I enjoyed that.
Samhocking - just look at the evidence regarding the convicted dopers at two levels. Firstly look at the factual number of positives. As stated it is an IQ test and an IQ test easily defeated with shared knowledge. Vast quantities of testing conducted to catch who ? The big busts have not come not from any testing but from the civil authorities acting outside the sporting arena.
Then look at the dopers. Let's start with the convicted dopers.
Basso, Lance, Tyler, Landis. Virenque is a great one for me right now because I see I still have in my pile of paper cuttings and magazines (that is a tribute to the morons who masquerade as cycling journalists), the Cycling Weekly tribute to him as the greatest ever climber of all time. Page after page of the stuff , all printed many years after Festina. In the 1998 Tour he was pictured in tears, spouting his innocence and how wrong it was for Festina to be ejected from the Tour. Neil Stephens came across for Virenque and the rest of the team about as sincerely as his fellow compatriot Shane Sutton does in the media, backing up his story. Next year Virenque was banned from the Tour, but got the ban overturned using the UCI. He rode the Tour on bike painted in white with red dots and wrote a book in response to "Breaking the Chain", professing his innocence. (I wish I had a recording of Floyd on the BBC Radio 4 Today program professing his innocence.) Later of course it all went wrong and suddenly poor "victim" Virenque needed the support of his fans then, just like Millar for us Brits, the idiots that fell for his story the first time, would rather be taken for suckers all over again, than address their own stupidity in the face of outstanding evidence. So Virenque came back, rode "cleans" in the Lance era and won the balance of his 7 polka dot jerseys. I didn't see it but I understand that now he is doing punditry on the TV.
Now look at the evidence of the non-convicted dopers. Let's keep it away from Wiggo or Froome but with Radcliffe. There is not much doubt it is her name on that small list of "red" category athletes that was put in the lap of the IAAF. If that domino tumbles, it follows that it is her legal team that is acting "super aggressively" and has achieved a lock-down that Ryan Giggs and the MUFC media machine was not able to match. Look at the facts. A whole shed load of convicted, epo fueled African distance runners have not run as fast as "white men can't run" "cleans" Paula did after she found "rounder wheels" and "better pillows" to go from loser to winner. Go back on her twitter feed. I have a screen print of her tweet as the Russian doping story started on German TV saying it "made her sick". Sorry darling, not half as sick as it made you feel before you called your legal attack dogs into action as people began to work out that it was not the obvious face in the frame - Christine O. Radcliffe is not going down because too many people in too many high places have invested so much of themselves in the fantasy. Will Radcillfe defender Oldcrank post up here his change of heart ? Not a chance - it will be "never convicted blah blah blah only gossip blah blah blah" Yeah sure thing - let's keep that Flo-Jo record in the books, it looks so good.
British Cycling have cynically followed the same path. All those knighthoods and awards, not just for the riders but the likes of Keen, Sutton, King as well as Cookson and Brailsford. Keen is there right at the heart of the UK Sport WCPP programs. He had gone once but they brought him back. How dull was that ? Couldn't they work out Boardman ? Or was it the fanboys chose not to engage their brains? If the Boardman domino were to tumble, the Keen domino is linked to it with a taut bit of string. The block of establishment figures that is invested in the Sky myth is enormous.
Then consider downstream from the low grade IQ test, is the process around the tiny bit of evidence that the tests reveal, treated appropriately ? Let's not look back in time, let's go with something entirely in the Cookson "transparent UCI" era. The Tonkov story was making the rounds over 12 months before it crept out. Go on, tell me the way Cookson and his staff handled that was anything other than wholly unsatisfactory.
More importantly, make a case for Cookson's actions after it was put to him that updating a remote PDF, without any notice, was not the way a sport should act when, after a year's speculation and innuendo, the winner of the 2nd most prestigious races in its firmament is finally announced as disqualified for PED infractions. When that was put to him, Cookson acted exactly like Virenque , Stephens, Floyd and Tyler - it isn't me guv - I have done nothing wrong ! Excuse blah blah blah, clutch at straw blah blah blah, look over there blah blah blah.
Samhocking, if you look at what Sky invest in the technology and support for the riders, it requires no significant step to imagine that the riders and team management will invest more than enough to defeat doping controls. Look who is around them. I used Stephens at the top because, again, this will take us away from BC/Sky and see that the same confidence trick is present in Australian sport as it is in Brit, American or Russian sport. Stephens is at the heart of Orica Green edge. The guy told us it straight as only an Aussie can. He was clean as a whistle at Festina, had never seen a PED, none of his team-mates had.
Back to Sky, I have the cutting from 2012 as the USADA files started to be made public "DS Yates steps down on health grounds". Poor guy, he had heart problems. When it was put to them that Yates' departure was related to Lance revelations, Sky denied it - purely health grounds. Oh and in case memory is weak, Cookson was, at that time and had been since inception, on the tiny board of directors of Team Sky and therefore entirely responsible for its commercial and employment matters. It is the season for religion - so glad Yates was "touched" and via a miracle is recovered so he is back as DS for Saxo. It is inconceivable that Sir David and Sutton OBE did not know the track records when they hired that bunch - a long-term team-mate of Lance f f s - hired in 2010. And people actually believe Cookson is the right man for the job ?
Am I saddened, of course I am. But just how good is the internet ? So many have their odd little bit of information. So many eyes and ears out there. On its own, each element is virtually worthless. Together it is entirely different. Cookson is already finding the seat a whole lot hotter than Hein or Pat before him. The landscape is shifting.