Big Mig - honest, dishonest?



Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> And it pains me to admit it, but Brian's not only right, he's probably
> been right about doping prevalence more often than most people in this
> group.


I'm sure many here didn't have any illusions either. Its just that if
everybodies doing it then the race is still mostly about who has the most
ability. And in Armstrong's case it was more the ability to be single
minded and focus everything on winning the TDF than just talent or
physical ability.
 
Dans le message de news:[email protected],
Dan Gregory <[email protected]> a réfléchi, et puis
a déclaré :
> Sandy wrote:
>> Dans le message de news:[email protected],
>> Dan Gregory <[email protected]> a réfléchi,
>> et puis a déclaré :
>>> Spotted **** asks will they give me back my nine months of
>>> suspension.. http://commentateursvelo.blogs.eurosport.fr/

>>
>> Won again. You're runner up.
>>
>>

> Mais j'ai fait mes cent bornes ce matin (avant la pluie)
> I rode 60 miles before it starts to rain ..
>
> :))


Et nous, seulement 85.
 
On May 26, 11:45 am, RonSonic <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Risible." From the Latin "ris" for laugh - the root word of ridicule and
> derision.


Thank you. I knew, as soon as I popped "send", I would be called into
account for leaving the hyphen out, between ision and able.

However, my intent in posting was not based on "laughter" but on
"laffer". Hidden protocols ("get me a positive reader"), personal
vendettas, bad rules, worse enforcement-- none of that is very funny.
Like having an apparent deep and real hatred for someone you've never
met; who, at worst, might only have been doing the same as everyone
else, if being more successful at it... because he saluted too
vigorously when he won some stupid bicycle race? (just guessing,
there) --D-y
 
On May 26, 11:43 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
wrote:
> On May 25, 11:36 pm, "Carl Sundquist" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > The situation that made Brian such a focal point of derision was not that he
> > was necessarily wrong, but that his zealousness was focused on one
> > individual to the degree of appearing of indifferent about doping throughout
> > the remainder of peloton.

>
> I believe Brian stated (and then quoted himself at least once) he was
> actually in favor of letting riders use whatever they wanted. Which
> made his personal hatred of someone he's never met personally even
> more derisionable IMHO.
>
> Well, some people just can't stand others' feeling good about
> themselves, you know? Such is life! --D-y


Actually that was one of the options Brian threw out there. I believe
his point was that, at least that way, we'd have an honest system
where everyone knew what was going on, what they were getting into,
and it would allow close medical supervision for practices that are
now underground.
Proabably better for and afer for riders than the current mess where
the majority feel the need to dope to compete, but are having to do it
themselves or with quacks.
Lot's of reasonable thoughts got lost in Brian's crusade against
Lance and everyone who has every even met him.
Bill C
 
On 26 May 2007 14:09:11 -0700, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On May 26, 11:45 am, RonSonic <[email protected]> wrote:
>> "Risible." From the Latin "ris" for laugh - the root word of ridicule and
>> derision.

>
>Thank you. I knew, as soon as I popped "send", I would be called into
>account for leaving the hyphen out, between ision and able.


Oh, it certainly was clear without a hyphen.

>However, my intent in posting was not based on "laughter" but on
>"laffer". Hidden protocols ("get me a positive reader"), personal
>vendettas, bad rules, worse enforcement-- none of that is very funny.
>Like having an apparent deep and real hatred for someone you've never
>met; who, at worst, might only have been doing the same as everyone
>else, if being more successful at it... because he saluted too
>vigorously when he won some stupid bicycle race? (just guessing,
>there) --D-y


Risible is good for that. While it just means laughable it doesn't mean funny as
much as that it should be laughed at as ridiculous and bordering on
contemptable. A sort of one snort laugh. You know like the guys who say you can
tell the dopers by either their super human consistency or by their super human
recovery from having a bad day.

Ron
 
On May 25, 7:02 pm, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
> "B. Lafferty" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I wonder how you would feel if you raced clean and lost Olympic Gold or the
> > Tour to a doper. I'd want justice and the medal.

>
> And it pains me to admit it, but Brian's not only right, he's probably
> been right about doping prevalence more often than most people in this
> group.
>
> About the worst thing you can say about WADA-world is that it's a
> McCarthyite witch hunt. Overzealous, willing to transgress the
> principles it claims to get to its targets. And like McCarthy, the
> witches it's hunting are mostly real.
>
> I can't remember who keeps quoting "it's possible to frame a guilty
> man," but all I think of a lot of the time is a quote by Kissinger:
> can't they both lose?
>
> My saving grace with the whole "justice and the medal" approach is that,
> however proper it would be, moving everyone up a rung is probably
> better-than-even odds of just promoting a different doper in a large
> number of these cases.


Dumbass,

I said "Even a guilty man can be framed." I'll take
credit for coining the phrase, unless of course I
unconsciously cribbed it from somewhere. If it makes
you happy, I originally said it about Alger Hiss, who
was almost certainly guilty but not proven beyond a
reasonable doubt until many years after the fact.
However, you're 98% wrong about Joe McCarthy, as most
of the people that McCarthy went after were not actually
spies, but guilty only of having belonged to a disfavored
political group - Army dentists, China experts, and the
like, many of whom hadn't even been CPUSA members.
This also goes for other people caught up in the Red
Scare, targeted by HUAC and every Podunk witch-hunter,
not just McCarthy.

Back to cycling, Brian is right for the wrong reasons,
in the way a stopped clock is right. It's always been a
damn good bet that there is plenty of doping going on
that we don't know about. Saying that some rider or team
is doping can't ever be proven wrong, and sometimes the
passage of time will prove you right. Kunich argues
that Brian is just wrong, which I think is naive. More
reasonable people argue that we may think there's doping
but we don't know it, and you can't usually prove it by
looking at race results and power outputs. (I'll make an
exception for farcical race results like the Gewiss-Ballan
3-man breakaway, or disappearing acts like Berzin; many
people accept those as evidence of doping.) Brian _knows_
certain people are on the hot sauce. The rest of us
don't know for sure, even if we expect it.

I think the open question is whether doping is still a
team-organized activity as it was in the pre-Festina days,
which the latest Telekom scandal is reminding us of.
Even if not, it's not clear that any amount of UCI, WADA,
public confessionals, and testing of riders will clean
up the sport while all the DSes, soigneurs, and doctors
are the same. The sponsors want no embarrassments, but
they also want results.

Sure, if I raced clean and lost a medal to someone I
knew was doping, I would want it myself. Who wouldn't?
But at the same time, 10 years later, I hope I wouldn't
still be obsessing over it and waiting for a press
conference confessional and my medal to come in the mail.
Longtime bitterness eats away and owns you.

My guess is that riders who race without doping have
made a choice and mostly accept that they may win fewer
races. In non-racing life, you could cheat on
your taxes, swindle people at business, or climb your
way to the top while stepping on people. Most of us
don't, whether out of the fear of getting caught or
some kind of ethics. We accept that we make less money
or have less power than people who cheat or are assholes.

It may not be very fair; cycling is a game with rules
and is supposed to be fair, but still you make your
choices and then you live with them. Or you can go
on muttering about it years after the fact and
turn into a street crazy. From there, it's a short
step to posting to RBR.

Ben
 
This is just another example of guilt by association. Since Indurain
was a tdf winner ergo he was doper.. I find this baseless character
assassination to be very despicable to say the very least.

On May 25, 9:36 am, "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
> > I too will always think of him as being a dignified patron of the
> > peleton and-- rightyl or wrongly-- as a clean rider. Perhaps this is
> > naive but it is how I want to remember him.

>
> Yes, this is naive! Big Mig was a doper; he was once described as
> 'EPO perfected'. I sure as hell hope no one still believes Pantani
> was clean! If they take Riis' title, they should take Pantani's as
> well. Should Ullrich admit he doped too that would leave...HOLY ****
> BOBBY JULICH AS THE VIRTUAL TdF champion! Considering the scandal
> that year and his meteoric crash, I'd Julich was clean. Oh my god my
> head's going to explode...........
>
> Seriously, this is one goddamn mess because if anyone deserves to get
> busted it was coke head Pantani.
>
> CH
 
On May 26, 11:55 pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> This is just another example of guilt by association. Since Indurain
> was a tdf winner ergo he was doper.. I find this baseless character
> assassination to be very despicable to say the very least.
>
> On May 25, 9:36 am, "[email protected]"
>
>
>
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > I too will always think of him as being a dignified patron of the
> > > peleton and-- rightyl or wrongly-- as a clean rider. Perhaps this is
> > > naive but it is how I want to remember him.

>
> > Yes, this is naive! Big Mig was a doper; he was once described as
> > 'EPO perfected'. I sure as hell hope no one still believes Pantani
> > was clean! If they take Riis' title, they should take Pantani's as
> > well. Should Ullrich admit he doped too that would leave...HOLY ****
> > BOBBY JULICH AS THE VIRTUAL TdF champion! Considering the scandal
> > that year and his meteoric crash, I'd Julich was clean. Oh my god my
> > head's going to explode...........

>
> > Seriously, this is one goddamn mess because if anyone deserves to get
> > busted it was coke head Pantani.

>
> > CH- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -


It's pretty sad, but if you happen to be standing in a crackhouse with
a fistful of cash when the cops raid it, even if you don't happen to
be doing anything at that moment it's a pretty good bet that it was
just your lucky moment, not that you are pure and innocent.
Can't say he did, or didn't, but it's very reasonable to question his
performances. When you've got a guy who weighs 40 lbs more dropping
people on steep climbs all day long, or lightweights smoking TTs then
you've really got to wonder.
Bill C
 
On May 27, 5:39 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
wrote:
> On May 25, 7:02 pm, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:


> > And it pains me to admit it, but Brian's not only right, he's probably
> > been right about doping prevalence more often than most people in this
> > group.

>
> Dumbass,
>
> Back to cycling, Brian is right for the wrong reasons,
> in the way a stopped clock is right. It's always been a
> damn good bet that there is plenty of doping going on
> that we don't know about. Saying that some rider or team
> is doping can't ever be proven wrong, and sometimes the
> passage of time will prove you right.


Dumbass,

I was a kid when the Four Color Problem was first solved. You may know
that it was one of the first of the algorithmic proofs that was done
by exhaustive computer checking and wasn't hand-checkable. I had a
friend whose father was a topologist. Every few months my friend's
father would get a letter from someone claiming to have proved the
Four Color Problem. He'd glance through the proof and then pull out a
form letter that said something like, "Dear Sir, I've received your
proof of ______. Your first error is on page ____, line ____." Then
he'd fill in the blanks and send it off. After Appel and Haken
presented their proof, he got several letters from guys saying, "Hey,
asshole, I was right."
 
In article <[email protected]>,
"[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:

> On May 25, 7:02 pm, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
> > "B. Lafferty" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > I wonder how you would feel if you raced clean and lost Olympic Gold or
> > > the
> > > Tour to a doper. I'd want justice and the medal.

> >
> > And it pains me to admit it, but Brian's not only right, he's probably
> > been right about doping prevalence more often than most people in this
> > group.
> >
> > About the worst thing you can say about WADA-world is that it's a
> > McCarthyite witch hunt. Overzealous, willing to transgress the
> > principles it claims to get to its targets. And like McCarthy, the
> > witches it's hunting are mostly real.
> >
> > I can't remember who keeps quoting "it's possible to frame a guilty
> > man," but all I think of a lot of the time is a quote by Kissinger:
> > can't they both lose?
> >
> > My saving grace with the whole "justice and the medal" approach is that,
> > however proper it would be, moving everyone up a rung is probably
> > better-than-even odds of just promoting a different doper in a large
> > number of these cases.

>
> Dumbass,
>
> I said "Even a guilty man can be framed." I'll take
> credit for coining the phrase, unless of course I
> unconsciously cribbed it from somewhere. If it makes
> you happy, I originally said it about Alger Hiss, who
> was almost certainly guilty but not proven beyond a
> reasonable doubt until many years after the fact.


Dumberass:

Benjamin Franklin, DUH!

More seriously, a quick google suggests your phrasing may be unique, but
the thought may not be.

Here's a link to a 2004 article about the Rosenbergs titled "framed but
guilty?"

http://www.workersliberty.org/node/3408

[as an OT aside, the article seriously argues in one place that the case
was an example of anti-semitism, as evidenced by the fact that the
judge, prosecutor, and defence attorney were all Jewish. I have no
words...]

> It may not be very fair; cycling is a game with rules
> and is supposed to be fair, but still you make your
> choices and then you live with them. Or you can go
> on muttering about it years after the fact and
> turn into a street crazy. From there, it's a short
> step to posting to RBR.
>
> Ben


The two things that drive me nuts about doping cycling are the fairness
and, for what it's worth, the children.

I have a reasonably strong connection to the children, despite not
having any myself. My club runs a substantial and effective
youth-development program (dEVo): we've got a lot of kids going through
this program, including ones that are national-level riders in this age
group. I'm not directly involved with the dEVos except for seeing them
on rides and working for them in races when possible, but I'm proud of
the work our club does.

I don't want to developing these kids and pushing them into high levels
of competition in a sport in which at some point the rule becomes "to
win at the next level, you must cheat the rules." That's not a
gamesmanship thing. Whether one agrees with it or not, cycling's doping
sanctions position doping as among the most serious transgressions you
can commit against the sport. Get caught even once, and your career is
brutally carved up, at a minimum.

Further, I'm pretty doubtful the answer is to let the pros dope. First,
I suspect a trickle-down effect to Fatty Masters, amateurs, and the
aforementioned kids. Second, I don't trust the pros to do it well or
safely, given that once "safe" doping programs are established, the
temptation will remain to push the legal limits to the edge of
detectability without much regard for safety. Just like today!

Finally, I think there may be an argument to be made about what the
limits are and what the line is between "fair" performance enhancement
(motorpacing, altitude tents) and "unfair" performance enhancement (EPO,
deka, autologous blood transfusions). This debate is ongoing, as seen by
the near-miss with altitude tents and the moving caffeine limits, among
other things. I think that's fairly healthy, and I also think that to
the extent I agree or disagree with current WADA proscriptions, they're
probably reasonably to the best answers right now.

The dark background to all of cycling's doping scandals has two parts:
the culture of doping, and the ease of cheating. Interestingly, a severe
weakness in either part would be enough to unravel the current
prevalence of doping.

If we could detect the cheating better, this argument wouldn't be
happening because nobody could cheat. It would be like the rules
governing safe finishing sprints: debatable moments, a few
controversies, but mostly no news because most riders know that if you
deliberately impede another rider in a sprint, you'll get relegated.

Of course, if cake had no calories, I could eat cake without getting
fat. Maybe WADA could work on that too.

As to the culture of doping, I have more hope here, and despite the
"cycling is over!" pronouncements, stories like Riis coming clean are
probably steps in the right direction. Maybe only in a "heighten the
contradictions" way, but if riders start getting the idea that Omerta is
dead, that everyone now thinks, whatever Riis did, that it was wrong and
is wrong, then we might have ourselves a new culture.

Back on topic, that stage today sounds wonderful. I can't wait to check
out the highlights. Anyone else looking forward to the finish atop Monte
Zoncolan on Wednesday?

--
Ryan Cousineau [email protected] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos
 
rechungREMOVETHIS wrote:
> I was a kid when the Four Color Problem was first solved. You may know
> that it was one of the first of the algorithmic proofs that was done
> by exhaustive computer checking and wasn't hand-checkable. I had a
> friend whose father was a topologist. Every few months my friend's
> father would get a letter from someone claiming to have proved the
> Four Color Problem. He'd glance through the proof and then pull out a
> form letter that said something like, "Dear Sir, I've received your
> proof of ______. Your first error is on page ____, line ____." Then
> he'd fill in the blanks and send it off. After Appel and Haken
> presented their proof, he got several letters from guys saying, "Hey,
> asshole, I was right."


Perhaps they should have tried the Erdos program.
 
On May 27, 7:11 am, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
> The two things that drive me nuts about doping cycling are the fairness
> and, for what it's worth, the children.


Dumbass,

It only drives you nuts because you think sports are important.
They're not.
 
[email protected] wrote:
> On May 27, 7:11 am, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
>> The two things that drive me nuts about doping cycling are the fairness
>> and, for what it's worth, the children.

>
> Dumbass,
>
> It only drives you nuts because you think sports are important.
> They're not.


With respect to the 'for the kids' argument, my kid (12 years
old) asked me about Floyd Landis the other day. I told her I
thought he did something, but that I didn't know for sure
and we would likely never know for sure. The point I stressed
was that while I thought bike racing was a fun hobby, being
a professional athlete was not an acceptable career choice.

Ryan, professional cycling is what it is. In spite of the
recent revelations it has always been what it is. Other
endurance sports are no different.

If you have people in your club that are encouraging young
riders to pursue cycling at a high level under the premise that
competition in endurance sports at high levels is something
other than what it is, that is a problem that is within your
power to address. Your club owes them honesty above all else.

Bob Schwartz
 
In article <%[email protected]>,
Bob Schwartz <[email protected]> wrote:

> [email protected] wrote:
> > On May 27, 7:11 am, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> The two things that drive me nuts about doping cycling are the fairness
> >> and, for what it's worth, the children.

> >
> > Dumbass,
> >
> > It only drives you nuts because you think sports are important.
> > They're not.

>
> With respect to the 'for the kids' argument, my kid (12 years
> old) asked me about Floyd Landis the other day. I told her I
> thought he did something, but that I didn't know for sure
> and we would likely never know for sure. The point I stressed
> was that while I thought bike racing was a fun hobby, being
> a professional athlete was not an acceptable career choice.


Bien sur. And most of our dEVos go on to be just kids with surprisingly
low BF% and good memories.

But at least three of the current members of Symmetrics did their first
road riding as dEVo kids in our club. Symmetrics is not ProTour, of
course: some of their riders are full-time pros, some are riding with
them while they finish school, and so forth. But "how far is too far?"
would be the other question.

Do Div III teams in the US routinely dope? Is there any point in a fast,
clean Cat I signing to ride at that level? Not a trivial question.

> Ryan, professional cycling is what it is. In spite of the
> recent revelations it has always been what it is. Other
> endurance sports are no different.


> If you have people in your club that are encouraging young
> riders to pursue cycling at a high level under the premise that
> competition in endurance sports at high levels is something
> other than what it is, that is a problem that is within your
> power to address. Your club owes them honesty above all else.


Well, this is the problem. Even at the amateur level, I don't want
cycling to be a sport where one has to say "good, you have shown ability
enough to get this far. Now retire, because to go further is to
compromise your ethics and reputation."

Because sure, there's going to be kids who through sheer will drive
themselves to high levels of achievement. But there's also going to be
kids who just come out, shoot through every level of competition
available, and through no fault of their own, are naturals to go to
Europe at age 20 and join up with a neo-pro team.

At that point do you say "now stop: go get a degree or a trade, and if
you like you can still race the Tuesday Nighters and the Tour de
Gastown."

Seems kinda sad.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email protected] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos
 
On May 27, 6:59 pm, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
> But "how far is too far?"


How far is too far with alcohol?

> Well, this is the problem. Even at the amateur level, I don't want
> cycling to be a sport where one has to say "good, you have shown ability
> enough to get this far. Now retire, because to go further is to
> compromise your ethics and reputation."


Why would going further compromise ethics?

> Because sure, there's going to be kids who through sheer will drive
> themselves to high levels of achievement. But there's also going to be
> kids who just come out, shoot through every level of competition
> available, and through no fault of their own, are naturals to go to
> Europe at age 20 and join up with a neo-pro team.
>
> At that point do you say "now stop: go get a degree or a trade, and if
> you like you can still race the Tuesday Nighters and the Tour de
> Gastown."
>
> Seems kinda sad.


It only seems sad because you think sports are important.

Dumbass, doping among airline pilots, bus drivers, nuclear power plant
operators, and the guy who does my taxes is important. Hitting
baseballs over fences, kicking a ball into a net, and riding a bike
fast isn't important -- what's more, the dope they take enhances
performance, not degrades it. If there was a magic elixir that made
airline pilots more alert and better able to perform their job (and
made mathematicians able to produce more and better theorems), would
you suspend them if they used it?
 
rechungREMOVETHIS wrote:
> If there was a magic elixir that made airline pilots more alert and
> better able to perform their job (and made mathematicians able to
> produce more and better theorems), would you suspend them if they used
> it?


We haven't seen a ChungChart for ages. What PEDs are good for
statisticians ?
 
On May 27, 1:29 pm, [email protected] wrote:>


> If there was a magic elixir that made
> airline pilots more alert and better able to perform their job (and
> made mathematicians able to produce more and better theorems), would
> you suspend them if they used it?


dumbass,

there is. uppers. military pilots are given uppers to stay alert and
offset the effects of airsickness medication (i was part of a study
that looked at this). and everyone on rbr knows about erdos and
uppers.
 
[email protected] wrote:

> there is. uppers. military pilots are given uppers to stay alert and
> offset the effects of airsickness medication (i was part of a study
> that looked at this)
>

Is colour blindness one of the side effects?