July 23rd, 2008
Performance Enhancements
It’s not likely - especially since I gave up paying to join British Cycling due to their lack of support for mountain biking - that I’ll ever be drug tested. However following a long discussion at the doctors yesterday about the long term prospects for my asthma if I don’t take action now I am back on the drugs. The prospect of COPD in the long term is not something I relish.
Preventative
Reliever
I have a letter from a specialist somewhere confirming that I need these drugs. I’m now trying to convince him that the haemoglobin enhancements offered by Micera would be an effective asthma treatment.
Call me a conpiracy theorist but given the ongoing wranglings between the ASO and the UCI I can’t help thinking that the UCI wants drug cheats to be found in the Tour de France rather than in ProTour events because that taints the Tour and strengthens the UCIs hand. Consequently dope testing in UCI sanctioned events and outside competition isn’t as rigorous as it could be. Organisations like ASO are the ones left actually doing the hard work of cleaning up the sport when it should be the UCI. If that is the UCI tactic - and withholding biological passport information would seem to support my theory - it has backfired. The positive tests in the Tour have just confirmed that the UCI aren’t doing their job and that ASO are finding the cheats that have “eluded” the UCI. UCI ineptitude dates back a long way, and that’s to say nothing of their ongoing dispute with WADA.
I also wonder how the UCI can complain about the Tour being run under French Cycling Federation rules, whilst at the same time expecting USA Cycling to pursue Floyd Landis on their behalf? And without any financial backing. You can do our dirty work but not organise races? Can you say “double-standards”?
ASO is a commercial organisation - it needs the Tour to be a success to earn money. I’m not sure where the UCI gets it’s money from - it seems remarkably rich for something funded by national cycling federations. Someone can probably reveal that it’s actually funded by evil Swiss gnomes and their cache of Nazi gold, just confirming my suspicions that they’re a bunch of untrustworthy bastards.
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July 23rd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Yes it does smack of incompetence on behalf of the UCI when there’s been the best part of a season with biological passports for Protour teams, with pretty much no positives. Yet at a WADA and ASO event cheats are found quickly, it says a lot really.
Oh regarding Asthma I’ve just got a new thing Nick called Symbicort it’s a preventative and kind of reliever that really works, might be worth asking about it as I’ve effectively got an extra gear withing a day of starting to take it.
Oh and the number of Astmatics in the peloton has always struck me as being a tad suspect….
August 8th, 2008 at 9:33 am
[…] Recently I wondered about where the UCI got it’s funding from: “I’m not sure where the UCI gets it’s money from - it seems remarkably rich for something funded by national cycling federations.” […]