Here’s an interesting story from today’s New York Times. Hot on the trail of “Thomas Mann,” who was selling peptides. Check it out.

Holy crap, I actually agree with Dick Pound.

“I believe that in the collective mind of a significant portion of the world, and among the athletes of the world, the I.O.C. has not only failed to protect athletes, but has made it possible for cheating athletes to prevail against the clean athletes,” said [Richard “Dick”] Pound, the former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“We talk more than we walk,” Pound added. He said the athletes and the public “no longer have confidence that their interests are being protected. Our commitment to both is in serious doubt. With respect, I don’t think we can talk our way out of this problem.”

With essentially hours to go until the opening ceremonies of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, a number of Russian athletes are still trying to get included in their events. Almost two years after the IOC banned Russian athletes from the 2016 Rio Olympics, a battle is still being fought over which Russian athletes can participate.

So far about 160 athletes are going to be able to participate as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” A number of others are still awaiting the results of rulings from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Those rulings should occur about 8 p.m. Central time, which is 11 a.m. tomorrow in PyeongChang. If all of the appeals were granted, that would account for about 207 Russian athletes competing in Korea over the next couple of weeks.  Update: At about 8:48 p.m. last night, the CAS issued a statement saying that the appeals for 47 athletes and coaches had been denied, so the number of Russian athletes competing will not change from the 160 or so who are currently slated to participate.

Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, passed the buck as far as appeals go. From the same New York Times article as the quote above:

“The timing there was not in our hands,” Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said at a news conference Wednesday. “Studies had to be done, evidence had to be provided, fair hearings for the Russian athletes had to be offered.”

Sure, all of that may be true. But this is a story that’s been going on since May 2016. Surely that’s plenty of time to get everything sorted out.

It seems to me like a number of athletes are being punished for past sins. The IOC has known (or should have known) that an organized doping program was going on in Russia (and before that, the Soviet Union) for decades. Banning the entire country’s athletes makes it look like the IOC has taken a stand. Which they did, sort of. But then they allowed for a process to enable individuals to compete under a different banner.

So in essence, the Russian Olympic Committee is banned, but a number of their athletes will be participating in PyeongChang anyway. Yeah, I get it, this is “individual justice,” as Bach calls it, while also

describing Russia’s actions as an “unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympics.”

But let’s be real. The idea that Russia’s program is an “unprecedented attack” conveniently ignores the history of doping at the Olympics. East Germany had an organized program from the 1950s until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The USSR did, too. So if this is what Bach says, that attack has been going on for a long, long time. By ignoring these programs for so long, the IOC definitely made it possible for dirty athletes to win. Shame on them.

Like Punxsutawney Phil, who will be dragged out of hibernation in about 4 weeks time in order to see his shadow under the klieg lights, thereby ensuring only 6 more weeks of winter, this blog is waking from its deep sleep, if only temporarily.

Turns out that today’s New York Times has a piece that suggests the Baseball Hall of Fame voters are going a bit squishy on whether or not to admit Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens into the Cooperstown shrine. David Waldstein reports that:

baseball writers who vote to decide who should be inducted into the Hall, and who should not, appear to be backing away from their punitive approach to Bonds and Clemens, and perhaps others as well.

It appears that some of the writers feel that if Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner who did precious little (read: nothing) to address the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport, and Tony La Russa, one of many managers whose teams benefited by players using such drugs, can somehow be enshrined in the museum, then Bonds and Clemens should, too.

All of it “just kind of struck a nerve with me,” said Kevin Cooney, a voter from The Courier Times in Bucks County, Pa.

“To me, it would be hypocritical to put the commissioner of the steroid era and a manager who had connections with the steroid era in and leave out the greatest pitcher and the greatest hitter of that time,” Cooney said in explaining why he had now decided to vote for Bonds and Clemens.

As another sportswriter puts it:

Steve Buckley of The Boston Herald said he pictured himself sitting in the audience at Cooperstown for future induction ceremonies and looking out at Selig and La Russa and others who he said benefited from the steroid era and wondering why the two best players of the time were barred.

“I’m not saying Bud turned a blind eye to it or that he knew it was happening,” Buckley said of the drug use under Selig’s watch. “I’m simply saying that Clemens and Bonds and others took the performance-enhancing drugs and did the steroids and all those evil things, and at the end of the day, the game did prosper, and they are on the outside looking in, and I have an issue with that.”

Ultimately, though, from my perspective, the issue is pretty cut-and-dried. Gordon Wittenmyer of The Chicago Sun-Times sums it up well:

[Wittenmyer] recalled that before his first vote a few years ago, when another tainted slugger, Mark McGwire, was still on the ballot, he described the voting process to his son, who was 12 at the time. Wittenmyer described each player’s biography and what he had seen from them up close as a writer. Then he explained the steroid issue.

“His response was, ‘Well, Dad, isn’t that cheating?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it was,’” Wittenmyer said. “If that’s the easy conclusion a 12-year-old draws, it really is that simple.”

If I had a vote, I’d vote the way Wittenmyer votes. Without the steroids, Bonds’ and Clemens’ accomplishments would not have been nearly so great, and very likely wouldn’t have elevated them to Hall of Fame status (though that is an entirely debatable point, I’ll concede).

So instead of electing these players to the Baseball Hall of Fame, I propose that an entirely new organization be set up — The Pharmaceutically Induced Sports Superiority Hall of Fame, or PISSHOF (pronounced “piss off”).

Best of all, this could be for all sports. So there would be a baseball division, professional cycling, football (both real football, which you know as “soccer,” and the American sport), track and field, and of course weightlifting and body building (of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger would be a charter member). That’s the Hall of Fame we need. And Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens would be perfect candidates for that honor.

Oh, and for those who are still wondering, this blog coming out of hibernation right now has no effect on how long winter lasts. So get ready for 10 more weeks of cold, snowy weather (unless you live in warmer climes).

Time flies. So it’s been six months since the last post, give or take a few days. After a while, what new is there to say about doping? I suppose I could write about every story that comes along — which would make updating the old book easier — but after a while it just seems like it’s all the same. Different names, different days, pretty much the same story.

Until, that is, one of my English cousins sent me this article. Seems it’s possible to gain an aerodynamic advantage, let’s call it “chase car doping,” from a follow vehicle. And if you think about it a bit, it eventually makes some sense.

After posting on my Facebook page, I got a few responses that pretty much say, “Yeah, we know that. Been done for years. And the UCI generally ignores anything but the most egregious violations.”

What I find interesting is that someone did the research and actually quantified what type of advantage could be gained. As Marcus Woo’s article on BusinessInsider explains:

Using computer simulations, [Bert] Blocken [of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands] discovered [in 2012] that during a race, the rear cyclist can reduce the aerodynamic drag on the one in front by as much as 2.5 percent. That’s a lot, considering that 90 percent of a cyclist’s total resistance results from drag.

In general, a cyclist feels drag while speeding along. That’s because air gets pushed forward and squeezed into a small region of high pressure, leaving a pocket of low pressure in the wake behind the bicycle. The high-pressure region pushes back on the cyclist while the low-pressure region pulls, creating resistance.

But the simulations showed that a second cyclist close behind would sweep air forward, filling the gap that the first cyclist created. The air pressure behind the first cyclist isn’t as low anymore, so the wake pulls on the first cyclist less, decreasing the aerodynamic drag.

Pretty interesting stuff. Blocken and a graduate student named Yasin Toparlar did some more tests and found:

[I]f a car is within 10 meters (about 33 feet) of the cyclist during a typical time trial that is 50 km (about 31 miles) long, and if they are traveling at a speed of 54 km/h (about 33 mph), then the car would shave 3.9 seconds off the cyclist’s time. If the car were within 5 meters (about 16 feet), the cyclist would save 24.1 seconds.

These numbers only apply for individual time trials, when a car directly follows a lone cyclist. But when the total time difference between winning and losing is often mere seconds, a trailing car could offer riders a big advantage. “With this information,” Blocken said, “you could influence the outcome of the race.”

Now, if everyone is doing this, it’s not much of an advantage. And truth be told, most time trials aren’t in a straight line, so the effect won’t be as strong. Still, it’s food for thought.

Makes you wonder, as the article concludes, just how much aerodynamic assistance does a breakaway or a lone rider get from the motorcycles that zip along with race officials and cameramen. Might be time for some new rules about chase cars, motorcycles and other support vehicles during pro cycling races.

Yes, dear regular reader, I know what you’re thinking. “What? This isn’t about doping in sports?” And you’re right, it isn’t. Not at all. It’s about something much bigger and more important.

As you might know, I started my professional life as a journalist, after graduating from the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri – Columbia. Photojournalist to be exact. And I still have a number of friends who are journalists of all stripes. Writers, editors, television, print. And photo. Especially photo. And yes, I miss being a photojournalist every day — every time I see the brilliant work being done by my classmates and other friends from the business.

So I take an attack on other journalists personally. Even if they aren’t my friends or relatives. Even if they live in a different country. To say I was appalled by the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week would be an understatement. Same for the killings at Hyper Cacher (the Kosher market) two days later.

Much has been written about Charlie Hebdo and what it supposedly is or isn’t, and what kind of work it puts into the marketplace of ideas. I’m not going to touch on that, for a very simple reason. Without fluency in a language, and a culture, and the context, it’s impossible to evaluate the work in terms of whether it is racist, for example. Much of what has been written in America is through American eyes looking at cartoons, using Google Translate or (heaven forbid) Bing to figure out the text in the captions or in the image. It’s a dangerous formula for commentary, and it’s a game I’m not going to play.

Over at The Daily Kos is a very good article that explains some of the magazine’s works and gives some of the context to the work. I’ll say this much. It’s probably not what you think. Read the article.

My concern is the reaction that the magazine shouldn’t have provoked the attackers and is somewhat to blame for what happened. No, they aren’t. It is never acceptable to kill journalists, no matter what you think of their work. And no, the magazine should not necessarily censor itself and hold back publishing material that might be offensive to someone. In the business of satire, much of what is written or drawn is offensive to someone, somewhere. So to hold back would be not to publish satire at all.

We don’t have anything quite like Charlie Hebdo in the US, from what I can tell. The TV shows “The Family Guy” or “The Simpsons” might come close. And Mad Magazine of a certain era, too. But that’s about it.

But if we did, then the magazine or show should be free to publish or say what they wish.

Now having said that, even when speaking freely we aren’t absolved from responsibility for our speech. For example, if I publish an article that claims a person is a child-abuser, I’d better darn well have proof that this is so. Otherwise, I’ll face the possible wrath of a defamation lawsuit. And deservedly so, if the claim is not true.

I’m no fan of a certain “news” network, or certain bomb-throwing commentators who suggest that those not like them are traitors and should be dealt with in various harsh ways. The discourse in this country has become so polarized and vehement, that someday, somewhere, someone is going to snap, and we’re going to have a Charlie Hebdo-like event right here.

Because it’s not that far from demonizing one or more groups of people to someone actually taking matters into their own hands and causing harm. It might be directed towards an ethnic group, a racial group or a religious group, or even a political group. But it can happen.

It’s not a matter of if. It’s only a matter of when. Unless…

Unless we can move the dialogue in this country back from the brink. Unless we can find a way to respectfully disagree. Unless we can marginalize the shrill voices of unreason. And unless we find a way to make sure that everyone has a good education and an opportunity to get ahead. Unless we can create an economy that has jobs that pay a living (or better than living) wage to all.

None of this is easy. It takes everyone’s effort. We are all in this together. We may not agree on how things should be done, or even what should be done, but if we don’t find ways of working together, we’re doomed.

The lesson of Charlie Hebdo, to me, is not that journalists shouldn’t be killed. Of course they shouldn’t. Or that they should not publish what stories or commentary they will. They should be free to say what they think.

The lesson is that we need to be sure we have an environment where differences of opinion are respected — even if we find those other opinions abhorrent. And an environment where the conditions that led to the radicalization of these men do not exist.

What happened in Paris happened because the extremists could not accept that others have a right to say things they disagree with or find offensive. And they felt somehow justified in using violence to silence those they disagree with.

While I have no idea how to do it, we need to find a way — both in France and the US — to build a society where such extremism is much rarer than it is today. And not just in matters of religion.

So, that said, I am both Charlie and Ahmed. The provocateur and the person defending the provocateur.

Not that often that working journalists covering a particular beat will pen what is, essentially, an opinion piece. But The New York Times’ Juliet Macur does just that, with her latest article about the pending departure of USA Cycling’s (current) CEO, Steve Johnson.

I say finally — and hooray — because it is high time for Johnson to exit the national federation, stage left. Really, he missed his cue a few years ago.

A big hook should have dragged him out of his corner office in 2012, when Lance Armstrong was found to be the kingpin of systematic doping on his United States Postal Service teams, and when nearly every top American rider of the past generation admitted to doping to help Armstrong win. Armstrong and those riders — men like George Hincapie, Christian Vande Velde and David Zabriskie — all rose through the ranks while Johnson was at U.S.A. Cycling.

Speak her mind, she does. What more can you say, except, “Don’t let the door knob hit ya where my darn dog shoulda bit ya, Steve.”

Not sure who the next CEO will be, or who the candidates are, but if Bob Stapleton stays true to character, it will be someone much more capable and with more integrity than the departing Johnson.

Wow. Had no idea that I’ve been gone from this space for almost six months until I stopped by to check something in WordPress for a friend.

I was going to post a video of the Tour going by my grandparents’ house in Leeds back in July, after one of my cousins sent me his footage. Unfortunately, the file was too big to load onto the blog. Having recorded the race on NBC Sports Network, I managed to see the parade through my dad’s hometown, and amazingly enough spotted my grandparents’ house not only in street footage, but in aerial footage, too. Really. You’ll have to take my word for it.

So, I’ve been following the goings on in the world of cycling and doping in sports, even though I haven’t had much to say. But one thing jumps out at me right now. Astana has five riders who recently fell afoul of the anti-doping rules. And, while I don’t like presuming guilt, I do have to say that there seems to be  a whole lot of smoke there. Especially so, if the connections to Dr. Michele Ferrari are true.

You’d think this might be enough to cause a team to lose their World Tour license. But from what I understand, the Astana license has been renewed with some conditions. According to Neal Rogers on the VeloNews web site:

The license committee granted Astana a WorldTour license, however, under two conditions: First, that the team is audited by the Institute of Sport Sciences of the University of Lausanne (ISSUL), and second, that the team adheres to new UCI internal operational requirements, which will be compulsory for all UCI World Teams from 2017.

Well, at least there’s that. But it does make me wonder: What does a team need to do to lose their license?

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

Yep, it’s been a while. A long while. Even longer than the last interval between posts — I think. Sorry folks. Haven’t really known what to say. There’s a whole lot going on. But at the same time, it’s a whole lot of the same old, same old. Lance Armstrong keeps trying to outmaneuver his legal foes, and they keep coming back for more. So far, Armstrong has been on the losing end of his various attempts to forestall the inevitable.

I can see where he’s coming from, at least a little bit. Trying to preserve his fortune, at least enough so he won’t have to work a real job like the rest of us plebes. But how much can a person write about Armstrong and his machinations, anyway? (I suppose if I were a sports writer, the answer to that question would be “a lot.” But this is just a hobby for me.)

So something struck me the other day that is somewhat of a comment on the state of affairs within the world of cycling, and perhaps sports in general.  A few days ago, a French newspaper published a story that suggested the International Cycling Union (UCI) gave Chris Froome (last year’s Tour de France champion) an unfair advantage recently by allowing him to use the corticosteroid prednisolone during the Tour of Romandie.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

…according to Dr Gerard Guillaume, cited by the Journal du Dimanche as an expert: “The rules state that taking steroids by mouth is prohibited during competition and that if a cyclist displays a condition requiring such a treatment, he is clearly not fit to take part and that any request for a TUE [therapeutic use exemption] must be considered by a group of experts.”

When I saw the story, I thought, “Hmm. What’s the deal here? Is this guy suggesting that Froome shouldn’t have been given a TUE for the drug?” And then it occurred to me that if a rider or other athlete suddenly needs treatment during a race (think Jonathan Vaughters years ago with an eye swollen shut by a wasp or bee sting), can’t a TUE be granted pretty quickly? (The answer is “yes, it can.”)

Of course, you would expect the UCI to challenge the paper’s assertions. And they did, as the Telegraph reports:

“Christopher Froome’s TUE (therapeutic use exemption) for oral use of glucocorticosteroids was granted on April 29, 2014, based on duly documented medical history and in compliance with the applicable UCI Regulations and the relevant Wada guidelines,” read a UCI statement.

Froome, of course, has something to say on the subject, too. Also from the Telegraph:

Froome, meanwhile, was forced to defend his use of an inhaler on his way to winning the second stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné last week.

“I have had an inhaler since childhood, I have exercise induced asthma,” said the Tour de France winner. “It is ok. I didn’t need a TUE.”

And sure enough, after the World Anti-Doping Agency looked into the matter, they said everything was above board. Not necessarily something you’d expect given the animosity over the years between the two organizations. From the BBC, we learn:

…a Wada statement said it was “satisfied that the UCI’s decision to grant a Therapeutic Use Exemption to Chris Froome was conducted according to the rules of the International Standard for Therapeutic Use Exemptions, and therefore will not be reviewing this case any further”.

Much ado about nothing, right? Well, given the history of cycling — and especially given the history of corruption within the halls and walls of the UCI (see Armstrong, Lance and McQuaid, Pat and Verbruggen, Hein) — it would be easy to believe that something underhanded occurred. Such is the sad state of affairs within the sport.

So even if Chris Froome is totally clean (and I’m not claiming anything one way or the other), he’s going to have the albatross of a previous generation’s sins hanging from his neck for pretty much the whole of his career. Lots of fans have become jaded and cynical about sports achievements, especially when it comes to cycling. For that, we can thank a long list of people, including Lance Armstrong. But if we’re being honest, it goes back a long, long, long way. (Think Choppy Warburton and Jimmy Michael circa 1896 and go forward from there.)

Can there ever be such a thing as “clean” competition? I don’t know. When fame and fortune await the winners of big events like the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana, there will always be a temptation to cheat. Even if most of the competitors are clean, there will always be a few who would risk it all to grab all the glory.

With what appears to be a move towards a cleaner and more transparent sport, those who participate and those who run the events and those who administer the rules will be subject to a certain amount of scrutiny from the outside. And that scrutiny will be tinged, at least a little bit, with cynicism.

We will probably see stories such as this for some time to come. It took on the order of 15 years to get Lance Armstrong to come clean. But how much longer will it take for people to believe that someone like Chris Froome might actually be following the rules and not bending them to his wishes? A good, long time, I suspect. As a certain disgraced cyclist from Austin, Texas once said, you can’t prove a negative.

Only after doping stories and allegations have faded well into the background will things on that front change. It’s gonna be a long wait.

Meanwhile, the Tour de France starts in my dad’s hometown, Leeds, in just a couple of weeks. Really wish I could be there to see the race go by, especially if it goes by my grandparent’s old house. That would be cool to see. Something that’s not to be, I’m afraid. But maybe one of my cousins will stand by the side of the road and cheer the riders on for me.

Getting a bit quiet in these parts. I haven’t inhabited this space for more than a couple of months now. Time flies, I guess.

Six months ago today, on a day with similar weather (minus the morning rain), I went out for what I thought would be a nice fifty-mile circuit of one of my usual routes here in the northern suburbs of Milwaukee. Cool temperatures and a great looking day ahead, at least, that’s what the weather forecast said. Six and a half miles from home, on sharp right-hand corner, fate had a different plan. In a spot where the local community had recently sprayed the road with a petroleum-based sealant, where they also used a kind of liquid goop to fill in cracks in the road (stuff that’s slippery as ice even on a dry day), and where there was a sheen of moisture on the pavement, my front wheel washed out and I hit the deck, hip first. When I tried to stand up, I couldn’t put any weight on my right leg, the first sign that I’d managed to break my hip.

Strange thing, that crash. I’ve hit the deck going much faster and walked away with bruises and road rash. This time, I wasn’t so lucky. But even when I came out of surgery later that day, my hip pinned back together with titanium deck screws ($1000 a pop, according to the hospital bill), I wouldn’t have guessed that my recuperation would take this long.

Six months later and I’m not quite 100 percent. I can swim, and have been four days a week since late January. That’s certainly helped my recovery along. And I can walk on a treadmill or ride my bike indoors. I suppose I could even ride outdoors. What I can’t do is run for the next six months. Or walk with a normal gait. I’m getting better at this walking thing, and I’m doing really well with the swimming (fastest times in my 500 and 250 intervals in eons). But I’m not quite normal.

Which makes me realize just how incredibly determined (or more likely foolish with a dose of massive painkillers and other medicinal products) Floyd Landis must’ve been to be racing within months after his injury. I guess when your living depends on it, you’ll muster up the courage (or craziness) to do just about anything.

But thinking back to the night of Sunday, October 6, 2013, I’m pretty sure I believed that by now I’d be back to my old self, doing everything I’m accustomed to and carrying on. Hasn’t worked out that way. Let me tell ya, folks, you don’t ever want to go through this. More and more, it’s looking like it will be another several months or more before I’m back to where I want to be. All things considered, though, it could have been much worse. For that, I count myself very lucky.

So here’s a couple of items on doping that caught my eye since last I posted.

Better Late than Never Department

This morning I saw this editorial in today’s New York Times. Turns out the Jockey Club, an influential group within the world of horse racing,  now supports legislation to put the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in charge of conducting testing and enforcing rules against doping within the sport. From another NY Times article:

The club’s chairman, Ogden Mills Phipps, conceded that efforts to reform the sport from within had moved too slowly, and in some cases not at all. The industry has come up with a national uniform medication program after years of embarrassing scandals, but only 4 of the 38 states with racing have fully implemented it.

[…]

“It is my hope that these state bodies use all the prosecutorial powers available to determine if there is evidence of animal cruelty, medication violations — and cheating,” Phipps said.

[…]

He continued: “And as much as it pains me to see our industry being denigrated in the media, there is another part of me that feels that we, as an industry, deserve every bit of that criticism because the sport’s rules and our penalties have not been effective deterrents.”

Pop quiz: Doping began in which sport:

1. Horse racing in the early 19th century
2. Swimming in the mid-19th century
3. Cycling in the late 19th century
4. Track and field (a/k/a Athletics) in the late 19th century/early 20th century

If you chose A, congratulations, you know your sports doping history. And you’re aware that doping in other sports grew out of doping in horse racing (and sometimes it was done to slow animals down, way back when). So it’s only taken about 175 to 200 years of doping to get to this point? Say it with me now, “About damn time.”

Bulletproof Anti-Doping Test

Meanwhile, this article from about six weeks ago looks at whether there might be a “bulletproof anti-doping test” on the horizon. The idea is to find “a distinctive, long-lasting genetic ‘fingerprint’ left by [doping products].” From the article:

[Yannis] Pitsiladis, whose background is in genetics, thinks the secret to a foolproof test may lie inside cellular anatomy. He spent years picking through the DNA of East African runners, looking for a source to their prowess. But he couldn’t find a genetic cause. In fact, he started to wonder if they were just doping, and that suspicion led him to search for evidence of cheating on a genetic level, specifically in RNA.

Interesting idea, but what about athletes who use a drug legitimately, but who years later come up positive based on such a test. For example, when Lance Armstrong was being treated for cancer, he received EPO. A legitimate medical use. Now, suppose he had really raced clean (yeah, right, I hear you say…). With a test like this, he could have might have come up positive for doping. Would such an athlete need what amounts to a life-time therapeutic use exemption to cover such a situation? And if so, would that, in essence, give him or her a license to cheat? (After all, with the TUE, the result could be explained away.)

The article does manage to address such problems.

Tests like these still have a long road ahead before they reach the locker room. A flaw could let cheaters slip through, or — arguably worse — generate false positives. Because these tests rely so heavily on secondhand evidence — protein patterns and RNA levels, rather than banned substances themselves — researchers face a particularly high threshold to prove their accuracy. They are left splitting hairs, distinguishing between natural processes in the body and artificial ones that look similar. For example, when people travel to higher elevations, their bodies naturally make more EPO to increase blood cell production. Would that look like doping to Pitsiladis?

Definitely a long road to go before such a test could be implemented, and I suspect it won’t be ready in time for the next summer Olympics, even though the article suggests it might. In the struggle to figure out who’s cheating and who isn’t, scientists definitely have to think creatively about what types of tests might work. It will be interesting to see if this type of test comes into use in the future.

It’s about time I put something new out, isn’t it? Yesterday was 16 weeks since my accident, and I’m doing better. For the last two weeks, I’ve been able to put 50% weight on my right leg (that’s 50% of my body weight, or an equal distribution of weight on both legs if I stand still). And I’m able to drive, which is good. While I’ve appreciated all of the carting around my wife did for me since I took my fall, I’m happy to be mobile for myself again.

Not too terribly happy about the weather here. We’re headed back into the deep freeze for the next few days. And while I like winter and being outdoors in winter, when it’s so cold that your nose hairs freeze on contact with the outside air, it’s just a wee bit too cold for man or beast.

If there’s been an upside to the past almost four months, it’s that I’ve gotten plenty of reading done, and I’m making progress playing the guitar (which is what I do most nights before sacking out). So that’s the progress report. Getting closer to full mobility. Earlier today I had another checkup with the orthopedist. Since the healing is going well, I’ve “graduated” from using a walker to using a cane. Definitely, moving up in the world.

To answer Buzzy B’s question on whether I’ve accessorized my walker: Yes, I have. It’s got a cup holder (really) and I added some gel pads for the hand grips. Took me six or eight weeks to “upgrade,” but both modifications made the time a little easier. One guy I work with suggested flame decals. I told him I’d put them on if he provided them. Still waiting, but with today’s upgrade it’s a moot point, anyway. The walker is now going into (I hope permanent) retirement.

But onwards to a few short musings about the world of dope.

The Never-Ending Apology Tour

So, is Lance still out there trying to convince folks that he wants to help clean up the sport? Seriously. Is he still out there on his “Reconciliation Tour?” Over the last couple of months I’ve managed to put that completely out of my mind. I gather that Brian Cookson, the new head of the UCI, has set up a commission to look into the sordid past — or at least the sordid past 15 years. I suppose you can’t investigate everything that’s happened in the sport since the sport began (that would take nigh on forever), and that a line has to be drawn somewhere. But there’s nothing magical about the last 15 years. They were just the culmination of trends that had existed for decades.

Still, I wish them the best of luck. If the commission can gather a reasonably complete picture of doping during that time frame, they will understand the magnitude of the problem. And perhaps they will even provide an outlet in the vein of a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission. One can only hope.

But whatever the commission uncovers, and whoever comes forward to tell their stories (maybe even a certain resident of Austin and Aspen?), the real change that has to be followed through to completion is the shift from a “do whatever it takes to win” attitude to a “do the best you’re capable of naturally” attitude within the sport. On the surface, it appears that such a shift is under way. But it’s what happens behind the scenes that will determine whether that shift is successful.

A-roid Gets A Year’s Vacation

So it looks like Alex Rodriguez (better known as “A-Rod” or “A-roid,” depending on your point of view) gets to sit out the entire 2014 season. From what I gather, this is the longest suspension handed down in Major League Baseball. So that’s significant. From the news reports, it appears that the arbitrator wasn’t swayed much by Rodriguez’s arguments, but he did win a small victory. The original suspension was slated to be more than 210 games, so he can at least take comfort in the fact that his suspension is only for the 2014 season (the full 210+ games would go about a third of the way through next season).

Not that he takes any comfort in that thought, however. Going into the regular court system to overturn the judgement, ala the Lance Armstrong playbook, A-rod shows the same kind of attitude that a certain cyclist had for many years. (Assuming you believe that Armstrong is genuinely sorry for what happened in the past, and not just sorry he got caught.) I’m sure A-rod’s lawyers are only too happy to rack up the billable hours, but unless they have some truly compelling evidence that refutes the case against him, I don’t see the suspension being thrown out. And if they did have such evidence and didn’t introduce it during the arbitration, shame on them.

A couple of weeks back, 60 Minutes did two segments (part 1 and part 2)on the whole A-rod drama, drawing much of their material from interviews with Anthony Bosch and Bud Selig. Bosch’s tale sounds eerily familiar, a combination of what Jose Canseco said years ago, mixed with BALCO and a dash of the whole Armstrong-US Postal team thrown in. Perhaps the most telling part of the interview, to me, is that Bosch was using the same techniques to beat the system that Victor Conte had figured out more than a decade ago. And his attitude towards helping A-rod and others dope was pretty much the same as Conte’s.

It’s also a testimony to the idea that the “do whatever it takes” attitude permeates more than just cycling. Rodriguez, with his $250 million contract has literally millions of reason to dope. In order to maintain the performance level he needed to fulfill the contract, he had to find a way to extend his performance capabilities beyond the natural limits that the aging process imposes on all athletes, from the weekend warrior to the superstar. In the end, none of us can beat the effects of time, we can only postpone them. And A-rod had plenty of reasons to try and postpone the inevitable. With this suspension, he’ll be about $25 million poorer for the effort, but he’s still got all he received prior to his suspension, and whatever he will receive after he comes back. All in all, from A-rod’s perspective, maybe the risk was worth it?

In part 2, Bud Selig, the outgoing commissioner, said something to the effect that Rodriguez’s case is the biggest scandal to rock baseball. Perhaps. But I’d suggest that the dust-up over the home-run derby in the late 90s was a pretty big deal. And the whole Barry Bonds/BALCO scandal was a pretty big deal, too. As was the testimony (some of it misleading from the likes of Roger Clemens and others) before Congress by certain players a few years back. And the Mitchell Report. Selig has been in the sport for 50 years or more. Surely he knew before Rodriguez’s case that doping with steroids has been pretty rampant during most of that time. (Steroids go back to the mid- to late-60s among pitchers, with others catching on within a few years.)

So even if Rodriguez’s case is a big deal today, there have been others that were just as big.

Where it maybe goes over the top is in the ways that Rodriguez or his associates might have approached keeping his doping quiet. According to 60 Minutes’ reporting, Bosch thought he might be killed if he ratted out A-rod. If true, that’s pretty sinister. Definitely something beyond the pale.

Of course, it’s easy to develop tunnel vision when one works in a certain field. And it’s easy to miss what to outsiders might seem the blazingly obvious. So maybe Bud Selig wasn’t aware, or wasn’t paying attention to the seamy underbelly of the sport. And maybe this really is, to him, the biggest scandal to rock baseball in a long, long time. (Black Sox, anyone?)

Me, I’m a bit of a cynic and a skeptic. And I haven’t followed the sport as a fan for about 20 years now. Given the huge paychecks some of these players get, the temptation to take shortcuts to enhanced performance will probably always be there. So there will probably always be someone who dopes and eventually gets caught, generating yet another scandal in the process.

I saw recently that MLB has implemented a biological passport system, which may (or may not) help catch those who are cheating over time. But for it to be successful, many, many samples need to be collected and analyzed from each player. Unless MLB is willing to pay the cost to effectively implement the program, it may have a deterrent effect for a short while, at least. At least until someone figures out how to beat a limited implementation of the biological passport.

The sanction A-rod received is by all accounts the toughest ever meted out. But will it serve as a warning to others? I’m not convinced, yet, that it will. As always, time will tell.