You Keep it Classy Ben Berden

There is a certain time when certain people need to be called out, and in this case, it’s a doped-up lying asshole cheat named Ben Berden. You know, the class act cyclocross racer who got banned from racing in Belgium for EPO. Prove someone you suspect is a liar with a lie detector test. He later told dopers to “keep lying.” – nice. Powers apparently thinks he’s a nice guy too. Hmmmm:

“Then take Ben Berden. He did a bunch of drugs and got popped, but it turns out he’s the nicest guy. He comes over here (to the U.S.) to race and he’s extremely nice, outgoing, and he tells it like it is. He says there were a ton of drugs going around back then. He got caught up in it and he’s paid his price. He can’t even get a contract in Belgium anymore because of all the bad press. But he’s been super nice and helpful. For me that’s the biggest thing, how they hold themselves after that.” – VeloSnooze

Well he’s at it again being all nice and classy, recently taking to his Twitter account to call out one of our own, Charles Scott McDonald. 

1

You remember Charles? We all pitched in a while back to help him get a prosthetic arm. He’s a badass rider and a great dude, we ate plenty of beers and shared stories earlier this year at cross nationals.

The Story:

Charles was doing some good ol’ heckling at Cincy3 when Ben got all butt-hurt because he can’t deal with the truth. Caveman put it best when saying, “If you don’t like being heckled, don’t race cross.” So after being called a “doper” (which is 100% true), he told Charles, “say it to my face.” So Charles chased him around the couse and said it to his face, simply doing what the man requested. Well then things got out of hand when Berden took a swing at Charles when he rode by the pits. Seems as though it’s not the first time he’s dealt a low blow..

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNjVcYbJ4x4[/youtube]

So after the race he rode up to Charles once again and asked if he had lost his arm from masturbating. Real classy. Your team must be proud of you. Charles replied saying he’d lost it shooting dopes like him. He rode away.

Ten minutes later he rode up to Charles yet another time to inform him he would have kicked his ass had he had both arms. Charles, unwavered, told him to bring it. Ben didn’t. Then Charles told him he couldn’t kick his ass if he had zero arms. Kapooyah.

You see, here at DC we’re one big happy family when it comes down to it, and when someone takes a shot at one of the family, that shit just doesn’t fly.

So here’s what you do: While sipping on your beverage of choice tonight, let Mr. Berden know what you think about the way he’s been carrying himself lately. Perhaps shoot him a tweet, or post on his “supporters page”, or let his team know he’s been a shithead lately. Better yet, go heckle him in Iowa next week.

Thanks for your help, cycling doesn’t have room for arrogant pricks like this.

About Cupcake

I don’t have a beer gut, I’ve developed a liquid grain storage facility.

95 Replies to “You Keep it Classy Ben Berden”

  1. “People like to bring up your past when your present and future look better than theirs”. – unknown

  2. Sure is a lot of hate here on this subject. May I suggest we all have a drink or a drag and go back to the hot POV clip of “Girl Riding Bike Downhill over and over” yea.

  3. Funny shit. I call puss on both of them. They seem like typical cry baby racer types. Sounds like the time for a ho-down is way past do and neither one has the stones to pull the trigger.

    And that take down was fun to watch.

  4. I miss the old angry days when most rants were about real world shit,not race boys getting butt hurt. bring back the PORN

  5. WTF? Don’t know any of the players in this little shit-storm. All I know is that Powers seems like the one with a level head. Even if he does ride for Rapha… ;-)

    Oh, and Olivia Wilde’s boobies… They ARE wonderful.

  6. Here ‘s some real facts guys about this unguided ‘Charles Story”!
    Ben is a great guy and yes, he paid his fine a long time ago, in fact all ready a couple years ago. That ‘s a done deal, period.
    He could build himself a nice home with the price he had to pay back then and besides of the fact that he lost a couple fans at that time he also lost two years of professional CX experience.
    But hey, if you can ‘t stand the heat….
    What do you expect from top athletes these days, do you really think that EPO ‘s only used in CX races or road races? It ‘s not about EPO anymore, it ‘s about the magical power of hard earned sponsor money and with every breath you take there will be another drug in every sport discipline to push the top 5 even further than you can ever imagine! That ‘s the deal, that ‘s what happens every day worldwide, being- and staying the number one, two or three is not easy, simple!
    Time to watch more TV on sundays and look at some tennis players, Formula 1 drivers, don ‘t forget to look at some top soccer players and don ‘t miss the huge basketball industry, they damn sure run a lot faster than the average 100M sprinters that I used to know 5 years ago. #justsaying. I can remember those Formula 1 drivers stepping out of they ‘r cars after an intense race and doing an interview and not even gasping for one breath, not being exhausted when they took they ‘r helmet off, same thing with a lot of athletes right after they reached the finish line. (Football players as an example, Tour Des France, regular road races, motorcross racers,…). Look at Ben when a real journalist asks him a question 1 minute after he crossed the finish line. He ‘s exhausted, his light ‘s out, down on the ground, on his knees trying to breath because he went to his limit and believe me, that ‘s the number one signal if you ride ‘clean’…

    I know Ben as one of my true best friends since a long time and yes I would walk trough fire for him! If there ‘s one thing he does not deserve than it ‘s this crap from a dumb guy (Charles) with a website that has the most ridiculous domain name that I ever read, but that to the side.
    From my point of view and the research that I did, he does not even know the difference between a Belgian Beer and a South African Diet Soda on the rocks. Ben is a cool person, honest, always fair to people around him, he ‘s a heck of a great father for his kids, takes care of his girlfriend Nicole and, lives a great life in his new home of Boulder CO and works *%ucking hard for his job, 24/7, and his job is not just riding a bike like some people think. His job is creating interest in a great sport, showing people what you can do with a CX bike.
    But his 100% honesty was misplaced by a couple of people at that time when he got caught, and that just happened, and yes for a reason, but does that make him a nasty person today or the devil on two wheels?
    I don ‘t think so and I ‘m going to tell you why.
    Ben is the kind a guy that picks up a penny on the strip in Vegas and starts asking people around him who lost it. He ‘s the kind a guy that jumped in his truck 5 years ago and drove 85 miles to help me change my tire at 4am in the morning, image that he had to race the day after! But he ‘s also the kind a guy that kicks you in the nuts if you try to make a fool out of him or his friends. God bless that mentality! But he would never do that if it ‘s not a fair fight, I guess Charles was the lucky one last week because of his disability when he reached out nasty to Ben. Believe me, he would definitely ended up within 3 seconds with his ‘space-pen’ shoved up in his lower spot where the sun does not shine if they had equal weapons… ben responded virtually where it hurts Charles the most, how would you be?
    Ben is not the kind a guy to kick someones butt if it ‘s not fair.
    But looking at that video and the reactions from some people, as an example, makes me sad because that ‘s another story where you only see one side. (Look at the whole race!) No one told you you guys that the rider being ‘pushed’ by Ben ‘s elbow was constantly looking at Ben during that race and closed the door every time when Ben wanted to take over, so he after 8 attempts Ben did what he did and you would do the same thing, he pushed him to the side where he belonged. Believe me, you would do the same, even faster I guess….!
    And I accept that behavior from a ‘friend’, because friends need to protect friends and that starts with protecting yourself. Look at it like sitting in an airplane that goes down, you first inhale some fresh air for yourself before you help your neighbor and you both be safe before the crash landing…!
    People that needed to judge sports athletes when they did something wrong did what they had to do a couple years ago and justice took care of that, simple!
    Ben responded correct at that time and told the whole world immediately that he made a huge mistake, from the first minute when they asked him he confessed and agreed to cooperate and work it out.
    I call that ‘respect’! Totally different story than the 250 other confessed users and not to mention the thousands of other “uncaught athletes” in multiple sport disciplines even as we speak.
    What ‘s more important is the fact that Ben currently took over second place in the US ranking even as we speak (US national list of top CX riders), that ‘s a whole different story if you know that he has his age against him, his past against him and most of all he reached this goal (top 3 rider!) without any form of doping. Test him out and you will find out.
    So that being said, I think, as a friend of Ben, that 99.9% of the (younger generation) CX riders should take a living example about him and learn the lesson that he teaches all of you guys. And yes, all of you guys, you should be thankful instead of shooting at him, and especially Charles. Ben told the whole CX world the goods and the bad ‘s of this sport.
    You know to be honest, why should I shoot my mailman in his legs because he delivers me my regular utility bills? Imagine that, and that ‘s exactly the same approach what ‘Charles’ was trying to do here. he ‘s shooting the mailman! Wrong approach, give the man a cup of coffee and make him your friend and be a thankful person. That ‘s how simple life can be….
    It ‘s just not fair because Charles is not the Holy Father and has obviously not the right to judge the way he did in public, he should have been a lot smarter and he would probably end up making a lot more hard earned dollars in the future if he ‘supported’ hard working people. But that ‘s what happens with uneducated writers. Simple approach from my point of view.
    He ‘s the kind a guy that would spit in dough, bake bread out of it and sells it with a nasty smile to customers in his bakery! Typical!!!
    I was just wondering why he was not writing for the USA TODAY or the New York Times or any other major newspaper. Let me tell you this, this is why!
    And before I forget, Charles sentence about Belgian CX team ‘s who are not signing a contract with him? That ‘s a funny one! With a USA TOP3 CX rider in 2013-2014? Hell yeah, with whatever background, I would sign him for a couple years to start with! And that ‘s the emails that Ben get ‘s from teams constantly, the ‘please ride for us e-mails’ like we call them. That ‘s Ben ‘s only value meter in his career, nothing more and nothing less, and specially not the “Harmless Charles dudes” and that ‘s important!
    At the end of the day, the best promo material you get are positive reactions in general to what I believe.
    Crashing hard a couple of years ago does not matter anymore, like Ben said in a recent interview ‘let it rest’…. It ‘s about today, even as we speak, Ben ‘s living a lot of people ‘s dreams doing what he does best, and that ‘s riding a CX bike, reaching for a podium almost every week and succeeding in his goals, only using his experience and knowledge to do that. And he is blessed to do all this in the US with a great team. How cool is that?
    Isn ‘t that what makes this sport so populair around the world?
    That ‘s what I call being a living hero in this magnificent sport!
    Sometimes you have to use your helicopter view and get a total image of what ‘s going on! I used to steel so much candy in our local gas station until they caught me when I was 7, does that mean that I ‘m a thief? I guess not. We all made several mistakes, but getting straight with whatever you did in your past makes you a better person, period!
    And teaching a lesson to a whole crowd of fans and enthusiastic riders is more valuable than anything else in life.
    At least you show people around you a couple different ways of reaching a goal, one way is better than the other…
    Anyway, Ben is a great guy and you should keep on supporting him, and what Charles accounts, he learned a lesson to if you know what I mean, let him do what he can do best and that ‘s making a fool out of people and receiving psychological mental hits back. Some people fuel them selve with negative energy, this is one of them. 100 to 1 that he will never retire from being a top journalist, at least not with fat paychecks every month until he passes away very lonely in a God forgotten corner out of the blue.
    Ben from the other counts on one thing and that ‘s karma, I know that, he knows that and you all should know that. Let my words be the words to remember when you look at Ben, doing his best to teach the world the best lesson ever.

  7. Wow man. Too drunk or not drunk enough? Let’s set all these character assasinations on both sides aside as pointless, and just disassemble this little shit-turd point-by-point.

    “keep lying”. Dude do you even know the back story? Have you ever paid any attention to cycling? When popped for doping he confessed. Do you have any idea how rare that is? Classy? Seriously? How many dopers can you name that confessed without being 100% totally cornered. And even then most don’t. So it isn’t surprising that he said “keep lying”. it’s surprising that he said it OUT LOUD, or that for one tiny little minute he was the only guy in the universe that didn’t get that “keep lying” was pretty much the standard advice EVERYONE FOLLOWS.

    Calling out on twitter? Like others have said, if you’re gonna bring it, be ready for it. If you’re gonna take your heckling to the next level, chase someone around the course, and leave all the humor behind, what the fuck do you expect?

    Oh that brings me to the next point. Maybe you expect that the prosthetic arm means no paybacks. WHAT THE FUCK? The handy-capable don’t deserve and shouldn’t want a free hall pass on this issue. If you bring the rawest most blunt heckling, you get back the rawest most blunt heckling. HARDEN THE FUCK UP.

    One armed dude grabbed the bull by the horns. Fair enough. Fuck yeah. But if the bull doesn’t lose his temper and tells some masturbation jokes, that means the bull has no class?

    Dude I think you need to take some classes on class. Because in my book, making jerkoff jokes in this particular situation may just be the classiest thing I’ve seen all year.

  8. I am calling a little bullshit on both sides here.
    Heckling in cx? sure. there probably is a line, gray and fuzzy as it may be. Calling a confessed (after he got popped) doper or former doper a doper is kind of harsh, (at what point do we live and let live) but then anyone who has followed DC over the years would know that this is not a doper/ex-doper/doping related friendly place…Berden is not the first to get slammed here. Don’t like the abrasive attitude towards anyone implicated in doping then you are in the wrong place.

    Maybe Ben is a nice guy but be that the case, he had a lot of higher-road options he could have taken, yet didn’t. If you take his side, then at the very least he stooped down to the level of his heckler. Pros take a lot of shit worse than that. Shouldn’t have too, but the reality is, it happens. Lot of others don’t react like that. Maybe he was having a bad day. Seems like a lot of BB supporters have been coming out of the woodwork, can’t imagine he would get this much love if he was a complete asshole. Or maybe its a birds of a feather kind of thing?
    Did Charles cross the line? Kind of sounds like it but hard to say without having been there, although if you have announcers calling you out it might be a good indicator.
    I like heckling in cx. As pointed out, there is a lot of creative shit out there. Generally it seems the uncreative, profanity laden, direct insults are not that great. And don’t get me wrong, I love profanity. But there is a point when you have to take a look around and say, hey, maybe weaving “fuck” into every imaginable insult at a public event, with kids and others of potentially thinner skin around, might not be such a great idea. The wrong people get bent and it can be a bad thing for the cx scene. Nothing a promoter loves more than having their event cast with negativity. Also a good way to endanger some venues.

    So who wins here? Seems like everyone lost. Except Tim Johnson.

  9. Yes indeed the ‘fuck’ thread all through it… very disappointed to hear of this kind of outburst at our beloved venue McD. You know the young parties that are present, and impressionable. If you really have a problem with someone, than disassociate, don’t hate. Hate is a value I wish not for my children. You are not the guardian of the sport, we have governing bodies for that. Please help to create a positive atmosphere or find the nearest exit.

    Hope this wasn’t too long PME

  10. So to sum up;
    A guy that once admitted to doping gets abused by a crazed, racist, one-armed, hate-monger and when said guy defends himself with the hilarious ‘masturbating’ jibe DC rolls in to join the abuse – adding links to said riders team in the hope that the DC massive will get the guy fired or just generally continue the abuse or whatever.
    I’d never heard of Ben or Charles but you’ve certainly helped me form an opinion on both.
    Good work DC. How does that backfire taste?

  11. So can we call this thread dead with a summary of points made?
    A) Half the people here think Ben is classy. Why he came clean after he got popped. Man in handcuffs in the back of a squad car “I stole the car.” Cops say “Wow what a classy guy, he came clean after we got him.” Makes sense. Also classy would of been to completely ignore a guy who is really just trolling to get the reaction Ben gave so he can say “look he’s not classy at all,he’s an asshole.” Which is is exactly what he got. Classy can also be coming out before you got popped and and saying “I’m not gonna dope. I’m not going to sacrifice my integrity for a fistful of dollars.”
    B) Half the people here think Chuck is a really nice guy. From what I have read and heard, I call bullshit. Not having an appendage doesn’t give you a free and clear pass. From what I have read Chuck has no creativity in his heckling and I have no time for that. If promoters are telling you to shut the fuck up. Maybe you need to shut the fuck up. If the handicap-able what to play hockey they better expect to get every once in awhile. I’m EOE when it comes to talking shit. But the arm, or lack there of is an easy target Ben. Should of gone more sublime and picked on his small dick.
    C) Half the people here hate dopers. I don’t get it. I mean I do but I don’t. We will see pictures and coverage of guys known to dope (Marco Pantani) and talk about how awesome they were. But then Ben comes along and he is the god damn devil. Confused on that hypocrisy which is very prevalent in my own mentality.
    D) I see people talking about how DC needs to go back to the days of Porn and blah, blah, blah. I say fuck that. Titties are awesome, I’ll give you that, but the one constant in life is change. You can get porn anywhere. Shit you can go on reddit and get gifs of a foreskin hiding Cheetos if you want. Or two Japanese women scissor dancing with a squid between them. So use your smart phone to look at that stuff. People change as do websites get over it.

    On another note can we stop using pussy, or vagina, or other terms as an insult. I love me some pussy. In fact I would say it is one of my favorite things in life. I really don’t want Chuck, Ben, or Wheeles to be lumped into that same category as something I love. Brings the bar, of what is awesome, way down. Use balls or scrotum or taint instead.
    Also pussy be tough. Your wife’s vagina can take a pounding and come back for more. Where as your set of balls gets grazed by a butterfly wing and your ass is curled up in the fetal position in the corner for ten minutes. I think I like your wife’s vagina more. See what I did there.

  12. Wow. Cyclocross is PATHETIC.

    If it’s not bitching about heckling
    …it’s bitching about callups.
    …or mechanicals.
    …or tire pressure.
    …or caught behind crash.
    …or too muddy.
    …or too dry.
    …or not a power course
    …or too technical.

    Maybe they need to start handing out medals to all the finishers, and cx racers will stop bitching all the time

  13. There is nothing funny about any of this, except for most of it. Chuck should exchange the prosthetic arm for the biggest dildo in the land and run around clobbering everyone off of their trainers with it at the next race.

  14. 77 comments? This doesn’t even rate as the silliest thread on here. I think Big Jonny’s Balls got well over 100, and we drove a couple of littlejar’s rants over 200. Get with it people…

  15. el jefe is right, this is really pretty tame.
    The great political debates preceding a few presidential elections were seriously serious and got pretty nasty at times.
    a shit-ton of bitching and arguing and little to no bikes/boobs/beer talk.

  16. Sounds like Charles was heckling just to piss Ben off. Way passed the fun/entertaining type. Ben then said something to equally piss off Charles. Don’t hide behind the veteran thing that’s fucking stupid. You can’t demand respect if your not earning it. Plus how was been supposed to know he was a veteran he sure as hell wasn’t acting like one. I think Charles and DC is disrespecting veterans WAY more than Ben ever has.

  17. The “I remember when” posts are always my favorite.

    I remember when BioPace came out. Does that make it cool now?

  18. Kapooyah! It’s like my dad said just before being arrested outside that playground; “Fuck em,fuck em all son”. Thanks for all the dip-shittery DC readers, and I hope you do go bugger off the DC threads (per your promise) with your 10,000 word dissertations on the weight and smell of used tampons and other worthless pseudo-intellectual pork-fed diatribes you spew., The readers just helped me kill half a bottle of Three Buck Chuck. Fuck this and fuck that, and that’s a fact.

  19. THIS SIDE, AND THEN THAT SIDE, AND WHAT HE SAID AND THE OTHER GUY SAID! YAAARRGGGHHH!

  20. Powers – there’s little you could do to convince me you’re not a doper. Thank Ben and the rest of your cohorts for that. You want a little respect…. please, you get paid to ride a bike, you’re not curing cancer. If any of these guys respected the bike half as much as themselves there wouldn’t be a pissed off dude running around calling you out.

  21. I’m curing cancer and I know a ton of other scientists who are curing cancer, a good bunch of them are total asshole person…. oh and by the way, we will never cure cancer, put that in your stupid head.

    Heckling an ex-doper is like heckling an ex prisoner (I’m not gonna hire you, fucking convict), or like someone who heckles because I smoked a joint 10 years ago (hey you fucking doper)… Are you people so fucking self righteous ???? Give me a break, and not one in your glasshouse please. The same kind of treatment one arm by is giving to an ex doper recalls the discrimination an ex combat officer has to fight upon return, or the perception of a handicap. Fuck off already, oh and by the way. Yeah I find it fucking funny his dick didn’t fall off like his arm when he masturbated, niggers, get over yourselves.

  22. Everything you said was right until ”Your wife’s vagina can take a pounding and come back for more.” You sir, have a very sad wife who doesn’t have the balls to ask you to make love to her….

  23. Who, in cycling, hasn’t “doped”?
    If the intention of this post was to make your friend Charles look like a huge douche, then great writing!
    If your intention was to be funny, amusing, interesting, or thoughtfully irreverent toward the establishment(all the things I used to read this blog for), huge fucking failure!
    After a six month hiatus from DC, due to all the boring, popular consensus “Lance lie’d to me” bullshit, I decided to check back to see if you got funny again or if there was a cool story from Dirty about gettin lost in the Mexican desert while drinking tequila riding epic goat trodden single track.

    HUGELY DISAPPOINTING SMALL MINDED BULLSHIT!

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