled Bassons and Simeoni, one of his aims/tasks seems to have been upholding, safeguarding and consolidating the Omerta.

Since he's gone, I wonder, who is/are really in charge of the peloton, and, particularly, who see(s) to it that the riders respect and honor the Omerta?

#An example: If the young and talented Roche decides to openly criticize Contador, who or what does he have to be afraid of? What consequences could he be facing?
Who will drive up to him in the peloton to tell him to shut up or else..?

Popovych if he is allowed to race this year

no one.

LA got to be the patron because everyone knew he was part of the mafia, ie the UCI, so if you went against uniballer you were going against the UCI.

anyone who rode the same tour as Bassons and Simeoni should hold their heads in shame.

 

[Fester]

The boss? Probably Cancelara since he was the (one) that began that protest about the "danger" of the course in that early stage of the tour last year.

In terms of the omerta one key difference seems to that people have replaced humility and denial with arrogance and hypocrisy.

 

[B_Ugli]

I didn't want to start a new topic but I thought this one courtesy of Sniper was worth re-visiting for discussion, since the Froome story has broken recently and also since the whole Wiggins jiffygate in the past year.

Like Fester suggested above in 2011 at that time Omerta seemed morph into operating with arrogance and hypocrisy.

Has it evolved since then? The fact that Sky are putting it on the rider as opposed to the team with Froome suggests not - if you get caught its on you.

But what of the actual dynamic at play in the cycling fraternity many of whom have remained quiet save for a handful of riders, doctors and the MPCC?

Take Astana & Katusha for example once the pariahs of the cycling teams whose riders and former riders are criticizing Froome publicly (Martin, Nibali). Are they really breaking the Omerta or just hypocrites themselves? Martin mentioning Kittel (the transfusing teen) as a reference point certainly looks to be tenous at best. And what of the Mark Cavendish, the poster boy of Pat McQuaid's Blood Passport in 2008 who was so outspoken on all things doping?

And what of the press? Walsh seems to have hit is bump in the road with Froome but in terms of other journos asking the difficult questions? Certainly Lance Armstrong's method was intimidation and manipulation, but is Sky's M/O any different at this point?

I know a lot of these things have their own thread but I was interested to see what others thought insofar as the context of the evolution of Omerta is concerned - is it simply a case of same old same old?

 

[DanielSong39]

Nibali is showing everyone how Omerta is done. Other cyclists should learn from the master.

Charisma and style is a big part of doing this properly. I can see guys like Quintana or Aru carrying on the tradition. Maybe Sagan. Dumoulin, not as much.

 

[Rollthedice]

Re:

Nibali is showing everyone how Omerta is done. Other cyclists should learn from the master.

Charisma and style is a big part of doing this properly. I can see guys like Quintana or Aru carrying on the tradition. Maybe Sagan. Dumoulin, not as much.

After all, the word was virtually invented in Sicily.

 

[Red Rick]

Re:

Nibali is showing everyone how Omerta is done. Other cyclists should learn from the master.

Charisma and style is a big part of doing this properly. I can see guys like Quintana or Aru carrying on the tradition. Maybe Sagan. Dumoulin, not as much.

The Dutch will go through a few years of "We're finally winning, so cycling must be cleanz" first, though a few of the journo's are somewhat critical enough to ask questions

 

[DanielSong39]

Based on the few interviews Dumoulin has done he just doesn't have the delivery.

 

[TrackCynic]

The silence from the peloton is deafening. Same as it always was.

 

[buckle]

Re:

Nibali is showing everyone how Omerta is done. Other cyclists should learn from the master.

Charisma and style is a big part of doing this properly. I can see guys like Quintana or Aru carrying on the tradition. Maybe Sagan. Dumoulin, not as much.

I found some interviews in Spanish with Quintana and he said absolutely nothing.

 

[Aragon]

This is how Tyler Hamilton describes the Omertà in his book The Secret Race:

It's funny - you ofter hear about cycling's omertà, which is real enough. But when you're inside, it's positively chatty. Riders are constantly talking, whispering, comparing notes. The rewards were too big, the punishments too mild, so the hunt for the next magical product was too tempting. The peloton was Facebook on wheels - and during this period, information was flying.

So everything was well-known within the Peloton, but the information didn't leak out and practically everyone kept their mouth shut when communicating with "others". While this type culture could've been widespread until the end of the Armstrong-era, there were two reasons why the sport was different then:

1) Law agencies weren't mostly interested in investigating the doping issues at all and correspondigly the legal issues were minor and the risk of having to testify under oath (perjury?) about doping practices of other cyclists was negligible.

2) You actually had to test positive or have been found having PEDs in your possession in order to get any disciplinary measures directed against you. The tradition has slowly but definitely migrated towards accepting other evidence than AAFs as evidence of doping use.

My reading of the situation is that the secrecy is there but the open discussion is gone for good. I wouldn't be surprised if the use of doping methods of individual cyclists is kept secret even from their teammates.

It should be emphasized also that "silence" as such doen't mean neither that the "silence folks" know anything nor that there is anything to be silence about in the first place.

One example of faulty reading of the "silence" was when anti-doping activist Don Catlin visited the Netherlands to solve the mystery of the death cyclists which he and many other sincere people attributed to overdosing of rEPO. When he couldn't make their relatives to admit that the cyclists had taken rEPO, he just assumed that there was code of silence operating and started seeing secrecy everywhere. Maybe there was one, but I am not convinced myself.

It's like the video about the UFO-conspiracy guy getting hit by Buzz Aldrin, there is always a portion of population who find that as a proof that omertà operating within the astronauts.

https://youtu.be/vNw0q57eizc?t=1m25s