Randomland

It's Friday, so I'm a bit brain dead.  And since it got all super serious yesterday with the shenanigans surrounding the World Triathlon Corporation, I'm pointing this ship to Randomland.  Here are 5 completely random things in orbit around my world at the moment:

1)  Big Ups to Canada.  I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I've decided my dream city would be created if Vancouver could physically be moved to Southern California.  That way I'd get to run on the Seawall without the fear of it raining every day.

 2)  I am still capable of acting 12.  I was on my bike today when I saw a Google Maps camera van coming cross traffic from the left.  I instinctively flipped it the bird as it drove by.  I was at  Edinger & Bolsa, Huntington Beach, CA 92649.  Check for it.  I'll be the guy with his middle finger up.

3)  The Spanish Madre.  I know this is old news by now, but I can't shake a completely fictional mental image I have of Alberto Contador's mom pushing his skinny ass out of the way at a press conference to announce that her son may quit pro cycling, all while staring directly at the reporter from L'Equipe.  Maybe you have to be in my brain to get a chuckle out of that one, I dunno.

4)  When college kids get a dream intern job at a record label but then are asked to take apart office furniture, it never works out.  I inherited some cubicles from the record label division of the company I work for.  I saw the interns taking them apart, and in fact carefully numbering every part and panel.  However, for some inexplicable reason (which I admit could possibly be me) they are not going back together as easily.

5)  The 24 Hour "Idiot Shiver" Test.  I usually read my blog posts the day after I publish them to see if anything I wrote is embarrassing in the clarity of hindsight.  Here is the last paragraph of yesterday's post about the WTC.

"Do not fear change, embrace it.  Better yet, do everything in your power to be part of it."

Can I get a mulligan here?  The quote is a little dramatic even given the context of the post.  But if you swap out "change" for "a challenge", "the unknown" or something similar, then in a broader sense it's OK.  Thanks for that.

More Op-Ed: Doping

Joe Camp left a comment on my post from a few days ago about the recent doping allegations made against Alberto Contador.  Joe's comment was well thought out and very detailed.  Since I completely agree with his take on the US media coverage of doing in cycling and also find the science very interesting, I e-mailed him and asked if he'd like to expand on his thoughts by writing a guest blog post.

Joe lives in Chicago and has worked in pharma-related field for the last 10+ yrs, first doing bench research and then later moving over to the business side of drug development.  He started doing triathlons in 2007 and recently, through some fairly random luck (as he put it), found himself competing at the Age Group Sprint World Championships in Budapest.  He also wanted to point out that he did not win.

The below is 100% Joe's writing (like I really know what Clenbuterol is anyway), so the opinions expressed are his own.

  

A couple days ago Patrick posted his thoughts on the recent round of doping announcements – the most notable being Alberto Contador’s positive test for Clenbuterol and his subsequent “bad meat” explanation.  I’m no Contador apologist – that little pistol gesture he makes is pretty childish and he certainly seems to lack a bit when it comes to social grace.  But he’s a transcendent bike rider and the work he put into improving his TT’ing is admirable and made him the champion he is.  So when I heard of this recent positive test bringing down yet another tour winner -- a race that had me riveted for three whole weeks (I was rooting for Schleck) -- I wanted a better explanation than what I was getting from the typical news sources. 

I posted a comment to Patrick’s post expressing my skepticism.  Patrick liked what I had to say and asked me to expand on the idea.  A couple disclaimers first – I do not have a PhD and this is not my life’s work.  I have a degree in biology and I spent 2.5 years working in a pharmacology lab measuring drug concentrations via HPLC as part of drug interaction studies we had underway.  HPLC is the most common way to measure the amount of substance in someone’s blood or urine and I’m sure that a significant portion of the testing WADA does utilizes this technique.

The majority of what has been reported on this case involves UCI’s accusation and Contador’s response and other people’s opinion on the subject.  But I would like to focus attention on the actual numbers reported in the release – namely the 50 picograms/ml of Clenbuterol that was found in his urine(1).  It frustrates me that they report that number without providing any context whatsoever.  That is a barely comprehensible amount of any substance to be found.  It is totally and completely negligible under any other circumstance.  Some context:

-A small paper clip weighs about a gram.  One teaspoon is about 5 mls.

-There are one trillion (a million millions) picograms in one gram.  So in the case of AC – he had 50 trillionths of a gram of this substance in less than a teaspoon of his urine.  This is definitely below the threshold at which he would gain any therapeutic/performance enhancing value from it.

-Not once in our lab we were ever able to detect anything to the level of picogram/ml.  We were ecstatic if we detected anything at a level of nanograms (a billionth of a gram)/ml.  We also reported and published our data in numerous peer-reviewed journals.  I bring this up only to say that this level of detection was universally accepted and that picogram/ml detection was unnecessary.

-Most notably I think – the report even states that the amount was 400 times less than the amount WADA labs are needed to test for (I’ve also seen this number reported as being 40, not 400 times less).  Regardless, the question needs to be asked -- then why were they testing at that level???  Were they looking for controversy???

As I mentioned in my initial response to Patrick’s post -- trace amounts of pharmaceuticals at similar levels to what we’re discussing here have been detected in water supplies in several cities around the world.  Researchers in Wadenswil, Switzerland, found clofibric acid - a widely used cholesterol-lowering drug - at concentrations from 1 to 100 picogram/ml in nearby (post-treatment) lake water (2).  Notice the concentrations are very similar to Contador’s.  Closer to home, at Tulane University, testing showed that fully treated tap water had concentrations of the hormone Estrone averaging 45 parts per trillion with a high of 80 parts per trillion(3).  A quick conversion shows that this is again similar to the levels that Contador had.

My main point is this – if testing is going to be carried out at such minute quantities, then accommodations must be made for environmental factors that could generate a false positive.  We live in a world in which we are exposed to miniscule amounts of all kinds of things we have no interest in using or ingesting.  Some of these things will make their way into our bodies.  We also live in a world of incredible technological advancement.  From what I’ve read, Clenbuterol has been around for decades.  If you give a bunch of scientists 20 years to develop a test, they’ll generate a pretty darn good test.  Then it becomes of a matter of how good of a test is actually needed.  Or more importantly -- how good is actually appropriate when environmental factors are properly considered.

All of us face the possibility of something showing up in our bodies that we did not intend on being there.  The (fortunate) difference between us and Alberto Contador is that most of us will never know what these things are.  In the end I still don’t know if Contador cheated or not.  In this case, though, I think there is enough data to put our prejudices and personal judgments aside and allow for the possibility that he really did eat some funky meat.  I also think there is enough data to demonstrate that UCI and WADA need to do a better job of policing the sport.  Their readiness to accurately and appropriately monitor their own internal testing procedure doesn’t seem to equal to their readiness to accuse and to vilify.

1.http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/alberto-contador-suspended-over-traces-of-clenbuterol-from-tour-de-france-test

2.http://www.sciencebase.com/drugs_in_water_supply.html

3. http://ag.arizona.edu/azwater/awr/july00/feature1.htm

More Doping In Pro Cycling

Alberto Contador press conference

It was reported last week 2010 Tour De France winner Alberto Contador and 2010 Vuelta a Espana runner-up Ezequiel Mosquera are now suspected of doping due to positive in-competition drug tests.

There have been other recent announcements made by the UCI involving other riders suspected of doping this season, but I can't keep track of them all because there are so many.  Then there is the Floyd Landis  thing from May and the subsequent grand jury investigation into whether or not other US cyclists have committed any crimes by doping.  This obviously puts Lance Armstrong in the cross-hairs.  I'm sorry that this may offend, but I believe Lance is as guilty as they come.  And it's too bad, because the good he has done outside the sport is substantial.

Ezequiel Mosquera

The thing that drives me crazy about all of this is that it's straight up, enabled, unapologetic cheating.  And to try and hide the cheating, the behind-the-scenes stuff that comes with it is nasty, dirty and sad.  It's plays out so crooked that it's easy to forget that the players are professional athletes, "doctors" and "scientists" as opposed to meth dealers and street thugs.  Take Contador - he wasn't that well liked before these allegations broke.  Now he is going to take another hit to his credibility.  But what was he doing when these positive tests first surfaced in August?  Moving over to Team Saxo Bank to race for Bjarne Riis, another admitted doper.  On what planet does this make any sense?

Academically, I get doping - the second guy does it because the first guy did, and thus feels like he has no choice.  And the first guy does it because he's afraid that if he doesn't, the second guy will.  Add to this that sponsors pay big money for one thing - results.  It's a pressure cooker.

I guess what I don't understand is why it can't be cleaned up.  Actually, I think I do understand, but I hope I am wrong.  The UCI is engaged in a game of political double speak.  Doping is wrong - it runs contrary to everything we as a society believe about sport.  But doping is OK - Epic battles up the roads of the Alps and finishing sprints in excess of 70 KM make for good TV and happy sponsors.

I'm caught up in my own game of double speak.  I cringe every time I read a new report of doping.  Yet I am watching the World Championships as I write.  And I watched every second of the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana this year.  As much as I am against doping, I can't get enough of the excitement of cycling races.

I don't know where this is all going.  Cheating is nothing new - cyclists used to jump trains at the Tour.  And the UCI is compromised, that's for sure.  Yet since I generally distrust the typical "World Organization for X" anyway, I could make an argument that WADA is fighting back more to make a political point than to affect change.

Why do the doping scandals play out like a bad James Bond movie when in baseball stories like this pass through the news cycle and are left for debate by sports talk radio hosts when it's time to debate Cooperstown nominations?  My guess is that this is because cycling as a whole has managed to make itself guilty before proven innocent.  Because too much has happened already. So why don't we call it like we should see it?  I'm all for due process, but how about harsher punishment - Is two years enough?  "Life" sounds good to me.

I don't know the exact mechanics of the relationships between the UCI and the Pro Tour teams.  But I do know this - an issue even remotely close to a cycling doping scandal would never be allowed  to get this out of hand in the NBA or the NFL, especially if it was this endemic.  And by the way,  I don't see much evidence of declining attendance, diminishing revenue and lack of commercial opportunities in these two leagues.

This issue is way more complicated than a ten or eleven paragraph blog post, and I'm no expert anyway.  But I've been a sports fan for years and nothing "dirty" that has come out of sports bothers me like the dirt coming out of cycling.  Maybe it's because I am a little more bought in to cycling, but this all leaves me with a sense of unease I won't get the next time I see a picture of Jose Canseco, that's for sure.

Watch yourself at Trader Joe's (I'm not talking about the food)

I knew this morning when I put on my Saxo Bank Cycling Team t-shirt I might be making a mistake.  I wasn't going to be holed up in the house working all day (as is usual) since I had a lot of errands to do - the post office, the bank, the screen printer and Trader Joe's.  My shirt had the potential for a major unsolicited spoiler - It made me pretty identifiable and as such I was setting myself up for someone to say something to me about the Tour, especially if they had already watched it. 

But then I thought I was being paranoid.  This is America, where the second most popular sport after football is waiting for football season to start.  Cycling is way down on the list.  I know that Phil and Paul are saying on-air that Versus viewership of this year's tour is up 150%, but 150% of 100 is what? 250?  My point is I'm not sure how many people are watching this year, but it's no Superbowl.  It's probably not even the NBA All-star game.

But none of that matters, because it only takes 1 person.  And that "one" came in the form of a very well intentioned and friendly guy at Trader Joe's.

Him:  "Did you see the tour today?"

Me:  "No not yet, I DVR'ed it..."

Him: "Yeah, Contador is a real *sshole."

Me (to myself):  What the hell did I just say to you, dude?

Me (to him):  "Oh really? That sucks.  Just leave it there though, I'm going to watch it when I get home.

Him:   "Don't worry, I think Schleck will get it back."

Me:  "OK thanks dude, you just saved me 4 hours."

"Him" grovels a bit.

Me (feeling a bit bad that my bone dry humor just shot way above his head, possibly into the stratosphere):  "Aw, I'm just kidding, it's all good."

I watched it anyway, because I didn't yet know why this guy thought Contador was an "*sshole".  But when Shleck's chain fell off and Contador sped by, I groaned.  And as he rode by the camera, I saw a coward.

In 2003, when Jan Ullrich and Lance Armstrong where fighting it out for the GC, Lance crashed near the top of a climb.  Ullrich waited for him and it may have cost him the tour.  But it was good sportsmanship, and that's classy.  Contador, not so much.

I hope Schleck jumps all over Contador tomorrow and Thursday and buries him.

Stage 2 of the Tour de France

At least for a day, professional cycling is OK again.  Today's stage 2 of the Tour de France was a perfect example of why I still admire bicycle racing so much.  The pro peleton has been under the cloud of doping scandal for years.  And although I know better than to believe that this storm has passed, today was was a sunbeam through the grey.

The 200 kilometer stage, from Brussels to Spa, Belgium, is not a particularly spectacular route when measured against the later Alps or Pyrenees stages.  There are enough climbs to get the King of the Mountain contest underway, but that's about it.  Sylvain Chavenel from the Quick Step team was part of an early break.  With about 50 kilometers to go it was just a matter of when the peleton would close the couple of minute gap and set up for a probable sprint finish.

But then it started raining.

I've been in the Ardennes in the summer, and have watched the weather change on a dime.  It happened today in a matter of minutes.  During a decent the crashes started.  Andy Schleck went down.  I thought his tour was over by the way he was holding his arm.  But then a team-mate rode up and gave him his bike.  Paced by his brother Frank, he carried on.

 Andy Schleck just after the crash.

Amongst others, Alberto Contador went down.  Lance Armstrong went down.  Christian Van Velde went down, and his Tour is over.  He broke two ribs. 

All of these guys are/where favorites to win.

Fabian Chancellara from Saxo Bank, who was wearing the yellow jersey, was ahead of the crashes.  But when he found out what had happened, he took control of the front and slowed the pace down to allow the peleton to regroup.  Not only did he do this to give Schleck a chance to catch up, he did it for the sake of the entire race.  Because it was the right thing to do.  And not continuing to chase down the break cost him the overall lead.

This was selfless teamwork of the highest caliber.  Chancellera was never going to win the Tour, but he would have liked to stay in yellow for a few more days.  He gave up the lead for both the sake of his team and to help preserve the tradition and spirit of the Tour.

As I write this, I can't think of another athlete (some who get paid more per game than Chancellara probably makes in a year), who would show this kind of sportsmanship.  They're more apt to get caught up in a shooting or make a complete ass of themselves on Twitter.  It was a moment that made me proud to be involved cycling.

Chancellara remained in control of the peleton until the end.  As they approached the last few hundred meters, you could see him talking with everyone, discouraging any last minute sprints to insure that they would all cross as a group.  And they did.  As is Tour tradition, the entire peloton was given the same finishing time of 4:44:44.

Chavenel won the stage.  It was a ride of a lifetime.  A Frenchman riding for a Belgian team won a stage in Belgium and will wear the yellow jersey when the Tour crosses into France tomorrow.