The Lowe Down on Vaughters (aka Knight of the Ethical Objectivity round table)

[Not Riding Enough]

There are a few things which have me confused on White.......

I still think there is something odd about JV flying to Aus to sack White without talking to him first.

If my memory serves, at that time JV had not yet admitted to seeing the Del Moral name on the paper work that was cc'd to him many months before.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

Maybe this has been mentioned before but I am sure the Aussie riders *****ing has more to do with Matt White being sacked than it has anything to do with Thor not going to the Vuelta. Probably just trying to put the boot into JV now.

Maybe they should be complaining about Trent Lowe then. If he had not tried to blackmail Garmin then Vaughters would not have been forced to release White.

 

[Runitout]

Edit - Response to deleted idiotic post alleging blackmail.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

What are you talking about? JV was the one who went public, and if Andy Shen is right, it wasn't because of anything Lowe said, but Kimmage.

Lowe conveniently left out the part where he and his advisor threatened to go public if he was not paid, putting Vaughters in a position where if he paid Lowe then it would look like he was buying Lowe's silence. It also put Vaughters in a position where he needed release the information before Lowe had a chance to use it to damage the team.

Three days before Slipstream issued a press release about Lowe seeing an unauthorized doctor, his advisor sent the following email:

I am trying to be open and honest with you.
I am also trying to keep Trent from blowing his lid and going public. I have made it ****ing clear as to when and how he will talk to you. Just tell me now if you will pay him or not and when. If not I will let him do what he likes and you can deal with that without me helping. It is really quite ****ing simple. I don’t know why you are being such a scrooge about paying him.

The word filter starred out the f-bombs. The threat is clear. Pay or we will go to the press and damage your team. Vaughters was left with no option other than getting ahead of the power curve by releasing the team's side of the story first.

 

[Runitout]

Edit - Response to deleted idiotic post alleging blackmail.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

Again - what are you talking about? - that letter was sent AFTER White had been sacked and Garmin/Slipstream released a press release. Vaughters went public before any letter. Vaughters wasn't responding, he was setting the agenda.

There is no threat. He promised in the correspondence to meet with Vaughters' lawyers the next week. Instead of meeting, JV sacks White without even speaking to Lowe. I can't see how you can blame Lowe for that. Particularly if what Andy Shen says is true, and he did it because he didn't want to upset Kimmage.

That email was sent on January 20th. Slipstream released information that Matt White had been sacked on January 23rd. That information was in the form of a press release and a Vaughers interview with Bicycling magazine.

There certainly was a threat. Pay or deal with Trent going public. Well it was that plus the f-bombs. Martin Hardie also refused to let Slipstream talk to Lowe, so JV could not speak to Lowe before sacking White.

 

[Runitout]

Edit - Response to deleted idiotic post alleging blackmail.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

50) By email dated 20 January 2011, Mr Hardie advised Mr Vaughters, so far as relevant, as follows:

I am trying to be open and honest with you.
I am also trying to keep Trent from blowing his lid and going public. I have made it ****ing clear as to when and how he will talk to you. Just tell me now if you will pay him or not and when. If not I will let him do what he likes and you can deal with that without me helping. It is really quite ****ing simple. I don’t know why you are being such a scrooge about paying him.

54) On 23 January 2011, in a press release, Slipstream Sports said, publicly, as follows:

It has just come to the attention of Slipstream Sports’ board of doctors that in April 2009, Mr White referred former rider, Trent Lowe, to Sports Institute of Valencia to Dr Luis Garcia Del Moral
Slipstream Sports has an explicit internal policy that all medical referrals are approved by our medical staff. In this instance, this vital rule was broken, as a result, the board of Directors has dismissed Matt White.
We want to make it clear that we are parting ways for one reason and one reason only, because this vital rule was broken.

Game. Set. Match. Hoisted on your own petard.

 

[Runitout]

[Edit - Response to deleted idiotic post alleging blackmail.

 

[Nearly]

Lowe conveniently left out the part where he and his advisor threatened to go public if he was not paid, putting Vaughters in a position where if he paid Lowe then it would look like he was buying Lowe's silence. It also put Vaughters in a position where he needed release the information before Lowe had a chance to use it to damage the team.

Three days before Slipstream issued a press release about Lowe seeing an unauthorized doctor, his advisor sent the following email:



The word filter starred out the f-bombs. The threat is clear. Pay or we will go to the press and damage your team. Vaughters was left with no option other than getting ahead of the power curve by releasing the team's side of the story first.

Well if wasn't Kimmage stirring trouble enough for Lowe, he certainly seems to have been badly advised (as that email alone strongly suggests). The Kimmage contact would have seemed orchestrated to JL especially given Hardie's anti doping campaign.

But Vaughters cannot have it both ways - he cannot be a penny pinching stickler on the detail of a contract term (the claimed breach of which hardly seemed of great consquence) -- yet ignore his and Steffen's own negligence in the face of advice from Lowe in relation to Del Moral, no matter how stupid the Lowe camp was in attempting to connect the two issues.

The fact that JV seems to have had Lowe "on ignore" for quite some time (for right or wrong) may well have seen him overreact when Lowe swung a leg over the wrong bike seems to have a parallel in the Hushovd/Vuelta decision - that is a tendency to dissemble on his reason for taking tough action. He has said that the omission of Hushovd was unrelated to the announcement of his decision to leave Garmin (as posted by ACF in this thread) when in fact most on here (and vocal parts of the peleton) seem to assume that must have been at least a major factor in the decision.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

Nice try.

The first time Lowe mentions going public regarding White is 24 January*, AFTER Vaughters sacked him. Before that, it's al about suing for his wages.

Are you completely incapable of reading the January 20th email from Hardie or are you too thick to understand the threat that made? Hardie was Lowe's advisor and was acting as his negotiator. When he told Slipstream that Lowe would go public if he was not paid, that threat is the same as Lowe making it himself.

Bringing along Hardie to handle a contract dispute is like bringing along General Custer to handle a little indian trouble.

 

[Runitout]

[Edit - Response to deleted idiotic post alleging blackmail.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

If you read it, you will see his is threatening to go public about his pay dispute. He is threatening to sue for his wages.

No. The previous correspondence clearly brings up every issue that Hardie could think of to use as leverage. This included Doctor Del Moral as well as wild allegations that Garmin damaged Lowe's health. No where in the January 20th email does Hardie say that Lowe going public will be restricted to the pay dispute. In fact the previous communication clearly says that if the pay dispute cannot be resolved then they will bring in other issues.

I can't see how threatening to sue for 15k has the merest thing to do with White's sacking.

It has everything to do with it. Lowe put Vaughters in a position where Vaughters had to do damage control for the Del Moral visit. Vaughters cannot tell the world that White sent Lowe to Del Moral and Vaughters is okay with that. Vaughters needed to publicly take stern action. Now maybe Lowe and Hardie thought that Vaughters would just give White a few demerit points or something. Maybe they thought the threat of going public would force Vaughters to pay, and they had no intention of ever talking to the press. But they had to know that they were playing with fire. They had to know that if this went public then it would create an uncomfortable situation for White. Now Lowe is playing dumb, acting like he has no idea why White was sacked when he and his advisor used the issue that led to White's dismissal as leverage to force Vaughters to pay.

The absurd thnig about this is that Lowe says that nothing happened at Del Moral's clinic. He was threatening Vaughters with an unloaded gun. "Pay me or I will tell the world that nothing happend." His threat was smoke, and he knew that there was no fire.

 

[Maxiton]

The absurd thnig about this is that Lowe says that nothing happened at Del Moral's clinic. He was threatening Vaughters with an unloaded gun. "Pay me or I will tell the world that nothing happend." His threat was smoke, and he knew that there was no fire.

I'm following with interest the argument you guys are having, but let me just ask tangentially: don't you think this is just damage control by Lowe? I mean, why go to the Del Moral clinic if nothing happened there? If it was just training plans, couldn't Lowe have gotten those from Frank Schleck's gynecologist?

 

[Runitout]

Edit - Response to deleted idiotic post alleging blackmail.

 

[gregod]

oh sh!t. my bad. i thought i was posting in the twitter war thread.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

I have no idea how you got that. They are clearly talking about the pay dispute only, made even clearer by the subsequent correspondence from Hardie where he asks JV to stop talking about it. He's saying, 'forget the other stuff for the moment - let's pay Lowe'.

After it blew up in their faces they were scrambling to limit the damage to Lowe. That has nothing to do with the game of brinkmanship they were playing before. It appears that they did not think that Vaughters had the cojones to go to the press and talk about the mistake with Doctor Del Moral.

This thread has gone way off target, so this is my last post on the topic - but you accusing Lowe of blackmail based on the above documents seems absurd to me. Threatening to sue is not blackmail. And threatening to sue for 15k, which is what he did until JV went public, simply is not an invitation to go public regarding the del Moral affair and sack White.

They asked for the absurd figure of half a million euros minimum. They never threatend to sue just for 15K. They demanded 15K plus bonuses and threatened to add dubious issues about health and such if they sued. What the heck was Vaughters supposed to think when they threatened him with causing a public stink if he did not pay? It is interesting that Slipstream's legal counsel repeatedly asked Hardie to give him an acceptable figure less than 15K. Hardie repeatedly refused.

If the aussies are up in arms about White being released then they should have the balls to say so instead of using the Thor situation as a way to attack Vaughters. O'Grady, who was kicked out of the Vuelta when he went on a late night mid-race bender with Andy Schleck, has no credibility when it comes to criticizing a team for giving a Vuelta spot to riders leaving a team.

 

[Runitout]

That's funny. All of of Damiano Machiavelli's posts on the topic were deleted, including his most recent one where he says exactly how much Lowe was asking for, which I've never seen published anywhere...

Is that you, Jonathan?

 

[woodie]

Man it's annoying when all the posts are deleted.

Whats wrong Damiano?

 

[Martin318is]

Damiano removed his posts from this thread because he didnt agree with them being pulled here from where he wrote them in the Vaughters Twitter thread. http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=14927&page=5

Thats all.

Lets cease discussing that on this thread and let it stay OT please.

 

[unsheath]

New Cycling Pathways Seminar, Trent Lowe

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/user/auskadi#p/u/7/VQNgyPHEr5o

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/user/auskadi#p/u/6/3mxRHwBB5Uk

As expected, no explanation of White/Vaughters/Del Moral saga. Otherwise a well spoken put together speech

 

[Nick777]

Have not seen this posted yet. Looks like Vaughters has a whole new reason to come back and only tell "part" of the story.

http://www.newcyclingpathway.com/news/blog/transperancy-international

JV, we miss you down here in the cellar! Come visit us so we can chat about all this...

Where has Colm.Murphy gone? He was a good poster.

 

[auscyclefan94]

It seems that Trent wants to be open about things and he hints about certain things yet he also doesn't want to outrightly name people who he thought were doping or who were heavy drinkers as a result of doping.


EDIT: It seems to me that Hardie is using his New Cycling Pathway organisations as a medium to gain support for his and Loew's case with Vaughters. I have an issue with that when the site is suppose to be about making the sport better and not about gaining support for his court case and for his own personal needs.

 

[DirtyWorks]

It seems that Trent wants to be open about things and he hints about certain things yet he also doesn't want to outrightly name people who he thought were doping or who were heavy drinkers as a result of doping.


EDIT: It seems to me that Hardie is using his New Cycling Pathway organisations as a medium to gain support for his and Loew's case with Vaughters. I have an issue with that when the site is suppose to be about making the sport better and not about gaining support for his court case and for his own personal needs.

New Pathways advocates a rider is not wrong. You need to consider the simple fact there's no policy giving the rider some kind of equal footing in this kind of situation. It goes much further than just JV's team too. The reductionist reply is something like, "Two wrongs don't make a right." True, but this is business/money/people where two wrong really do make a right.

All organizations have biases. This may be New Pathway's bias.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

New Cycling Pathways Seminar, Trent Lowe

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/user/auskadi#p/u/7/VQNgyPHEr5o

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/user/auskadi#p/u/6/3mxRHwBB5Uk

As expected, no explanation of White/Vaughters/Del Moral saga. Otherwise a well spoken put together speech

Nice , i know deakin university very well.