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

[benb]

Originally Posted by FlashUNC

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]

Originally Posted by benb

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by Clancy

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.

Originally Posted by Clancy

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]

Originally Posted by mt2u77

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.]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

ahhh, no.

Obviously, we were in different branches.

[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]

Originally Posted by 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....

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