Paul Kimmage wins Sports Interviewer of the Year again

In case there was any doubt about Paul Kimmage’s credentials as a top quality journalist, he’s been voted Sports Interviewer of the Year for the fifth year in a row at the Sports Journalists’ Association Awards.

Seems like a good time to look back at some of the great cycling interviews he’s done over recent years:

The Doper’s Redemption – David Millar (July 2008)

Darkness and Light in Bradley Wiggins (October 2008)

Cycle of Abuse – Greg LeMond (July 2007)

Jonathan Vaughters and his drugs-free team (June 2008)

Allen Lim Rides the Slipstream (July 2008)

Armstrong confirmed for Tour of Ireland in August

It’s been confirmed that Irish cycling fans will get their own little taste of the Second Coming when Lance Armstrong competes in the Tour of Ireland in August this year.

Race organiser Darach McQuaid had this to say about the news:

“The Tour of Ireland could not be more proud than to have Lance Armstrong riding once again on Irish roads in the lead-up to his global cancer summit in Dublin.

“The massive, positive public reaction to his comeback to the sport in Australia in January and California in February indicate that, by the time Lance arrives in Ireland next August, the interest levels will be at fever pitch.”

Whoa there fella! Would you like to try sticking your tongue a little further up His Lordstrong’s arse?

Does anybody else feel like this situation is becoming even more nauseating than we possibly could have feared?

And in case you weren’t aware, yes, Darach McQuaid is related to UCI chief Pat McQuaid. They’re brothers.

The other notable thing about the announcement was the language that Armstrong used:

“Unless we act on a global level, cancer will be the leading cause of death by 2010. Our goal is to be the catalyst that brings everyone together to fight cancer – from survivors, like me, to world leaders and policy-makers who must commit completely to the effort to avoid a public health catastrophe.”

I don’t really have any desire to parse every word Armstrong says, but there’s something odd here about his description of cancer as a “public health catastrophe”. Honestly, if all cancers are grouped together, I’m surprised it isn’t already the number one worldwide cause of death. As a guess, I’d think maybe only heart disease, HIV and some preventable diseases like malaria or tuberculosis could come near it. How can a disease that roughly one in three people will develop during their lifetime be anything other than a public health catastrophe? It’s not as if anyone in the world is unaware of that. But cancer isn’t suddenly a grave threat to public health like bird flu or HIV. It’s an ever-present possibility that we all live with from the first time we hear of a relative who’s died from the disease. How on earth can we avoid it?

And again, there’s that implication from Armstrong (which was present in his dismissal of Paul Kimmage) that if you don’t support him wholeheartedly, you must want cancer to continue killing people. Which is simply absurd. Everyone has been touched by it at some point in their lives and would hope for as much money as possible to be raised for research into treatment of the disease, but it doesn’t mean that awkward questions about doping posed to Armstrong should lose any of their validity simply because they’re asked by a journalist who is hostile to him. There’s no magic cloak.

Kimmage and Armstrong

After his run-in with Lance Armstrong at the Tour of California press conference last week, I’m sure Paul Kimmage won’t have been at all surprised by the way he’s been treated in the US media. It’s easy for them to portray him as a bitter ex-pro looking for publicity, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. If a great champion like Greg LeMond can be demonised and made to feel as if his business interests are being threatened because of his outspoken views about Lance Armstrong, then Kimmage was always going to get the same brutal treatment.

It’s not exactly the first time he’s has been vilified for posing awkward questions to famous riders about doping either. His feud with Stephen Roche dragged on for a while even though he never directly accused Roche of anything and despite the fact that there was rock solid medical evidence that Roche had been part of the Carrera team (which also included Marco Pantani and Claudio Chiappucci) that had been ‘treated’ at the University of Ferrara between 1993 and 1995.

Keith Duggan from the Irish Times is one of the few people who seem to have pointed out Kimmage’s response to Armstrong’s tirade:

He responded to the attack from the feted world champion in spirited fashion, pointing out that he, too had lost people through that illness, that he too had raced bikes professionally and that exposing the ills of professional cycling had become his life’s work. It was a brave stance to take in what was a hostile room. After a few charged seconds of awkwardness, the public relations man called for the next question.

“Back to the Tour of California,” someone began in a sardonic voice and there was widespread laughter, which disguised the sound of all the uncomfortable questions being brushed away under the carpet.

It’s a great shame that the work that people like Paul Kimmage, David Walsh, Matt Rendell, Jeremy Whittle and others have put into exposing the blackened heart of pro cycling isn’t acknowledged more widely by people who call themselves fans of the sport. Even among his peers in the world of journalism, most would rather Kimmage kept his mouth shut. So it seems almost inevitable that the sport will carry on as it always has, with journalists too complacent and star-struck to ask probing questions, in cahoots with breathless fans hanging up their bunting every time a race comes to their town; proudly wearing their little coloured wristbands while steadfastly keeping their heads in the sand when it comes to accusations against their heroes. At the same time, people like Kimmage will be portrayed as bitter self-publicists out to tear down a hero’s legacy. Armstrong even seems to think that Kimmage is pro-cancer. Now there’s a concept that neatly encapsulates how ludicrous the debate around this sport has become.

The only thing I disagree with in Paul Kimmage’s original statement is that I don’t believe pro cycling has been in remission since Armstrong retired. There have been a few green shoots in the sport over that time, with a number of teams clearly trying to do as much as they can to prevent their riders getting away with doping. Then we had the cheats at the 2008 Tour de France being caught when they thought they were one step ahead of the testers. But then again, there are real doubts emerging about the effectiveness of independent testing; the owners of the Tour de France have handed the responsibility for testing back to the UCI rather than Pierre Bordry’s AFLD and the UCI’s proposed bio-passport scheme still isn’t fully operational. Perhaps you could say that the problems in cycling haven’t got any worse since Armstrong originally retired, but I just hope we don’t end up looking back on 2008 as the high water mark in the fight against doping.

Mancebo victory should embarrass the Tour of California

As Cycling Weekly’s Simon Richardson puts it, the decision taken by the organisers of the Tour of California not to stop Operation Puerto suspect Francesco Mancebo from riding this year’s race (as they did last year) has come back and “bit them on the ass” on the very first stage.

After winning the first stage, Mancebo had this to say:

“I’m very happy. The whole world has seen (the stage win). And I have nothing else to say. I’m just happy and proud of what I did today.”

It’s wonderful to have another unrepentant doper back on the world stage again isn’t it?

Who can we look forward to hearing a self-congratulatory soundbite from next? Basso? Hamilton? Landis? My, what a treat we have in store.

Armstrong uses Twitter to find stolen bike

Ladies and gentlemen, we might have reached a new low in Lance Armstrong minutiae making headline news in the mainstream media.

The top story on The Guardian’s sport section is about Lance Armstrong tweeting about the theft of three time trial bikes from the Astana team bus.

Now I know that Twitter is the cool new thing for journalists to talk about. For what it’s worth, I really like it. But is this the big news story of the day? Really? You don’t think this reduces a sporting event to the level of say, Celebrity Big Brother?

Race promoter lauds Armstrong

Sick bags ahoy.

Tom Sickmann, co-promoter of the Tour de Guene – an event that Lance Armstrong unexpectedly entered last weekend explained the increased interest in the race as being down to the “Lance factor,” adding that, “people don’t look at him like a rock star, or celebrity, they see someone who has transcended sport with his story. They see inspiration; they see hope.”

Anybody would think he was running for President or something.

Even when I used to believe in him, at no point did I ever think he had transcended the sport. Not even for a moment.

Sadly, this is exactly the kind of nauseating crap that we’ll be seeing all of next season from people with a financial interest in the races Lance Armstrong attends.

Weekly round-up

I’ve collected lots of little bits and pieces of post-season stuff, so thought I’d throw a few together:

Each rider will be submitted to at least eight tests in order to gain a biological passport next year.

UCI chief Pat McQuaid has come out with a statement that frankly beggars belief regarding retrospective testing:

“If we’re going to start rejigging the podium of every major international race over the past two or three years, by finding new tests for new products, and going back to the organizer and saying ‘you’ve got to rejig your podium’ .. it makes a complete mockery of sport,” he said. “You need very good information in order to do that in the first place.”

You mean a worse mockery of sport than we have now Pat? You’ve got to be kidding! This is tantamount to saying, ‘good luck to them, they were clever enough to use stuff that was undetectable at the time, the scamps’. We’re not giving out gold stars for ingenuity here, we’re talking about the decaying integrity of an entire sport. What a fucking idiotic thing for the president of the UCI to be saying publicly.

Velonews have published a two-part interview with Garmin boss Jonathan Vaughters. In part one he’s asked about the cancellation of the Tour of Germany and suggests that “more patience on the sponsor’s part would have been good in this situation.” But how long can you reasonably expect them to wait for the sport to be cleaned up? Perhaps they’re just fed up of being taken for mugs time after time, and have decided to show some backbone.

In part two, Vaughters hails retro-active testing as “a massive deterrent and a really positive development. Because now you can’t say, oh, I have some drugs that no one knows about it. Three or four years from now, they’re going to know about it, and in another 18 months after that they will have a test for it, and they can go back and test it. I think now that that precedent has been set for retroactive testing, it’s going to be one of the greatest developments in anti-doping and a really strong deterrent for anything — even autologous transfusions.”

That contrasts noticeably with McQuaid’s earlier comments and also reminded me of an old interview from 2004 that Michael Ashenden gave about how truly repulsive blood transfusions without medical necessity are. He also offered the tantalising prospect of retrospectively testing for homologous transfusions eight years into the future. It goes into a lot of detail, so if you’re a bit squeamish (like me) you might not make it to the end of the article. I really had to force myself.

And finally, Michael Rasmussen will be up in front of the CAS on 13th November. While we’re on the subject of blood transfusions, let’s not forget the allegations made about Rasmussen that he was prepared to use a blood product only licensed for veterinary purposes, which consisted of red blood cells extracted from cows.

Major German races cancelled

Hot on the heels of the cancellation of the Six Days of Stuttgart which would’ve been held in January, comes the news that the 2009 Tour of Germany has also been cancelled.

A statement from the organisers said:

“Due to the current developments in professional cycling we are no longer in a position to successfully finance and market the event.”

It’s interesting that the Tour of Germany would’ve been held between August 29-September 6. That just happens to be a week before the 2009 Tour of Britain is scheduled to start. I wonder if the organisers are considering extending the event now that a window in the calendar has opened up? It would certainly give them a chance to invite even more dubious characters next year. Not that things went that well for some of them.

Bernhard Kohl admission round-up

Here are a few quotes from Bernhard Kohl now that he has admitted using CERA during the Tour:

From VeloNews:

“The pressure was overwhelming,” he said. “I was looking ahead to the Tour and realized I was not in the kind of condition I had hoped to be. I am just a man and a man who made a decision at a moment of weakness. I made a bad decision and I have to pay for that.”

From the BBC article:

“I have only myself to blame for this mess… I had a bad feeling to have cheated so many fans and all of Austria, so many young people who became enthusiastic about the sport because of me. It was not a good feeling and that’s why I’m relieved the truth is out.

“I thought this medication could not be traced but it could be traced. I hope every medication can be traceable in future. I would like to play my part so the sport becomes cleaner.”

And finally, from a selection of Austrian newspapers (via VeloNews again):

“The King of the Mountains in freefall,” headlined the Kurier daily.

Austria’s largest newspaper, the tabloid Kronen Zeitung claimed: “Austria has lost a sporting idol.”

You’ve got to love the bit about him being relieved that the truth was out because knowing he had cheated was a ‘bad feeling’. It clearly wasn’t horrible enough for him to admit to it before he was publicly named as having tested positive. He must have known for about a week after his roommate Stefan Schumacher’s positive test for CERA that he too would almost certainly be caught. Clearly that ‘bad feeling’ did not drive him to confess until he absolutely had to. Would he have given up the lucrative contract he had signed to be Cadel Evans’ lieutenant at Silence-Lotto next year? Of course not. He would’ve carried on, kept his mouth shut, taken the money and carried on cheating. We can only wonder how many other riders have done the same thing without being caught.

To a limited extent I can understand how huge pressure could lead someone to doing this, so I’m glad Kohl has explained this on some level. It offers the rest of us a glimpse into why this has happened so often over the years. But I have no sympathy for him whatsoever and I fervently hope that he never returns to the sport of cycling in any capacity.

McQuaid wants four-year bans

UCI chief Pat McQuaid has publicly raised the issue of extending bans for what he describes as ‘willful cheating’:

“I have said before that I would like to see them out of the sport for good. That is purely on a personal level,” he stated. “However, we are obliged to follow the world anti-doping code, and that is what the UCI will do. Currently the world anti-doping code gives a maximum two-year sanction in the case of a positive test. From the first of January there is a bit more flexibility in it, and we can go up to a four year ban in the cases of something regarded as willful cheating.”

Hallelujah.

I believe McQuaid is largely preaching to the converted here. A lot of people in the sport will agree wholeheartedly, particularly those of us who are sick of seeing people like Basso, Vinokourov, Hamilton, et al slowly burrowing their way back into the sport without first admitting their guilt, after spending their entire bans whining in the face of overwhelming evidence against them.

There is a question though, over whether this would make it more or less likely that riders would co-operate and name names. Perhaps the thinking behind it is that a four-year ban kills a career stone dead, so you might as well talk. Nobody is going to wait around and offer you a way back into the sport if you’re going to be gone for four years. I think any measure that shifts the balance in the risk versus reward doping equation has to be a good thing.