VinoKourov and Kolobnev charged with corruption

[saganftw]

you could probably charge vino for god knows what - with his connections in government he has done some criminal stuff i bet,plus doping...

but really for this? al capone much?

 

[Miburo]

Re:

Vino will probably pay off the jury and get off. Kolobnev might go down though, he has to have spent that money by now.

Not a jury in belgium unless in a very short amount of cases where you usually have to kill someone to be trialed by a jury.

 

[Rollthedice]

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Wow just watched the finish video... Really who could tell ? Kolobnev looks cooked....
If they get done for it, give the man an Oscar atleast !

On the other hand Uran looking the opposite way while Vino sprinted for the Olympic gold deserves an Oscar for the best comedy.

 

[Afrank]

Re: Re:

I'm in no way a vino hater, as a rider I like his style and approach to races very much. At the same time though I feel there should be reparation in some form.

Reparations? To whom? After all, Vino allegedly followed through and paid Kolobnev what they agreed on. Who's the victim here? The State? Surely not...

Just because this may be something that is widely done in cycling does not make it acceptable. It is still against the rules, and when exposed it should be punished in accordance to the rules.

Ahhh, so you object to the fact that they "got caught" buying/selling a race by virtue of being exposed by nefarious and corrupt journalists who themselves likely committed crimes by hacking the original emails...

I'm not entirely sure what the appropriate reparations should be. Perhaps the placing of each should be void.

What I object to, is the act of buying a victory. I don't care how common it might be, it's against the rules. The means by which that the emails were obtained is another topic entirely. I won't comment on that as I have no clue how they were obtained.

 

[jsem94]

Re: Re:

Wow just watched the finish video... Really who could tell ? Kolobnev looks cooked....
If they get done for it, give the man an Oscar atleast !

It could have been a straight finish - just that the winner pays the loser an agreed sum, in other words an insurance bet. I don't know how much a monument is worth. The prize money is about 20,000E I think but I suppose much more in terms of contract/endorsements etc

This was my first thought too. But the way Kolobnev just got owned in the finale there, maybe Vino just actually paid him off. I don't know though. Uran, similar case, even worse actually.

 

[Afrank]

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I'd be pretty irritated if I was Belgian and my country was spending a bunch of money to prosecute cyclists for doing something that has been done a lot through the years...

An absolute waste of time, energy and money. To be fair, the US spends billions of $ prosecuting people for stupid charges every year. It's shameful.

A halfway decent hack of an attorney should be able to handle this case without breaking a sweat.

I agree. Surly people have better things to do than waste shed loads of money on the outcome of a two horse race.
There is all kinds of stuff going on and nobody cares anyway apart from Vino haters who want him hung for just doing what everyone else does in cycling , dope and deals between teams.

Its a sport nothing else. It has no effect on the outcome of real world issues and should be treated that way.
In real terms it means nothing. If you get upset so much by sport that you want to see athletes go to prison because they won a race unfairly then perhaps a quick look at what's going on in the world might put things in proportion.
I hope this gets dropped and they live happy ever after. If that statement makes some of you angry I don't care at least it does not make me a hypocrite.

I'm in no way a vino hater, as a rider I like his style and approach to races very much. At the same time though I feel there should be reparation in some form.

Just because this may be something that is widely done in cycling does not make it acceptable. It is still against the rules, and when exposed it should be punished in accordance to the rules.

The way I see it. is like this. They made a deal and they are both happy. One of them would have won anyway.
Its not the crime of the century under the circumstances. They have not cheated anyone else out of a win. If that's a crime, what about all the times in F1 When a driver is told to let a team mate win because it's beneficial to the team financially to have a world champion. Millions involved in that sport. That is a equal fraudulent act.
Talk of jail and the cost of prosecution costs etc the whole thing is just stupid. As usual the lawyers will be happy.

Fair enough. I agree it's not a huge crime in the grand scheme of things. I'd also agree that going to prison because of it seems like overkill.

At the same time I don't find it possible to for me to turn a blind eye to it or shrug it off as nothing. Just like doping, holding onto a car, or tampering with your opponents gear (I'm sure that's happened at some point in cycling); paying off your competitor I consider to be a form of cheating.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

Wow just watched the finish video... Really who could tell ? Kolobnev looks cooked....
If they get done for it, give the man an Oscar atleast !

It could have been a straight finish - just that the winner pays the loser an agreed sum, in other words an insurance bet. I don't know how much a monument is worth. The prize money is about 20,000E I think but I suppose much more in terms of contract/endorsements etc

This was my first thought too. But the way Kolobnev just got owned in the finale there, maybe Vino just actually paid him off. I don't know though. Uran, similar case, even worse actually.

Vino was the more proven classics rider out of the two and was in great form having just won Trentino (unless he bought those races too ) so it was no real surprise when he beat Kolobnev

 

[orangerider]

Put Vino away, sick of seeing his smug face at the line when the team wins through clearly questionable methods.

 

[dazza]

I agree we don't need Vino in cycling at all and the sooner he departs and leaves the sooner the cycling profession can move forward. (Try to anyway)
This whole situation reeks of fraud just like the situation with Armstrong winning the Million Dollars and paying out to the other team if they let him win.
The race was fixed and that serves an injustice not only to the race but to anyone else who was trying to compete.
It does not do the sport of cycling any credit when this sort of thing happens, we seem to be always in repair mode for the mistakes that where done in the past and these guys have no respect for the sport at all other wise they wouldn't have done it and YES it is all about the money but the damage that is done cost much more in the end.

 

[memyselfandI]

Wonder how this case takes so long to solve. Five years? Should get done in 1-2 yrs or forget it..

 

[Bolder]

Yes, this thing does probably happen a lot, but the point is, it's still fraud. Sponsors etc. pay a lot to put on a race that for spectators should be a competitive event.

Think of it this way -- if you paid 50 euros for a prime ticket to see a big football match, and it turned out the result was rigged ahead of time -- or sometime during the game -- against your team, would you feel that you'd gotten your money's worth? If evidence then turned up that appeared to prove this sequence of events, wouldn't you want someone to prosecute.

Who in the world sends emails about this sort of thing anyway?

 

[TourOfSardinia]

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waste of tax money. they should learn cycling history, it's part of the game.

This.

 

[MatParker117]

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waste of tax money. they should learn cycling history, it's part of the game.

This.

Still doesn't make it legal

 

[Scarponi]

Correct me if I'm wrong and I know he still did something wrong but I'm sure kolobnov would have been pressured into it by a big time rider like vino especially with the way cycling can work aka the lance peleton stuff. If he says no does bad things happen to him?

 

[The Hitch]

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Think of it this way -- if you paid 50 euros for a prime ticket to see a big football match, and it turned out the result was rigged ahead of time -- or sometime during the game -- against your team, would you feel that you'd gotten your money's worth? If evidence then turned up that appeared to prove this sequence of events, wouldn't you want someone to prosecute.

Honestly, to me it would not be a big deal. Maybe I just take sport far less seriously than others and don't have some higher expectation of humans to behave nobly (which they don't). If you buy a ticket for a football match for a few squid and the match occurs, you got what you paid for. Its just a game. And like with any other form of entertainment if you didn't like it, the thing to do is not watch next time.

To me match fixing always seemed like by far the lightest of all the scandals that come up in sport. The same news companies which basically ignore massacres and wars in several third world countries trying to make it sound super important that a sport result, god forbid, was fabricated. Of all the *** these criminal gangs do, well, I'm glad they found a way that doesn't hurt anyone.

I don't expect sport to be full of honour. At least with match fixing no one is being forced to do anything, no one's talent is being pushed down, it doesn't stop people from being able to use their skills to make their way in the world.

I think people don't like match fixing scandals because they betray sport for what it is - a business. A dirty business which people enter to make money pure and simple.
The media don't like it because they want people to view sport as a utopinaistic lala land where everyone fights for traditional heroic concepts like "team" "country" "respect" "pride" using noble traits like "hard work" "determination" "competitiveness" "ambition" "fighting through pain". The fans don't like it because they want to believe the myth and feel good about how nice and rosy the world can be. Sport is an escape from reality and no one wants it tainted by, reality.

What really mellows the whole Vino Kolobnev thing in my eyes in particular and I don't get the outrage, is, unless I am missing something, Vino and Kolbnev did not cheat anyone out of their placing. They got to the 1-2 place themselves. They made a deal and both were happy with it. Who is the victim? If they use a motor then people like Valverde or Gilbert might argue they got cheated out of the place. Likewise if they stage a crash or any other method that involves giving themselves an advantage over others that aren't in on the deal.
But here they didn't do that. The only people the deal had an impact on were the people that made it.

The only person I'd go after is Vino for iirc not keeping his word and paying Kolobnev.

 

[The Hitch]

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waste of tax money. they should learn cycling history, it's part of the game.

This.

Still doesn't make it legal

You mean legal by the laws of the UCI?

Well the UCI, in case you missed it, is an ultra corrupt organization which half the time shows 0 interest in enforcing its own rules and actively supports those who break it. Thereby making itself illegitimate as far as I'm concerned and as far as several riders are no doubt concerned.

At this point, one should judge what is right or wrong by one's own moral code and not what some fatcats at the UCI say.

 

[MatParker117]

Re: Re:

waste of tax money. they should learn cycling history, it's part of the game.

This.

Still doesn't make it legal

You mean legal by the laws of the UCI?

Well the UCI, in case you missed it, is an ultra corrupt organization which half the time shows 0 interest in enforcing its own rules and actively supports those who break it. Thereby making itself illegitimate as far as I'm concerned and as far as several riders are no doubt concerned.

At this point, one should judge what is right or wrong by one's own moral code and not what some fatcats at the UCI say.

No I meant legal according to criminal law if a rider sells a race to a fellow competitor for monetary gain then that is corruption and fraud. Particularly here in the Uk if anyone bet on that rider.

 

[B_Ugli]

Re: Re:

waste of tax money. they should learn cycling history, it's part of the game.

This.

Still doesn't make it legal

You mean legal by the laws of the UCI?

Well the UCI, in case you missed it, is an ultra corrupt organization which half the time shows 0 interest in enforcing its own rules and actively supports those who break it. Thereby making itself illegitimate as far as I'm concerned and as far as several riders are no doubt concerned.

At this point, one should judge what is right or wrong by one's own moral code and not what some fatcats at the UCI say.

No I meant legal according to criminal law if a rider sells a race to a fellow competitor for monetary gain then that is corruption and fraud. Particularly here in the Uk if anyone bet on that rider.

The whole thing is crazy and ironic on so many levels for a number of reasons:

1. Races are routinely bought and sold in Belgium on a regular basis (in fact some say that most races on the 6 day circuit are fixed)
2. Belgium is part of the EU the financial administration of which is questionable to say the least
3. Switzerland (the country in which it was reported) harbours some of the most corrupt sporting organisations on the planet including the UCI
4. Kolobnev and Vino moaning about rights? If they were in one of the former Soviet states they would have been tried without rights and thrown in jail, if not bribed their way out.

 

[glassmoon]

hope the case will prove strong and they'll be found guilty.
hope they are not the last ones.

 

[Billie]

Re: Re:

waste of tax money. they should learn cycling history, it's part of the game.

This.

Still doesn't make it legal

You mean legal by the laws of the UCI?

Well the UCI, in case you missed it, is an ultra corrupt organization which half the time shows 0 interest in enforcing its own rules and actively supports those who break it. Thereby making itself illegitimate as far as I'm concerned and as far as several riders are no doubt concerned.

At this point, one should judge what is right or wrong by one's own moral code and not what some fatcats at the UCI say.

No I meant legal according to criminal law if a rider sells a race to a fellow competitor for monetary gain then that is corruption and fraud. Particularly here in the Uk if anyone bet on that rider.

races are not sold. 2 guys in a break make a deal where the winner pays the other rider.

 

[hrotha]

I'm not convinced that's actually what happened here, or Kolobnev wouldn't have had any reason to tell Vino that he'd only done it because it was him.

 

[phanatic]

Re: Re:

Honestly, to me it would not be a big deal. [...] I'm glad they found a way that doesn't hurt anyone. [...]I don't expect sport to be full of honour.[...] The media don't like it because they want people to view sport as a utopinaistic lala land

I thought honor was the whole point of sport, and what distinguishes it from war and commerce, muddied as they are by the necessities of life. Sport is the pursuit of excellence for its own sake. Far from being a Utopian ideal, it is the purest expression of a Platonic Idea to be found in the world, an angelic act, as immediate as music and architecture.

As for nobody being hurt, all I could think of was Brando: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwlqKiCpQ9Y

 

[the delgados]

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I'm not convinced that's actually what happened here, or Kolobnev wouldn't have had any reason to tell Vino that he'd only done it because it was him.

That was totally creepy. Adds such a godfather element to the whole story.

 

[Teddy Boom]

Re: Re:

No I meant legal according to criminal law if a rider sells a race to a fellow competitor for monetary gain then that is corruption and fraud. Particularly here in the Uk if anyone bet on that rider.

This isn't a fair way of looking at what happened, I don't think. They both knew, and we know, that Kolobnev never stood a chance 1v1 at the end. Meanwhile, Vino needed help to get to the finish, or the bunch might catch up. Kolobnev didn't have much motivation to work his ass off, so Vino motivated him.

Since the money was more about Vino paying Kolobnev to work for him, this is more like Richie Porte taking a compatriot's wheel than match fixing. The whole thing gets muddied because Vino and Kolobnev don't put it that way in their communications. I suspect that's because they are respecting each other as riders.

 

[doperhopper]

How about taxes? Paid?