The repeated reference to jiffy bags is a reminder of a number of extremely important, unanswered questions around an extremely poorly managed sector of UK sport, funded by the UK tax payer. The questions would have gone away had they been answered satisfactorily.
Outside of the wider implications for sport, i really didn’t care what Sky did with their riders*, but when you are representing the nation, i expect the governance to be squeaky clean…as was claimed at the time.
(*I have posted elsewhere about the knock on effect, so won’t labour that point).
It is not so much that I only view this with a GB lens (nearly half the athletes I work with are not GB) but that we ought to have got our own house in order by now…
The investigation, is of course far more recent, and i don’t think that we are out of the woods yet…
From Sean ingle
But we can be sure of this: few parties come out well from the Ukad investigation, which was closed on Wednesday. Not Team Sky or British Cycling, whose response to the initial claims the five‑times Olympic champion had been administered with the powerful corticosteroid triamcinolone in competition, was confusing and unclear. And certainly not Freeman, whose lack of basic medical record keeping had the fortunate consequence of Ukad dropping its case. All parties, including Wiggins, have been left in an uneasy limbo, not damned or cleared. Yet.
Earlier this week, Ukad made a lot of noise about banning a 60-year-old amateur cyclist for a positive test after he came 95th in a local race…
…Stuff like that does not matter. It is doing it in the big games that counts. Ukad has also set worrying precedent by terminating its investigation because of a lack of medical records as it could become a get-out-of-jail card for others.
Isn’t it maybe the case that not just the lack of funding but also the poverty in certain areas contributes to strong endurance performances?
It kinda makes sense in my head ( which isn’t always the best way to judge an opinion ).
When I rowed you would occasionally see UK Sport turning up at races with their drug testing caravan. They’d pull people at random for testing as they came off the water.
I don’t know if they ever caught anyone, but most of the people tested weren’t elite level.
we once did a tri in St Jean de Luz near Biarritz - purely age groupers across a variety of distances - where there was a dope testing tent on site at the finish.
I agree. I couldn’t give two hoots if a mid-pack age grouper has taken testosterone as long as they are doing it safely. I know that we should care about fair competition but once you get beyond 4/5th place/kona slots the placing doesn’t really matter.
That there are doctors out there devising doping strategies in elite athletes, designed to not show on tests is the really important part of anti-doping and it seems to me that it’s very badly done at present.
I agree on missing the bigger picture. to spend time and money testing someone who came 95th seems to be pointless even if there was some intelligence - if however, he was in a podium position then it would be more understandable.
it’s like us TOs penalising athletes with a time penalty - for those well outside podium spots or qualifying times it can often be meaningless to them, and not best use of our time.
I can’t disagree but catching the drafters is a perennial problem - TOs and motos just can’t be everywhere and athletes are good at listening out for motos so leave drafting to when they aren’t about. I tend to look at offences by the ones at the pointy end of an event in a different light to those in a middle/back pack and take a pragmatic and dfifferent approach for each group.
They should just rock up at the occasional amateur event, take a few wee samples then secretly pour them down the drain; deterrence effect with minimum costs
Amateur doping is just weird, must be some serious self esteem issues to want to dope yourself from 50th place to 40th in a chipper
