Tonight’s bullshit

This is to be tonight’s catch all post. Go figure.

Email from Lovedog:

From: Lovedog
Two links here (one NPR audio player, one for RealPlayer, both are the same 29 min. interview) regarding Floyd and his book and his ongoing doping legal issues:

npr.org/blogs/talk/2007/07/floyd_landis_on_floyd_landis,

and

npr.org/templates/story/story.

Interesting perspectives, comments and arguments. It is worth the time to listen.

A few things to mention…

If you are adamant about riding clean wouldn’t you be extremely interested in the RIDECLEAN project? Floyd was at a RIDECLEAN team member’s house the night prior to El Tour de Tucson 2006….and granted this is only a 2nd hand story, but apparently he was mostly interested in the music choice for the evening. Later at a Scottsdale fund raiser, when he met a RIDECLEAN T-shirt clad fan of cycling, Landis, to the best of my knowledge as a founding member of RIDECLEAN, has shown no interest in the project, although he did pose for a picture.

Ride Clean

If you were adamant about riding clean, wouldn’t you gladly accept free RIDECLEAN merchandise to promote clean riding? This was not the case when I presented Gord Fraser (he calls in to NPR during the Floyd Landis interview-so please listen to it via the link) with a RIDECLEAN T-shirt at the post El Tour party. He offered to wash his car with it, but not wear it. Maybe just an “off” joke, but it definitely made for an awkward conversation and gift attempt….somewhat contrary to the message delivered over the phone to NPR listeners. Upon my 2nd attempt, Gord did accept, somewhat reluctantly, some RIDECLEAN socks. He said that they would not to be used while riding on the road, or while conducting camps, but while Mt. biking.

I am in no way saying the above scenarios are indicative of doping, but after contemplating the NPR interview what strikes me is no mention or promotion of clean sport, only accusations and speculation regarding lab testing. Without promotion of clean sport, how do these professional cyclist see anything changing with the doping policies they criticize? How do we move forward without this type of movement being embraced by the sport’s top figures? What legacy will be left for our future athletes with the current approach?

I don’t really care if these guys doped or not, what matters is the future of cycling and I think we need everyone’s help to improve it.

That’s about it for tonight.

Link dump:

[cycling videos out the ass] belgiumkneewarmers.blogspot.com
[paul kimmage] timesonline.co.uk
[good times] studentsfororwell.org
[tour de schmalz] velocitynation.com
[ghetto fab] boners.com
[tempe az] myspace.com/bikesaviours
[more outta tempe] azcrap.org

About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

21 Replies to “Tonight’s bullshit”

  1. Nice, shoey! Floyd always speaks highly of you.

    Maybe you could direct your astute intellectual responses toward the more deserving. Gee ! I wonder who that might be, in this country ?

  2. Gordo’s a pro. If he’s making a public appearance, or on his road bike, he’s required to wear his team kit. Rideclean’s a good project, but we shouldn’t expect pros to drop everything for it.

  3. oh horse shit

    Lovedog is exactly correct.

    There is a litmus test. Out there, and it has to do if riders talk about either 1) spitting in the soup or anything aligned with discrediting riders who speak out against doping or 2) if riders talk about exposing doping, a clean future, the sins of doping and get rightly pissed if other riders are doping.

    The litmus test is 100% accurate. There has never been a recorded failure of the litmus test, and we should call it “Phlegm in the Soup Test”.

    Indurain talked about “spitting in the soup”. Indurain = doper
    Lemond gets ballistic about doping. Lemond = clean.
    Armstrong went after Simonei and was prideful how a lot of the peloton that day cheered him on. Armstrong = doper.

    All you have to do is listen to any given interview, and you know the deal.

    Let’s put it this way. If you were training your ass off, and a guy you normally stomp on, starts sailing past you and his HR is now 15 beats lower and he isn’t panting, you wouldn’t be mad as fucking hell? The only way you wouldn’t be pissed is if you were planning your own round of microbursting the esteemed Amgen product.

  4. and if a pro-rider doesn’t want to wear your t-shirt, they’re a doper?

  5. Go read it again Burleigh, there is a LOT more in there than just the T-shirt.

    And go listen to the interview too.

  6. Wow. Talk about reading into things a bit too much…

    Floyd supports and promotes the company that provided his artificial hip, as well, but he doesn’t wear Smith & Nephew gear everywhere he goes. Oh my god! That must mean he’s anti-prosthetic joints and wants people to suffer Avascular Necrosis!

  7. You fucking asshats and your blind devotion to Lemond racing clean during his career make me laugh until I piss myself. He says he raced clean but he raced in an era when riders could pretty much dope freely without worrying about being caught. Who fucking tested this guy? How many times? And what is he now? A fucking bitter wack job trying to pump himself back up. His whining is irritating and so is the blind devotion validating it.

  8. -The litmus test is 100% accurate. There has never been a
    -recorded failure of the litmus test, and we should call it “Phlegm
    -in the Soup Test”.

    That’s because there can’t be a failure of the litmus test, you twit. You can’t prove clean, and you can’t prove doping well after the fact. All you can do is catch dopers and then say, oh, he never went ballistic to the press about doping, the test works!!!

    Find me one rider in the modern peloton who gets really worked up about doping. Then when he retires clean, you might begin to have a point.

  9. We’re not talking about specific evidence of dope or not; we’re talking about Lovedog’s observations on key people making strong anti dope statements, or not, and what that means with respect to the whole omerta deal and if the “RideClean” ethic is going to float, and why is it so strange that so many riders don’t make strong anti doping statements?

    It stands to reason, if you want to race professionally, and don’t dope, you’re going to get pissed about people doping. Somewhere, you’re going to vent.

    I’ll just start parsing rider’s quotes, and then you can choose to pull the omerta veil over the head, or not.

    An aside: Look Colin, are you going to support RideClean ethics, or not?

    It’s pretty clear, when you have even partial history of the doping history in cycling.

    Let’s look at Kimmage’s column here
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article1845407.ece

    where he wrote
    **********************************************
    It was business as usual at the Eurosport studios on Friday when David Harmon went to work. The 13th stage of the Tour of Italy had taken the race into the Alps and Harmon had been on air for 90 minutes when he brought viewers the breaking news from Denmark. “The word we are getting over the head-phones is that Bjarne Riis [the Danish winner of the 1996 Tour de France] has admitted using EPO,” he announced.

    Harmon, whose cheerleading style is much admired by fans, shares the microphone at Eurosport with Sean Kelly, an icon of the sport, but the former world No 1 seemed suddenly subdued. “The questions will come tumbling out now,” Harmon observed.

    Kelly did not ask any. “I shall leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions,” Harmon said.

    Kelly did not draw any. Harmon returned to the subject three times before the end of the broadcast, but on each occasion Kelly had nothing to say.
    *************************************

    Do you think Paul Kimmage is just talking out of his ass? And Jakaske, and Manzano, and … and … and ….

    You think riders talking about “spitting in the soup” are …. ????????????????

  10. Pingback: RocBike.com » Links Of The Day: 13 July 2007

  11. Anyone stop to think that requesting pros to pimp your program against doping might be insulting? These are the same folks who continue to say the doping problem is not a big as everyone says it is. Why would they start wearing gear that furthers the notion that all riders dope?

    Add to that they have their own sponsors to pimp since they, you know, pay the bills.

    I don’t know what to think really. If the tests are so good, you’d think more riders would pop a positive now and then. I’m more inclined to believe there are just some folks out there who work harder than I do and have more natural ability than I do and that’s okay. At the same time, there are those riders of certain teams and countries that seem to have an inordinate number of TUEs. Of course, I’m not a bitter ex-racer who feels like it wasn’t old age and injury that may have made me slower.

    I always try to remember every time I go to a college campus, the girls never seem to get any older (or less hot). Of course, I get older and the hot girls I went to college with got older too (and for some it shows). Every old rider is replaced with a younger fast rider. It’s the nature of any sport.

  12. Floyd verdict is soooo late, maybe they are waiting for most dramatic day of tour to release verdict….scam

  13. Well Bush43 you are saying it’s evidence..specific or not;

    “Indurain talked about “spitting in the soup”. Indurain = doper
    Lemond gets ballistic about doping. Lemond = clean.
    Armstrong went after Simonei and was prideful how a lot of the peloton that day cheered him on. Armstrong = doper.”

    And I don’t agree with your comment here. Maybe what they are really saying that these guys are tarnishing the rep of Euro Pro Cycling with baseless accusations. So Simeoni says Ferrari injected him? Maybe he was injected and maybe he’s looking for some attention because his career is in the crapper (which it was if you look at his results in the latter part of his career). We need names, dates, especially correspondence or documentation of some sort, and police that know how to investigate this stuff so that the people who provide don’t slither away. Trying to get Fraser or other pros to wear a t-shirt that, at the root, says the sport is rotten is the wrong way to go about it. I think it’s great that Ride Clean exists as an advocacy group but they should be careful with how they present themselves to the pro ranks.

  14. I guess the crux Evil Bumpkin is the term “baseless accusations”.

    We could go to 1000 pieces of evidence as to if they are baseless or not. Does the Euro peloton mostly dope, or not. Mostly being about 90% of them. All I can say is you can read the abundant sources and come to your own conclusion.

    Now I know and have known a lot of people who have been in and also others close to the pro elite level in a number of capacities, mostly as racers. People I’ve known for 20 years. From conversing with them I’ve come to certain conclusions, as well as from the extensive reporting and judicial proceedings on the subject widely available to us all.

    Nobody has to wear a T-shirt. I don’t think that is what Lovedog related. But saying they would “wash their car” with it is a whole lot different than graciously saying thanks, but I can’t for sponsor reasons and/or other of many perfectly acceptable reasons.

    What Lovedog was saying, that is important to me, is until we hear widespread promotion of RideClean type ethics, some natural anger at being cheated out of results by dopers, the whole thing is quite unbelievable. Especially juxtaposed with what has been revealed by riders on the subject. As a big sportswriter recently said, we still enjoy watching it, but now we know we are not watching honest competition, but actually a form of WWE just played out on wheels instead of a ring.

  15. bikesgonewild – how about we talk about how your uncle played hide the salami every christmas and easter

  16. I know shoey knows him better than I do but from the “Whiskey” to the Black Suit with his hand out the whole time Floyd thinks he is the most deserving in this Country. But Shoey I might agree but there are other words for this dumbass. Assclown would have worked

    as to the Lemond “bitter” comment. blind devotion to Lemond? WTF is that shit about and WTF does Greg have to be bitter about anyway?

    Nice logic. LThat is like calling Jonny gay for not selling porn anymore

    war shoeyshoemaker

    and bushy. WWF is a reach bro unless you wish to expand

    save the dogma for the GOP

  17. Nice again, shoey! I believe the pros call that projection & now I see why both your Uncle & Floyd always speak highly of you.
    You sure you only got it @ Christmas & Easter cuz it sounds like it mighta been a little more often.
    But, Hey, like Big Jonny sez “Not that there is anything wrong with it…”

  18. Agreed on the carwashing comment. Not the best form. There are more diplomatic ways to go about it for sure. You are right…there is a lot of information out there. Whether it’s evidence or not I don’t know. Puerto is one thing I would definitely classify as evidence. I guess my point is (and we may be talking about two differnt aspects of the bigger issue at hand) is people such as Simeoni, Lemond and others who say the sport is rotten but don’t bring anything to the table to back it up are really damaging cycling..not helping it. It’s great that they talk. Freedom of speach is a wonderful thing! I have a voice too but I choose not to speak on certain issues until I can back it up. That is what I think, perhaps, Indurain and Armstrong were getting at. Don’t dis our sport unless you can back it up. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not under any misconceptions at all. I know it’s likely that most of the peloton is dirty. Hell..I’ll even go so far as to say I have suspicions about Armstrong and Indurain and any other rider that has been dominant in their career.

  19. it is really quite simple.

    RideClean…and the rest will follow…no judging involved.

    it’s about cheating, full stop. what kind of victory have you achieved when you KNOW when you close your eyes at night that it WAS NOT YOUR VICTORY? pretty fucking hollow.

    i am not so naiive as to think that there are not a whole shit-pot of pressures brought to bear that influence the impulse to cheat..from peers, from big money etc. i know the history of sport as well as anyone.

    you have to ask a fundamental question here, as SadCow did to me recently: can you actually get rid of it?

    tough one, that question … i’m willing to cast my lot in with the bunch that says “lets try” because cheating really sucks.