Open Letter to Pat McQuaid from Greg LeMond



Wouldn't it be safe to say that the reason that there are so many people getting away with Doping is due to unlike other drugs doping is being done my doctors themselves who know how to get around the system so that they can't or at least make it extremely hard to be detected? I mean that this is not like looking for pot, or meth or crack in a parolees urine. We are talking about doctors who have been trained to administer drugs and such in a way that they would know what would or would not set off an alarm.
 
Originally Posted by Dave Pace .

Wouldn't it be safe to say that the reason that there are so many people getting away with Doping is due to unlike other drugs doping is being done my doctors themselves who know how to get around the system so that they can't or at least make it extremely hard to be detected? I mean that this is not like looking for pot, or meth or crack in a parolees urine. We are talking about doctors who have been trained to administer drugs and such in a way that they would know what would or would not set off an alarm.
yes and no. in many ways i agree with your points here, but quibble over details. the involvement of doctors helps immensely. but the other actors, if you accept ***** voets' account, also make the doping data base work. voets stated that the soigneurs were the guinea pigs to determine the rate at which a substance's detectability dropped. in that work, the injections were carried out within the team without the doctors' involvement. a doctor like ferrari or fuentes is a breed apart from most g p's, i'd imagine. and in general usage, the doping tests act like those to catch proscribed substances, detecting the metabolites which result after consumption and not the specific drugs themselves.
 
Originally Posted by slovakguy .

yes and no. in many ways i agree with your points here, but quibble over details. the involvement of doctors helps immensely. but the other actors, if you accept ***** voets' account, also make the doping data base work. voets stated that the soigneurs were the guinea pigs to determine the rate at which a substance's detectability dropped. in that work, the injections were carried out within the team without the doctors' involvement. a doctor like ferrari or fuentes is a breed apart from most g p's, i'd imagine. and in general usage, the doping tests act like those to catch proscribed substances, detecting the metabolites which result after consumption and not the specific drugs themselves.

Originally Posted by slovakguy .

yes and no. in many ways i agree with your points here, but quibble over details. the involvement of doctors helps immensely. but the other actors, if you accept ***** voets' account, also make the doping data base work. voets stated that the soigneurs were the guinea pigs to determine the rate at which a substance's detectability dropped. in that work, the injections were carried out within the team without the doctors' involvement. a doctor like ferrari or fuentes is a breed apart from most g p's, i'd imagine. and in general usage, the doping tests act like those to catch proscribed substances, detecting the metabolites which result after consumption and not the specific drugs themselves.
Either way I am in a firm belief that the sport needs a clean up from the top down as I am 1 of them that believe the president down knew and or knows who or what is going on and are not doing something due to greased palms. and i do not think that the usada or anyone else can effectively work until the house is cleaned of the cockroaches. I also think that right now we are at a point where "Sacrificial Lambs" are being offered up as a hey look at what we found type of deal. But at the same time they are now exposing the chinks in their armor by giving up these offering. I say 10- years down the road we may be at where we want to be today. But with the current administration it can not happen.
 
Originally Posted by Dave Pace .
Either way I am in a firm belief that the sport needs a clean up from the top down as I am 1 of them that believe the president down knew and or knows who or what is going on and are not doing something due to greased palms. and i do not think that the usada or anyone else can effectively work until the house is cleaned of the cockroaches. I also think that right now we are at a point where "Sacrificial Lambs" are being offered up as a hey look at what we found type of deal. But at the same time they are now exposing the chinks in their armor by giving up these offering. I say 10- years down the road we may be at where we want to be today. But with the current administration it can not happen.
agreed on the top down cleaning. mc quaid's problem is that the sacrificial lamb trick has been used much too often. as much as he'd like to pass blame to verbruggen's era, under his watch (from the start) has seen landis and contadore caught out in doping violations at the tour--embarrassment. an olympic champ nabbed on epo--embarrassment. and do we even have to talk about ricco, saunier-duval mess or the continued involvement of ferrari in the peloton--embarrassment? granted, each of these show anti-doping activity on uci's (and other agencies') part, but also point out the pervasiveness of the doping culture. the kimmage challenge should prove interesting if those civil authorities use the same tools on uci as they have on dopers, as kimmage has asked in his legal filing.
 
hpearson said:
Yes, I believe that funding is part of the problem!  It has not been mentioned once by Tygart during any of his interviews as being a contributor to the problem. ITS NOT PERFECT, ITS NOT PERFECT" has been mentioned at nausea.  I think we got it TYGeee!  The fact that you had the biggest scandal in the history of sports with thousands of people involved tells us "IT IS NOT PERFECT"  we got it!
Actually, you don't get it because funding is a huge part of the problem that challenges USADA. The only way to discover more dopers is by testing more, something for which there isn't money right now. As it stands, money is in such short supply that it is the race promoters that have pay for the doping tests, and those promoters aren't getting rich. In fact, they're just barely getting by. If there's a lack of effectiveness, it's because USADA doesn't have the money to be more effective. It is certainly NOT silly for USADA to claim success. If you had read carefully slovakguy's post showing the number of dopers found by year, you would see that detections are generally increasing. I have no idea what you mean when you say:
hpearson said:
I would say a blood test above in the 25th percentile would be enough to deter doping permanently.
Above in the 25th percentile? What does that mean? The only percentile that would fit your statement would the 25th percentile of anti-doping agencies and the number of dopers each has caught (in total or on a yearly basis). Otherwise, the use of "percentile" really doesn't make sense.
hpeason said:
If he had any stomes he should step around on the athletes side of the table and say "this is what your get when you dont spend the money to do an effective job."
If USADA isn't spending the money, it's because they don't have it. If they had it, they would do more testing. Last, your railing on the "15 year old" doping scandal because it took USADA 15 years to catch the dopers in the US Postal conspiracy is misplaced. A well setup conspiracy can go undetected or unpunished for quite a while. It happens in law enforcement, counter terrorism, and so on. It can be very difficult to break a conspiracy. Just ask any DA, judge, police officer.... It's even more difficult to break if people on your side are working against your efforts, as Verbruggen and McQuaid may have been doing. You'll note that AEA, AFLD, CONI-NADO, WADA and others did not break the conspiracy. Doping will never permanently fade from the pro peloton, just as criminal conspiracies have not disappeared from our cities. There is no way around the fact that breaking the US Postal conspiracy is a huge success for not only USADA but also for other anti-doping agencies and for cycling. It's likely to provide a powerful deterrent for doping in not only cycling but also in other sports.
 
Dave Pace said:
Wouldn't it be safe to say that the reason that there are so many people getting away with Doping is due to unlike other drugs doping is being done my doctors themselves who know how to get around the system so that they can't or at least make it extremely hard to be detected? I mean that this is not like looking for pot, or meth or crack in a parolees urine. We are talking about doctors who have been trained to administer drugs and such in a way that they would know what would or would not set off an alarm. 
In general doctors aren't concerned with what needs to be done to detect a drug. Rather they are interested in how that drug functions and what that drug's therapeutic level is. The doctors concerned about the max dosage of a given drug that will evade detection are either doctors working with anti-doping agencies or doping doctors.
 
Quote: Originally Posted by hpearson

Yes, I believe that funding is part of the problem! It has not been mentioned once by Tygart during any of his interviews as being a contributor to the problem.

ITS NOT PERFECT, ITS NOT PERFECT" has been mentioned at nausea. I think we got it TYGeee! The fact that you had the biggest scandal in the history of sports with thousands of people involved tells us "IT IS NOT PERFECT" we got it!
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Actually, you don't get it because funding is a huge part of the problem that challenges USADA. The only way to discover more dopers is by testing more, something for which there isn't money right now. As it stands, money is in such short supply that it is the race promoters that have pay for the doping tests, and those promoters aren't getting rich. In fact, they're just barely getting by. If there's a lack of effectiveness, it's because USADA doesn't have the money to be more effective.[/COLOR]

With 1 positive test in 250 I would not be in favor of more testing but beter testing. [COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]It is certainly NOT silly for USADA to claim success. If you had read carefully slovakguy's post showing the number of dopers found by year, you would see that detections are generally increasing. I have no idea what you mean when you say:[/COLOR]
Quote: Originally Posted by hpearson
I would say a blood test above in the 25th percentile would be enough to deter doping permanently.

1 positive in 250 test for LA. If they could increase the quality to just 20 in 250 this would have been stopped long ago.

[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Above in the 25th percentile? What does that mean? The only percentile that would fit your statement would the 25th percentile of anti-doping agencies and the number of dopers each has caught (in total or on a yearly basis). Otherwise, the use of "percentile" really doesn't make sense.[/COLOR]
Quote: Originally Posted by hpeason
If he had any stomes he should step around on the athletes side of the table and say "this is what your get when you dont spend the money to do an effective job."
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]If USADA isn't spending the money, it's because they don't have it. If they had it, they would do more testing.[/COLOR] [COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Last, your railing on the "15 year old" doping scandal because it took USADA 15 years to catch the dopers in the US Postal conspiracy is misplaced. A well setup conspiracy can go undetected or unpunished for quite a while.[/COLOR] Obviously[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)] It happens in law enforcement, counter terrorism, and so on. It can be very difficult to break a conspiracy. Just ask any DA, judge, police officer.... It's even more difficult to break if people on your side are working against your efforts, as Verbruggen and McQuaid may have been doing. You'll note that AEA, AFLD, CONI-NADO, WADA and others did not break the conspiracy.[/COLOR] [COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Doping will never permanently fade from the pro peloton, just as criminal conspiracies have not disappeared from our cities.[/COLOR] [COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]There is no way around the fact that breaking the US Postal conspiracy is a huge success for not only USADA but also for other anti-doping agencies and for cycling. It's likely to provide a powerful deterrent for doping in not only cycling but also in other sports.[/COLOR]

I dont see this as a success everyone looks bad.
 
Originally Posted by alienator .


In general doctors aren't concerned with what needs to be done to detect a drug. Rather they are interested in how that drug functions and what that drug's therapeutic level is. The doctors concerned about the max dosage of a given drug that will evade detection are either doctors working with anti-doping agencies or doping doctors.
LOL

I think it goes with out saying that Dave is talking about "doping doctors" here not the medical community at large but thanks for clearing that up for all of us!!
 
Originally Posted by slovakguy .

you've lost me, again. what is a "blood test above in the 25th percentile"? a blood (not urine) test which catches a doper one time in four? to be short, you have again shown unrealistic expectations. you have to proceed from the position that every rider is a doper and that three of four will go undetected and a fundamental misunderstanding of what the test looks for. as it its, even if they all dope, if they have doped just before or on a day of competition, they have failed the doping i q test hamilton spoke of. even then you are letting three of four out of the door. to further complicate the matter, not every rider will be tested, only the riders and a few at random are usually tested. sure, universal testing would net more dopers, but then there is the cost. and more to the point, how is this a definition of "effective" by which i can understand how usada is performing poorly? the best i can see is that, for you, usada have to ban one out of four athletes every year.

as for usada, they are the doping agency in the united states. they administer the testing on competitions in this country. they had no role in the testing at the tour de france. even with their role in the u s, there are many races here which do not feel like paying for doping controls. so, usada should have overstepped its authorities and done the control work for all u s athletes regardless of the locale of the competition and that many athletes, armstrong, hincapie, leipheimer, et al lived abroad? again, travel costs and so on. the actual locus for your disdain is more likely those foreign doping agencies and uci. the latter really had the authority to control/eradicate the activity but seems to have turned a blind eye to it and took no action even when presented with information, seeming more interested in making the tour of beijing a money maker. the difference here is that, presented with information concerning usps/discovery cheating, usada took action. the delay really comes down to how long it took for the individual to come forward with the information. wail all you like for armstrong and the supposed injustice done to him, but usada acted as quickly as they could when the matter came to them.

i know where the bank is downtown. that is most likely where the bank robbery will take place. should i detain every single person going in because they might intend to rob the place? you only go after bank robbers when they have robbed the bank. the usada catches dopers only after they have doped, even though they may suspect certain riders of doping. the only tool they have for that case is an increase in testing. proactive/preventive activity has time and again been shown to occur with civil authorities who can search personal property with court authority. festina were busted because of a border stop. the french police found the empty activegan (?) boxes in the hotel trash. so are usada to begin searching athlete's trash?

as for you final point, if you say so, chum. tsa may have a margin of error equal to zero, but there are more than enough reports which have become public that tsa screening agents do an okay job for a group getting just above minimum wage, but weapons and other prohibited items have made it past check points (which is to say, in your world, they are failures.). additionally, the existence of the tsa points out the notion that we are locking the barn door a day late. if you were thinking of doing something to the u s travel industry, you would be looking at ways of dodging the present security system. does that sound familiar? it should. dopers learned how to evade the positive result of the current testing regime. in your example, usada would need a chute at the sign-in table and have every participant submit blood and urine and then have to wait until the tests are complete before the competition could start. time and money.

a final point. you, sir, are showing yourself to be an intellectual cheat. when you quote me, i would truly appreciate you not changing what i've written without indicating that you've altered my text. i did not write USDA, but usada. LOL - I think it was spell check dont get you panties all in a twist
To be honest your knowledge is out pacing me here Slovak. The only thing for me to do is yield or read the entire USADA playbook.

So I yield on this point!
 
hpearson said:
.......badly formatted response.......
You must have missed the part wherein the anti-doping agencies can only hope to be a step behind doping techniques. It's very easy to understand by objective analysis. Further, not only is it alleged that Armstrong tested positive in the 2001 Tour de Suisse, it has also been reported that 6 of Armstrong's samples from the 1999 Tour de France tested positive for EPO when those samples were retested in 2004 at the Chatenay-Malabry lab in France. You have also completely missed or discounted the fact that at least in 1999, there wasn't a proven method for detecting synthetic EPO. It is still very difficult, if not impossible, to detect EPO that's injected via micro dosing. Doping agencies cannot be faulted for the lack of testing technology and methods to detect newer drugs or doping drugs administered in creative ways. Let's not forget that US Postal, Armstrong, and his doctor brought micro-dosing to the game. Further, reliable testing modalities don't just pop-up. They have to be tested for reliability and efficacy, and these studies have to be multifold and varied to ensure that any calculated success rate is accurate and that the test method itself is robust. The anti-doping agencies haven't been standing still, nor have they publicized every testing technique at their disposal. The testing regime has expanded and improved greatly. This improvement is embodied in the Biological Passport. Unfortunately, by its nature, the Biological Passport cannot come online quickly since it requires a set of metrics for a given rider accumulate over time to enable an accurate way of seeing abnormal changes in the rider's physical state. There's a relationship in physics and engineering that states noise in a measurement or experiment goes down by the inverse square root of the number of samples taken. If the number of samples increases 100 fold, the noise, i.e. the uncertainty, in the experiment goes down by a factor of 10. While this relationship likely doesn't apply exactly as stated to biological systems, the idea behind it is absolutely applicable: the more regular tests of a given rider's physical state, the easier it becomes to detect abnormal results. None of the above, however, accounts for people within the regulatory bodies fixing the tests such that a given rider, Armstrong, is not found doping. This is exactly what Verbruggen and McQuaid are accused of doing. Also, as stated before, well controlled conspiracies are difficult to break. It's been shown over and over again. Lastly, everyone doesn't look bad. People associated with US Postal are looking bad right now. Verbruggen and McQuaid look bad right now. The anti-doping agencies don't look bad. The French lab, in fact, looks good. USADA looks good for bringing down the US Postal conspiracy and conspirators. Everyone--except possibly Verbruggen and McQuaid-- in the agencies involved know and have always known that test modalities and the testing process have to improve, and that is what they've been doing: improving the methods and the system. Not being in favor of more testing is saying that you don't understand how the process improves. Without more testing, the anti-doping efforts won't improve. It's a simple idea.
 
hpearson said:
LOL I think it goes with out saying that Dave is talking about "doping doctors" here not the medical community at large but thanks for clearing that up for all of us!!
No problem, but you clearly don't understand the answer. The answer points out that the anti-doping agencies and personnel will always be at least a little bit behind what doping modalities the doping doctors are able to come up with. There is no way for the anti-doping agencies to get ahead and remain ahead of doping practices.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/nov/07/uci-lance-armstrong-independent-commission

perhaps this investigation will actually be independent and not another vrijmann whitewash. i think it's particularly telling that one of commissioners will be a forensic accountant. i figure that is going to be (as is most often the case) where the greatest progress will be made. certainly whoever accepts this position will have enough grist from the rumour mill to keep him busy, what with the several contributions to uci from armstrong/livestrong and that large sum allegedly sent to verbruggen.
 
Originally Posted by slovakguy .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/nov/07/uci-lance-armstrong-independent-commission

perhaps this investigation will actually be independent and not another vrijmann whitewash. i think it's particularly telling that one of commissioners will be a forensic accountant. i figure that is going to be (as is most often the case) where the greatest progress will be made. certainly whoever accepts this position will have enough grist from the rumour mill to keep him busy, what with the several contributions to uci from armstrong/livestrong and that large sum allegedly sent to verbruggen.
I think following the debits and credits of the $125K, even if UCI washed it through their books, will be telling. The best case scenario is if there is no credit on the UCI books, but after that, were their unusual debits to any individuals that met with Bruyneel and Co.
 
It's with a very heavy heart that I have to report that our national cycling federation has decided to endorse
that gobshite McQuaid as a candidate for the UCI presidency once again.

It is of scant consolation to many of us in Irish cycling that there is a groundswell of membership opinion that would rather see another
candidate put forward for the UCI role.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/04/news/irish-cycling-backs-mcquaid-for-a-third-term_281855

We will continue to try to get the ICF to change/amend this if we can
 
he cannot consider re-election after the size and the reach of Armstrong's doping case
 
Originally Posted by vspa .

he cannot consider re-election after the size and the reach of Armstrong's doping case
The man has no shame.

At federation level here, Im spending a lot of time trying to canvass support to force an EGM about this.
 
Originally Posted by limerickman .

The man has no shame.

At federation level here, Im spending a lot of time trying to canvass support to force an EGM about this.
granted on the lack of shame, but the die was cast long ago. p mc quaid's election is assured like the manner in which boards of directors share quite a few common members, except mc quaid relies on ioc approved voters--the old boy network.

in all earnestness, good luck with bringing the local federations to some sense on this issue.
 
Originally Posted by slovakguy .

granted on the lack of shame, but the die was cast long ago. p mc quaid's election is assured like the manner in which boards of directors share quite a few common members, except mc quaid relies on ioc approved voters--the old boy network.

in all earnestness, good luck with bringing the local federations to some sense on this issue.
Thanks.

There is a lot of delegates here at local level who are entirely ****** off with the CF's decision to nominate McQuaid.
We're busy trying to persuade more delegates to do the right thing and to oppose the CF's Board decision.
Hence my lack of activity on this site in more recent times/img/vbsmilies/smilies/frown.gif
 
limerickman said:
Thanks. There is a lot of delegates here at local level who are entirely ****** off with the CF's decision to nominate McQuaid. We're busy trying to persuade more delegates to do the right thing and to oppose the CF's Board decision. Hence my lack of activity on this site in more recent times/img/vbsmilies/smilies/frown.gif
Maybe I missed something, but I thought the Board backed away from the nomination and that an EGM was the future. No?