If one riders uses PED’s, should the team be penalized?

[Clancy]

Interesting comments from Tom Dumoulin on his teammate.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/team-mate-might-not-racing-clean-thats-bitter-pill-swallow-tom-dumoulin-responds-georg-preidler-charged-fraud-438025

Made me wonder, should the entire team be penalized? Preidler rode in support of Dumoulin’s win at the Giro the year Dumoulin won.

I have a lot of respect for Dumoulin and believe his comments are sincere. But none the less, A rider that is doping obviously can add more support to the team leader. Should this in any way tarnish Dumoulin’s win?

I do not intend this to be a flame war on dopers, far from it. Rather how doping impacts not only a rider but also the team, the race and race organizers.

If a team knew it would be stripped of a title if one member was found to have doped, would it greatly lessen the incidents of doping?

I realize I maybe in the minority but I do believe both the UCI, WADA, and race organizers are doing what they can to clean up the sport.

Would this type of action help to further clean-up the sport?

[Peter P.]

That's the way it works in the military; one person eff's up, the entire unit gets punished. That way, peer pressure usually results in greater compliance, and also the unit polices itself, not waiting for outside factors to catch problem individuals.

[oldpotatoe]

That's the way it works in the military; one person eff's up, the entire unit gets punished. That way, peer pressure usually results in greater compliance, and also the unit polices itself, not waiting for outside factors to catch problem individuals.

ahhh, no. If one sailor is busted on a random pee test and even if his buddies knew it..the whole branch/division doesn't get punished. BUT, I've seen peer pressure in action tho..in letting the 'powers' know somebody is f'ed up..anonymously..we called it 'AnyMouse'...

As for the bike racer guy...I doubt nobody knew it, I think the team should get punished somehow...

[jamesdak]

ahhh, no. If one sailor is busted on a random pee test and even if his buddies knew it..the whole branch/division doesn't get punished. BUT, I've seen peer pressure in action tho..in letting the 'powers' know somebody is f'ed up..anonymously..we called it 'AnyMouse'...


Beat me too it. Sure didn't sound like the military I spent 22 years in.

[colker]

Beat me too it. Sure didn't sound like the military I spent 22 years in.


Maybe... but we are not a militarized society so not every military rule applies.

[FlashUNC]

That's a really bad standard to use, unless you want to accelerate sponsors leaving what is already a shallow pool of support for the sport.

[jamesdak]

Maybe... but we are not a militarized society so not every military rule applies.

LOL, no kidding. :confused: Never said it did or should, just round the other response inaccurate.

[jamesdak]

That's a really bad standard to use, unless you want to accelerate sponsors leaving what is already a shallow pool of support for the sport.

Maybe that's what the sport needs though? Obviously the oversight against doping and other cheating still doesn't work. What does it take for the Peloton to be truly clean and competing fairly?

[FlashUNC]

Maybe that's what the sport needs though? Obviously the oversight against doping and other cheating still doesn't work. What does it take for the Peloton to be truly clean and competing fairly?

If you don't have sponsors, you don't have a sport, at least as has existed for the last century.

I don't subscribe to the you-have-to-burn-down-the-village-to-save-it theory.

[Clancy]

That's a really bad standard to use, unless you want to accelerate sponsors leaving what is already a shallow pool of support for the sport.

A good point, one I didn’t consider. Maybe in the short term but perhaps attract more sponsors in the end?

I do remember way back in the day, if someone blew an assignment or messed-up during football practice, we all had to run laps. But this was H.S. And we didn’t have any sponsors. 🤣

[benb]

Yah burn it all down and see if we can have it come back actually clean.

Heck kick the team out if the DS has doping in their background too, no matter how committed they sound to clean racing now.

[Alaska Mike]

Even on "clean" teams, riders still get busted. Tommy Danielson riding for Garmin comes to mind. The culture there was supposed to be as anti-doping as it got, but it still happens. Not sure what else they could have done, to be honest. At a certain point, dopers are going to dope.

Riders get desperate, looking for the results that will get or keep them in the game. It's not as open as it once was in the Festina days, and the dopers generally keep it as quiet and compartmentalized as possible to avoid getting caught through a targeted test because somebody talked.

Most professional positives are coming from places like South American and Eastern European countries, where anti-doping bodies are not as strong. In the more developed nations, the dopers are more sophisticated and doping rings like Aderlass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aderlass) get unraveled through confessions.

One positive doesn't make the team dirty. A string of them?

[benb]

Even on "clean" teams, riders still get busted. Tommy Danielson riding for Garmin comes to mind. The culture there was supposed to be as anti-doping as it got, but it still happens. Not sure what else they could have done, to be honest. At a certain point, dopers are going to dope.


On his clean team run by a doper. No surprise.

[FlashUNC]

Yah burn it all down and see if we can have it come back actually clean.

Heck kick the team out if the DS has doping in their background too, no matter how committed they sound to clean racing now.

The sport has never been clean. Ever. Tough to see how that changes when you ask guys to ride as fast as humanly possible over 2,500-ish miles in a three week period with two rest days.

[mt2u77]

A positive should trigger an investigation and additional testing of the team. If the investigation reveals a systemic problem, repeated violations, or team complicity (prior knowledge, or lack of institutional control), the team should be punished.

Otherwise, what's to stop doping up the domestiques to carry the contender to the threshold-- contender puts in a few minutes of work, contender wins, contender is clean, team claims the "clean" victory.

[benb]

The sport has never been clean. Ever. Tough to see how that changes when you ask guys to ride as fast as humanly possible over 2,500-ish miles in a three week period with two rest days.

And yet the grand tours were actually harder in the days before these high test drugs were invented.

Aspirin, tobacco, and wine were not the same kind of doping as EPO and blood transfusions and T patches & steroids.

Heck those guys had to fix their own bikes too!

[FlashUNC]

And yet the grand tours were actually harder in the days before these high test drugs were invented.

Aspirin, tobacco, and wine were not the same kind of doping as EPO and blood transfusions and T patches & steroids.

Heck those guys had to fix their own bikes too!

Let's not poo poo it. Late 19th and early 20th century riders were doing a lot of -- at the time -- uppers and pain killers. Cocaine, strychnine, chloroform. Henri Desgrange had to tell riders in the rule book the race wouldn't be distributing drugs to them it was so pervasive.

And this is pre all the amphetamines and La Bombas and all other nonsense that crept in post-war.

Are they the same as targeted blood doping? No. But riding 400km over dirt roads while on a cocktail of cocaine and strychnine ain't exactly as romantic as position it with aspirin and wine.

If anything, blood doping made racing more exciting. The early/mid 90s were a heyday of positively bonkers racing.

[weiwentg]

A positive should trigger an investigation and additional testing of the team. If the investigation reveals a systemic problem, repeated violations, or team complicity (prior knowledge, or lack of institutional control), the team should be punished.

Otherwise, what's to stop doping up the domestiques to carry the contender to the threshold-- contender puts in a few minutes of work, contender wins, contender is clean, team claims the "clean" victory.

I'd endorse this. It may be hard to work in practice, because riders get tested at races and by their own national federations (correct me if I'm wrong). Some countries are less rigorous about testing than others. I don't want to name names, but we all have an idea which countries I'm thinking about.

(But let's not get too cocky - we had Dopestrong here in the US, France had Laurent Jalabert even if he was riding for a mainly Spanish team, etc.)

[Clancy]

Has a member of a wining TTT team ever been caught with a positive? If so, is the result nullified?

I can’t remember but in Lance’s tour wins, did the team ever win a TTT?

[Dino Suegiù]

Has a member of a wining TTT team ever been caught with a positive?
I can’t remember but in Lance’s tour wins, did the team ever win a TTT?
Yes.
USPS/Discovery; TdF; won the TTT in 2003, 2004, 2005.
Armstrong, Hincapie, Landis, Zabriskie, etc were all later found positive, and were individually DQ'd (individual stage results nullified retroactively).

I would guess that this has happened for other teams/riders/events.

The TTT results those riders contributed to still stand, interestingly, in that winning WC/Olympics track relay team results are individual- and team-nullified even if only one member is found positive. Usain Bolt/the Jamaican team were stripped (in 2017) of the 2008 Olympics 4x100 Gold Medal and WR because of Nesta Carter's positive doping tests.

If so, is the result nullified?
Apparently not.
The TTT stage result is not (has not been to date) nullified. USPS/Discovery are still listed as the winning team of those TTT stages even as Armstong's, Hincapie's, Landis's, Zabriskie's, etc names have been stricken as the individual winner of other stages in those same TdFs.

[72gmc]

Otherwise, what's to stop doping up the domestiques to carry the contender to the threshold-- contender puts in a few minutes of work, contender wins, contender is clean, team claims the "clean" victory.

“Not me” — Vincenzo Nibali

[Peter P.]

ahhh, no.

Obviously, we were in different branches. :rolleyes:

[John H.]

I think that a team and also management penalty would go a long way to addressing the doping issue.
Suspend the license of the team for a year.
Suspend the GM and directors of said team for a year.
Longer penalties for 2nd offenses.

If they did that the teams would be interested in having clean riders- Currently they are only concerned about having riders who do not test positive.

[citycyclist247]

Mmm, it’s hard to say. As some may have learned from group projects in school there are people that don’t care about the welfare and success of the colelctive group. I think an investigation should be done to ascertain if the team was in on it or just turned a blind eye. But to punish hard working and honest people for the poor decisions of one person is a serious punishment. The others have themselves and families to provide for.

[rwsaunders]

Without doing any deep research, any armchair fan of the sport can point out that at least 3 of the 18 UCI World Tour teams are managed and led by dopers...Zabel, Vinokurov and Vaughters of Katusha, Astana and EF. Are we really supposed to believe that these individuals care about rider health and welfare and riding “clean”? When a rider gets popped, they drop him like a bad habit and disavow any knowledge of his issue. Ineos doesn’t count btw, as Brailsford has stated that they are clean so we need to trust him....

[Clancy]

Without doing any deep research, any armchair fan of the sport can point out that at least 3 of the 18 UCI World Tour teams are managed and led by dopers...Zabel, Vinokurov and Vaughters of Katusha, Astana and EF. Are we really supposed to believe that these individuals care about rider health and welfare and riding “clean”? When a rider gets popped, they drop him like a bad habit and disavow any knowledge of his issue. Ineos doesn’t count btw, as Brailsford has stated that they are clean so we need to trust him....

A parent strives to keep a child from repeating the mistakes in life the parent made. Maybe I should amend that to say a good moral parent.

I would hope that instinct to care for those that follow applies here.

I realize that perception of any figure in public life is influenced (manipulated?) by the individual, press, press agents, and ever more so by social media. I’m saying that as a qualifier to my next statements.

I wouldn’t trust Vinokurov to manage a pee-wee football team (if such teams still exist) and find it near impossible to cheer any rider on Astana.

I do believe in the sincerity of Vaughters’ motives and actions and enjoy seeing EF succeed.

Naive perhaps