Cat 3 banned -out of comp test

[William]

Originally Posted by peanutgallery

Cat4/5 => having fun

Cat 3 => delusional

Cat 1/2 => unemployable

Glad to see nothing has changed and amateur road in the US is alive and well. Thought it was dead

Thanks for the laugh!






William

[zap]

USA cycling Cat 3..........out of competition test?

Really!

Did USADA use Facebook or Google to track the bloke?

[kgreene10]

Originally Posted by fignon's barber

I think the most pathetic part is that they actually wasted money on an expensive dope test on him, out of competition. Looks like this guy was Cat 4/5 pack fodder who did a grand total of 11 races over the last 5 years:
https://www.road-results.com/racer/93811

Completely agree. I think USAC and USADA are totally wrong headed in what they are doing with their time and racer / taxpayer resources when there are genuinely urgent things that at least USAC should be doing about improving safety. Sure, test the Cat 1 riders if you must and police the pro ranks to keep sponsors in the game, but then transfer all effort and resources to increasing safety so obsessed cycling dads like me don’t discourage their kids from getting into the sport. I can parent surrounding drugs and sportsmanship. I can’t parent my way to a safer environment on the open roads. But a concerted lobbying effort coordinated by USAC and involving existing local bicycle advocacy organizations could make an actual life and death difference.

[redir]

Originally Posted by BobC

This is laughable at so many levels as USCF once again shows their incompetence.

Step back & think about this: instead of going after the serious cheating masters racers, they target a below-average cat IV who has done about a dozen races & not placed in any -- in an out of competition urinalysis.

Bravo Zulu, USCF. You really showed some fortitude here.

It's kind of hard to argue with the fact that they caught a cheater yeah? If anything the randomness of this type of testing should strike home to anyone else who is doping.

[GregL]

Originally Posted by kgreene10

Completely agree. I think USAC and USADA are totally wrong headed in what they are doing with their time and racer / taxpayer resources when there are genuinely urgent things that at least USAC should be doing about improving safety. Sure, test the Cat 1 riders if you must and police the pro ranks to keep sponsors in the game, but then transfer all effort and resources to increasing safety so obsessed cycling dads like me don’t discourage their kids from getting into the sport. I can parent surrounding drugs and sportsmanship. I can’t parent my way to a safer environment on the open roads. But a concerted lobbying effort coordinated by USAC and involving existing local bicycle advocacy organizations could make an actual life and death difference.

USAC and USADA are in the businesses of racing and anti-doping, respectively. Their purpose is not general bicycling advocacy. The League of American Bicyclists is the appropriate group to target safer roads and local bicycle advocacy. As a licensed racer, I'm glad that cheaters are being targeted. I laughed my @$$ off when last year's state championship road race had drug testing for the masters winners. I'd guess that more than a few riders were suitably frightened by the prospect of a drug test!

Greg

[benb]

Given how little he races and that he had a prescription I'd be more likely to side on the side of this being USCF/USADA stupidity. This test/ban changes/will change 0 results it looks like. If he was following his doctors orders it was probably a dose that didn't make any difference.

Yet another reason not to pay their license fees and line up. They do just about nothing productive for the grassroots as far as I can tell and they mishandle the cases of all the pros where they should be paying way more attention and enforcing things in a way more even handed manner. (And every single person at USCF who enabled the Armstrong era should have been kicked to the curb by now)

Every time nutrition comes up on this forum half the thread is people espousing all kinds of garbage from GNC... news flash you could be this guy. How many pros have to tell you they gave up the supplements since they don't work and they sent some to a lab and they came back positive for banned substances?

I wonder how far this testing money could have gone towards things like defraying police detail costs for local races and stuff like that.. we seem to have pretty regular threads about big races closing up shop over costs and other things.

[carpediemracing]

Originally Posted by GregL

USAC and USADA are in the businesses of racing and anti-doping, respectively. Their purpose is not general bicycling advocacy. The League of American Bicyclists is the appropriate group to target safer roads and local bicycle advocacy. As a licensed racer, I'm glad that cheaters are being targeted. I laughed my @$$ off when last year's state championship road race had drug testing for the masters winners. I'd guess that more than a few riders were suitably frightened by the prospect of a drug test!

Greg

+1

A couple years ago there were rumors that a particular race would have dope control around here. There were a lot of "sick" racers that didn't show up that day. I was wondering who would show, who would not. I was happy to see the local (hero to me) pro show up to race, a guy that's taken a number of dope tests (he posts the letters he gets from USADA on Facebook). The Masters fields seemed decimated by good weather illness. I'm not as in tune with the area Cat 1-2s but those riders seemed to be all there. Ends up they did do testing at the race, so the rumor was true.

When the whole push to test lower categories (meaning 2s, 3s, and Masters) hit the news, more than a few very consistent Masters winners in the area quit racing to pursue their career/family/etc.

It's only correlation, there's no proof of any wrongdoing, but it's interesting.

There was one pro that did my race and cheated in a different way - he jumped into the Cat 3-4 race, dragged his friends to the front of the field, then dropped out (he did this on one stretch, apparently more than once). The final effort dropped his teammates off near the front of the field on the last lap, with the friends placing (if I remember right) 6th and 7th.

When we learned about his shenanigans he was ejected from the P123 race. I wrote his team director reporting his behavior.

It was all wasted effort. He got popped shortly after for doping and sent packing.

I suspect there are plenty of dopers in the sport. They may not be doping to win bike races - for example I struggle daily to read small print and based on the Outside Magazine article "Drug Test" if I went on HGH that would go away pretty quickly - but it's still doping if I took HGH for my vision. But I understand that people want to improve their quality of life if they can. Heck, if I could take testosterone to cut some fat with no effort that would make things much nicer for me on the bike. I know what it took for me to get to 1999 weight and it was a tremendous effort, albeit clean. That's why I'm 25 lbs heavier now

There's a reason for Masters and Categories. It's to put people in appropriate competitive categories. If I'm 50 biologically but I'm loaded up on HGH and test and whatever and am better than I was when I was 25, then it's not fair that I race against other presumably clean 50 year olds.

[Mikej]

Originally Posted by carpediemracing

+1



There's a reason for Masters and Categories. It's to put people in appropriate competitive categories. If I'm 50 biologically but I'm loaded up on HGH and test and whatever and am better than I was when I was 25, then it's not fair that I race against other presumably clean 50 year olds.

agree 100x even if a "doctor" prescribed it.

[benb]

There's enough things that are a PITA about going to races vs just going for rides that if I was clean and racing masters and then got told I was going to start getting tested that'd probably push me over the edge to quit. You already have to get up earlier, pay for license fees, worry about higher injury/crash risks, pay for entry fees, drive to the start, etc..

Of course I don't race anymore anyway, cause it's not worth racing for peanuts and risking f'ing yourself up when you're older and have a family depending on you.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by redir

It's kind of hard to argue with the fact that they caught a cheater yeah? If anything the randomness of this type of testing should strike home to anyone else who is doping.

Actually I don't think it really does.

If I were the USCF, I'd go to a big race & set up the drug tent plainly visible for all to see. Then I'd check all the DNS. Congrats you now have your out of competition list. And I'd test every single one of them. Then repeat that process.

That would do more to discourage than this latest example.

[pasadena]

I like your delusions A

Originally Posted by beeatnik

J, it's the delusion of being fast. I mean any of us who played JV basketball could score 80 points in the NBA if we were a little bit taller and practiced a lot, que no?

Random? USAC did not randomly test a buttstain cat 3 in the OC.
Like many of the leaky prostate wankers that get caught, someone called it in.
USAC pledged to stem cheating in the amateur ranks and I'm glad they are.

Yes, totally agree with you that it's a good deterrent.

Originally Posted by redir

It's kind of hard to argue with the fact that they caught a cheater yeah? If anything the randomness of this type of testing should strike home to anyone else who is doping.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by benb

There's enough things that are a PITA about going to races vs just going for rides that if I was clean and racing masters and then got told I was going to start getting tested that'd probably push me over the edge to quit. You already have to get up earlier, pay for license fees, worry about higher injury/crash risks, pay for entry fees, drive to the start, etc..

Of course I don't race anymore anyway, cause it's not worth racing for peanuts and risking f'ing yourself up when you're older and have a family depending on you.

I agree with the comments about the PITA and risk/rewards of racing vs. riding, especially as one gets on in years. But for me anyway, the adding possibility of drug testing is just a drop in the bucket, and makes no difference to me one way or the other regarding continuing to race. Getting drug tested is usually just a few minutes of inconvenience (as compared to the many hours of inconvenience of training and racing), and the chances of someone like me actually getting tested are very, very, small.

USADA has very little resources to do any kind of drug testing on amateur athletes, such as the master's level or the cat. 3 in question, and the certainly don't have to resources to do any meaningful amount of random testing. Therefore, most drug testing at this level is specifically targeted - USADA generally has a very strong reason to believe that a specific athlete is doping. Since I don't dope (and don't have the kind of results to make anyone even suspect I'm doping), the chances of me being tested are close to zero.

[earlfoss]

I had a chat last year with Victor Burgos, and he indicated that resources for testing are tight enough that when they take action there's usually a pretty credible lead behind it. It reinforced my notion that random testing is a lot less random than the casual observer would think.

[unterhausen]

Originally Posted by BobC

If I were the USCF, I'd go to a big race & set up the drug tent plainly visible for all to see. Then I'd check all the DNS. Congrats you now have your out of competition list. And I'd test every single one of them. Then repeat that process.

that's what I was thinking, just do the OOC testing right there

I guess the cat 3 must have blabbed to someone about this. Really stupid. I wonder if he could have gotten a TUE. I was never proud of being a terminal Cat 3, but the humiliation of being a doping Cat 3 would be too much to bear.

[bobswire]

The best thing about the article is not about the Cat 3 suspension but that it led me to this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=dr-wLhP_HpM.