With all of the sound and fury signifying nothing. That is a good way to summarize Operation Puerto which come Monday will be archived. The investigation failed to turn out any solid evidence against anyone that was remotely associated with the case.
Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich, Fransico Mancebo were barred from the Tour de France based on thin evidence. Liberty Seguros dropped their sponsorship of their ProTour team. Cycling was cast in the shadow of doping once again during its peak exposure time. This combined with Landis’ testosterone issue and you have a body blow for cycling in general.
Read the rest of this entry »
The on-again off again, confirmed but not confirmed move to T-Mobile is not a dead deal yet. The story keeps being denied, but then fresh reports come back to show that there just may be a link between Alejandro Valverde moving to T-Mobile for a price of $10 million Euros for the next three years. This would make the Green Bullet the highest paid professional cyclist in the Pro Peloton.
Caisse D’Epargne-Illes Balears has been reported to be in a tight situation regarding sponsorship cash. A nice $2 Million Euro buyout may help keep the team afloat. T-Mobile needs a guaranteed rising star since they put all their effort behind Michael Rogers who may or may not pan out as a stage racer.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Holiday cheer is missing in the cycling world. The Grinch has stolen all of the good cheer from anyone related to pro cycling. Sure Discovery Channel, CSC and Tinkoff among many others have already met for their first training camps for the 2007 season. Discovery Channel played paint ball in Texas while CSC was training to go to fight in Iraq in South Africa. Lampre can be happy that they locked up the services of Il Princippe (Damiano Cunego) until 2009.
A cold wind started blowing way back in the spring time when Spanish Guardia Civil started leaking info on a new investigation that was to bust open the world of doping in cycling. 200 or 59 or 8 cyclist in all were implicated in the press. Now we approach the end of 2006 and no one rider is implicated and pretty much anyone whose name has been associated with Operation Puerto has been cleared.
Read the rest of this entry »
2006 was the craziest year for drugs in cycling ever. The craziness of Operation Puerto probably eclipsed anything that happened in 1998 with the Festina Affair. Now that Ivan Basso and several others are cleared of involvement from Operation Puerto for the time being the hot news is who is signing for whom.
Jan Ullrich is talking with sponsors and teams, while Tyler Hamilton has already signed with Tinkoff. “Il Bufalo” (Italian spelling) Gutierrez is signing with a small Italian team to get back to the Giro and similarly Santiago Botero is signing with a smalll Columbian team. Genevieve Jenson is getting ready to comeback. On top of all this the Tour de France will feature a prologue in London that could be won by David Millar the man who made 2006 his comeback year. Manolo Saiz may be back in the ProTour with the Astana team or some variation. The list goes on and on of riders who are making a comeback either from being cleared of involvement in Operation Puerto or having served their suspension and returning to cycling.
Read the rest of this entry »
(pic from flickr, UPDATE: Actually this is from Graham Watson)
Ivan Basso wasted no time climbing on a new Trek and donning the Discovery Channel kit after word of his signing was released to the world last week. To say that Ivan is motivated for 2007 is an understatement. Basso is already dressed in Discovery Channel blue and has the matching blue SiDis. This move must have been close for a while since the matching blue SiDis are not a standard color in their 2007 lineup. They need to be custom made and the turn-around time on those must be more than a few days.
Basso is probably counting down the days until the December 3rd Discovery Team training camp. No cold nights in the Norwegian tundra this year. Just some warmer nights getting to know a team that is probably just as eager to meet him.
Read the rest of this entry »
(pic from http://www.team-csc.com/)
Ivan Basso and Bjarne Riis are no longer working together. The fallout from the Operation Puerto scandal has tarnished the relationship between Riis and rising star Basso. The close working relationship took a severe blow when allegations arose over Ivan Basso’s involvement with Dr. Fuentes who is at the picenter of the Operation Puerto situation. Basso was cleared of any involvement in the Operation Puerto case due to lack of evidence. However, the case could still be revisited if new evidence became available.
“After all that has happened, especially this summer, Team CSC and Ivan Basso have agreed to part ways. It has been a very difficult decision, but both parties agree it is time to move on. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Ivan for his time with the team and for the great results he and the team have achieved together. At the same time, we wish him all the best for the future,” says Bjarne Riis. — http://www.team-csc.com/ny_news.asp?n_id=1116
Basso also needed to prove to Bjarne Riis that he was not involved with Dr. Fuentes. Riis wanted extra hard evidence which involved Basso taking a DNA test which could be tested against the bags of blood found in Dr. Fuentes lab. Ivan Basso refused to take a DNA test under advice from his lawyer. The reasoning was that the blood bags found as evidence may have not been stored properly and could provide dubious results. This refusal was probably the detail that led to the split between Riis and Basso. For Riis this split is completely understandable since Basso is damaged goods. It would be hard to get new sponsors on board with Ivan Basso having questions and allegations surrounding him over the Operation Puerto scandal. What if new evidence were to arise next June? That seems to be the time of year that cycling related drug investigation get publicity. The team would find itself in the same situation as this year.
(read more on this article)
Read the rest of this entry »
Tuttobiciweb reports that Discovery Channel has given a contract offer to Jan Ullrich. The contract is to make Jan Ullrich team leader for the next two years. This contract offer so far seems to have no regard for the various legal issues surrounding Der Kaiser. Ullrich may be cleared of his Operation Puerto involvement since the court proceeding need to go through another court before any of the evidence in Operation Puerto can be used to implicate any cyclist. Jan may be in the clear for the time being, but he still needs to get his Swiss racing license renewed for next year. The process may be a bit messy since Ullrich seemed to have the most evidence that showed a link with Efuaminao Fuentes and personal coach Rudy Pevenage.
Spanish courts have ruled that all evidence in the Operation Puerto investigation cannot be used to implicate cyclist on doping charges. Looks like the investigation still needs to go through some sort of due process in Spain. All of the evidence is not to be used to implicate riders involved in the investigation.
This turn of events is very shameful for all of those involved in the presecution of this entire affair. Especially for men like Dick Pound who seemed all to eager to implicate all riders involved without even seeing any of the evidence.
For any observer it was very clear that Operation Puerto was a fiasco in the making. From the original list of 200 cyclist that turned to 59 then just 9, the reports were very suspect. The investigation was known more for outlandish and ever changing leaks than actual proof. Whenever hard evidence was actually demanded none came. When each cyclist was brought before their own cycling federation there was simply not enough evidence to prosecute.
Ivan Basso ready to be cleared, just after Santiago Botero was cleared last week. Most of the Astana team was denied entry to the Tour de France, but later cleared meaning that Astana’s exclusion from the Tour was for no good reason. Ivan Basso and possibly Jan Ullrich’s careers were dealt a serious blow just as they were poised to make a run for a Tour title in the post-Lance era. Jan Ullrich seems to be the most damaged from this investigation as he has lost his job at T-Mobile an several personal sponsorships. Yet nothing is fully proven. Ullrich has been implicated more in the court of public opinion than in any actual court.
This type of fiasco is a black eye to any investigation that is cracking down on doping in sport. The inquisition like treatment of cyclist has got to stop. These are athletes who may or may not take performance enhancing drugs. They are not terrorist, and they are not risking anyone’s life other than their own. They are simply being lazy and using a chemical enhancement to make them go faster. It is wrong, and it should be punished. The system used to catch the cheaters needs to be reliable, fair and open. Otherwise the credibility of all investigations and dope tests is suspicious and doping will go on.
Operation Puerto will probably do more to undermine the anit-doping effort than to help. The vast investigation has yet to convict anyone on the doping charges. With all of the sound and fury that Operation Puerto drudged up just in time for the Tour de France, the end result signifies nothing.
Santiago Botero is the latest cyclist to be let off the hook. The Federación Colombiana de Ciclismo did not have enough evidence from the Spanish Guardia Civil to convict Santiago Botero of any wrong doing in Operation Puerto affair. This is the latest in the long string of cyclist being cleared of wrong doing in the investigation.
Ivan Basso is getting ready to be cleared as there is not enough evidence to convict. So this investigation by the Spanish Guardia Civil has so far failed to provide any evidence that can actually convict riders of doping. The question now has to be why was thre so much credibility put into the preliminary finding when there was no solid evidence that could be seen by everyone? Why did the riders in question have to be suspended for suspicion which turned out to be false? There is a reason why most judicial systems in the world follow the the theory of due process.
The bigger problem is that men like Pat McQuaid, Dick Pound and anyone from the ASO want to convict riders to to give the impression that cycling is clean. Dick Pound in particular seems to have a vendetta against cycling and its doping practices. The fact is that to clean up the sport you have to be dilligent in your efforts. You must follow the policies and procedures that are in place. If there are suspensions by suspicion, then the sport is not helped later when a hasty investigation turns up nothing and a possibly guilty rider walks. It is time for those involved in the doping battle to take a look in the mirror and ask themselves just what is it they are trying to do and how is the best way to do it.
Ivan Basso’s Operation Puerto case took another slow step forward. Today Basso met with CONI for the followup meeting that was originally scheduled for September 12th. The meeting lasted for one hour and no descision was made official as of yet.
The documents are now going to the Judge in Cosenza who will need two or three more days to decide on the case that many are predicting will be dropped. The lack of evidence against Basso in the Operation Puerto case gives CONI not much choice.
After the eventual resolution of the case the only hurdle for Basso’s return to racing is his contract situation with CSC. Bjanrne Riis wants definative proof that Ivan Basso was not involved with Fuentes. Word of Basso and Riis’ relationship has varied, some say they are still friends, while others say the relationship has deteriorated to the point where Basso may have to look for another team. Milram and Discovery Channel are two teams that have been rumored to pick up Basso if he is not a CSC man next year. The likelyhood of Basso riding in a blue jersey is prety much up to where you get your news.
From what Tuttobiciweb reports, the outcome of this situation could see Basso return to racing very soon. Basso has been training on his bike despite no racing and was recently spotted riding with the Italian national team just before the World Championships last weekend. Perhaps with a quick return to action we may see Basso line up for the Giro di Lombardia.
http://ivanbasso.net/
http://www.tuttobiciweb.com/home.htm
