Tour de France self-destructs?
After a few days of epic struggle for the lead between the top-placed riders in the Tour de France, everything has been crushed under the weight of three simultaneous disastrous doping scandals. The top-placed team Astana, last year's top-placed team CSC, and the race leader Michael Rasmussen have all been withdrawn for various offences.
If you want to suppress crime, there are two main approaches: increasing detection rates (or the expectations potential criminals have of being caught), and increasing punishments. In their desperation to stop journalists from going on and on about doping, the UCI is getting wildly enthusiastic about both these approaches.
Rasumssen's case is an artefact of the detection side of the anti-doping system, where athletes have to be available for surprise inspections all year around, or risk being treated as if they had tested positive. They volunteer for this continual invasion of privacy when they become professional athletes, but it still seems onerous to me -- only the worst of criminals are subject to such close scrutiny. Rasmussen failed to keep his team, the Danish Anti-Doping organization, and the UCI all appraised of his whereabouts outside of competition, and as a result he's been dropped from the Danish team, and from the Tour -- just when he had finally managed to beat off his closest rivals in a thrilling stage in the Pyranees. It seems a bit unfair, given that his offence is not to have been found to commit the crime, but to fail sufficiently to prove his innocence.
Dropping the two highest-profile teams in the race is in the severe-punishment side of enforcement. Each had a positive drug test in one rider, and the whole team has been invited to withdraw as a result. The risk the race organizers are taking with this approach is that a dozen cheats scattered amongst the peloton could erase the entire race. I wonder if the organizers could come up with a formula that allows for cheats to be punished while reducing the collateral damage. Perhaps the sentence for the team mates of riders who have been expelled for a failed sample could be increased scrutiny rather than being expelled themselves.
The actions of the sport's governing body embody all the worst aspects of a police state: guilt is assumed until proven innocent, summary sentencing, collective punishment, invasive scrutiny, arbitrary definitions of what is a crime, and no accountability. Obviously the difference is all down to the fact that professional cyclists accept these conditions as part of their contract, but it still seems harsh at times.
If you want to suppress crime, there are two main approaches: increasing detection rates (or the expectations potential criminals have of being caught), and increasing punishments. In their desperation to stop journalists from going on and on about doping, the UCI is getting wildly enthusiastic about both these approaches.
Rasumssen's case is an artefact of the detection side of the anti-doping system, where athletes have to be available for surprise inspections all year around, or risk being treated as if they had tested positive. They volunteer for this continual invasion of privacy when they become professional athletes, but it still seems onerous to me -- only the worst of criminals are subject to such close scrutiny. Rasmussen failed to keep his team, the Danish Anti-Doping organization, and the UCI all appraised of his whereabouts outside of competition, and as a result he's been dropped from the Danish team, and from the Tour -- just when he had finally managed to beat off his closest rivals in a thrilling stage in the Pyranees. It seems a bit unfair, given that his offence is not to have been found to commit the crime, but to fail sufficiently to prove his innocence.
Dropping the two highest-profile teams in the race is in the severe-punishment side of enforcement. Each had a positive drug test in one rider, and the whole team has been invited to withdraw as a result. The risk the race organizers are taking with this approach is that a dozen cheats scattered amongst the peloton could erase the entire race. I wonder if the organizers could come up with a formula that allows for cheats to be punished while reducing the collateral damage. Perhaps the sentence for the team mates of riders who have been expelled for a failed sample could be increased scrutiny rather than being expelled themselves.
The actions of the sport's governing body embody all the worst aspects of a police state: guilt is assumed until proven innocent, summary sentencing, collective punishment, invasive scrutiny, arbitrary definitions of what is a crime, and no accountability. Obviously the difference is all down to the fact that professional cyclists accept these conditions as part of their contract, but it still seems harsh at times.