Tour de Tai-yawn: Drug Cheats Take Taiwan

The Tour de Taiwan (Tour de Tai-yawn) is over, the numbers are in the books and the prizes have been awarded. The teams chopped their way through some the seasonal drizzle and skimmed past the very best in concrete and rebar. This is a race local cyclists like myself often view as a simple matter of fact and not a tour de force. Normally there would be little to write about. It would be a whole ho-hum of results and stage winners. It would be...but....

I had been eyeing Stage 4, the KOM up the venerable slopes of Tataka on Alishan, as the only real section of UCI certified stage racing in Taiwan that was really worth a damn.

The winner of the KOM was suddenly poised to take it all. 

This wouldn't have been a big deal. It really wouldn't. The only issue is that Mirsamad Pourseyedigolakhour, the winner of the KOM and eventual winner of the Tour de Taiwan... is a drug cheat. 

The Iranian cyclist just returned from a two-year vacation for the use of EPO. Another Iranian cyclist to grab the second slot, Hossein Askari, recently served a one year ban for  methylhexaneamine. The third place on the GC was also snagged by a drug cheat. Rahim Emamai, who also took the 2013 Wuling KOM, previously served a two-year ban for clenbuterol, a drug known as the asthma medicine of choice than made its way into seasoning Alberto Contador's prime rib.

Only Patrick Bevin, the Kiwi of the Avanti Racing Team, made the podium without the dark clouds of a recent doping ban hovering over his head.

Another team that competed in the Tour de Taiwan that mounted the KOM with more than enough doping baggage, was the Vino4ever team that serves to honor Alexander Vinokourov, the disgraced Kazakh cyclist and notorious drug cheat.

If the less than exciting routes of the Tour de Taiwan weren't enough to dampen enthusiasm for the race, then the suspicion hanging over the winners might just kill it for Taiwan's cycling fans.

After some reflection, I am left to wonder if there is some sort of sick calculus at play in which the UCI and the race organisers are willing to leave Asia a regulatory black hole as part of an effort to boost the sport's popularity in an emerging market. 

Let us all hope the 2016 edition both takes advantage of Taiwan's superior topography, and lets the cheaters know they are not welcome. Pipe dreams!


Links:

• I Do Not Dispair: Kevin from the UK National Cycling Association bikes some of the more well-trod sections of Taiwan. He also ate his way around Taiwan as well. 

• China eats Taiwan's lunch in bicycle exports to South Korea. No, this is not because of the FTA.

• Can Taiwan figure out how to use a bike before Velo-Cities 2016?

Contador Fails Second Test For Second Illegal Substance

The embattled Tour de France champion, who last week held an emotional press conference to deny the use of clenbuterol, has tested positive for a plasticizer in his blood at levels eight times higher than normal.

A plasticizer is a chemical used in the type of bags employed by the medical profession to store body fluids and indicated Contador my have received an illegal blood transfusion during the Tour. Link

This is no Operacion Puerto, but it is a further indictment of professional cycling.

Spike The Bike

With accusations flying against the biggest names in the peloton and current points leader Alejandro Valverde suspended for two years for doping, what more could happen to tarnish the sport. If all the athletes are presumed to be doping... then it is still a fair fight... right? Until you spike the bike.

Oh yes my friends... now there are rumors flying that Fabien Cancellara was riding a "doped" bike when he won Roubaix and here is how they say it could have been done. Bullshit... or not!

On The Dope

With the Floyd Landis allegations of rife doping on the pro tour set to cast a pall over this year's Tour de France, I thought I would dig up an article on some of the tricks top athletes and movie stars use to perform beyond their natural abilities and keep the paydays coming.

Outside Magazine did a great article a while back on the different performing enhancing drugs in which an amateur athlete puts himself through a regimen of drugs on the DL to see how the chemical cocktail could improve his performance.

"OK," the doctor said when we settled into his examination room. "What do you want to be?"

I looked confused, so he explained.

"You want to be bigger? Leaner? Faster longer or faster shorter? More overall endurance? You want to see better?"

"See better?"

"Human growth hormone does that for some people. It improves the muscles in the eyes." He tried again: "So, what do you want?"

This was quite a concept. Freud wrote that anatomy is destiny, and here was a doctor giving me a chance, in my late forties, to alter my body in the most fundamental way. It was strange, but also strangely alluring.

As a lifelong athlete, I have done my share of hard training for wrestling, cycling, running and fitness, and at no time did I ever feel inclined to try ANY type of supplement. I have always believed in receiving all my essential nutrients from the miracle drug called... food. I even resisted the allure of Creatine in the 90's and Whey protein. I just figured that if you couldn't get what you need from eating food, you're not going to get it. I have often simply organized my diet around the properties of the foods rather than the simple appearance, taste or whatever food lust I feel at any given moment.

The only time I have been aware or doping and steroid use was a guy I used to wrestle against, who gained 30lbs in muscle mass over a year and had stretch marks from the rapid growth... and after coming to Taiwan.

When I first moved into town and got settled, my friend and I decided to seek out a gym to keep fit. There were few gyms in Taichung at the time and most were really expensive. We finally found a gym that charged NT5000 for a year and was run by the former ROC weightlifting team from the glory days of the 1960's when Taiwan's diplomatic warfare was being fought on every international venue including the Olympic Games. The gym was in a concrete basement with no A/C and only rotating ceiling fans. The equipment was often homemade and made of steel and concrete molded in coffee cans. The ancient "Coach" would sit in the back doing calligraphy and occasionally shout for no reason.

We'd go in for two hours a day, four days a week and recover from some intense workouts over Taiwanese steaks. We were getting strong and ripped. I was 120lbs benching 7 sets of 7 reps at 210lbs... but I wasn't getting big, only strong.

The gym attracted gang enforcers and rabble as well as a small group of young guys who wanted to be weightlifters. We'd watch them come in looking like sticks and after a few months they were Atomic-Powered Supermen. The only thing we could see for sure was that they would get really big, really fast and disappear into the bathroom with their kits before working out. It was just kind of understood that these guys were getting a little extra help to prep for their competitions. Probably nothing exotic, just animal steroids or something, but they were surely on roids and had easy access to cheap performance enhancing drugs.

They were easy to get and no secret in the gyms of Taiwan.

The Shot Heard Round The World: Landis

The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy piece today in which the disgraced and disqualified 2006 Tour de France winner (and loser), Floyd Landis, took pot shots at several of the biggest names in cycling, including the 7 time TdF winner and Team Radio Shack leader, Lance Armstrong.

Landis alleges that he and his fellow U.S. Postal Service teammates routinely used testosterone patches and Erythropoietin (EPO) under the instruction of coach Johan Bruyneel and the President of USA Cycling, Stephen Johnson. Landis implicated Armstrong, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, Dave Zabriskie and essentially the entire professional cycling establishment in colluding to promote and disseminate performance enhancing drugs to the peloton of professional cyclists.

Until these latest emails were sent to ESPN and The Wall Street Journal, Landis has vehemently denied ever using performance enhancing drugs. Landis even secured a book deal from Simon Spotlight Entertainmen for Positively False, a book in which he co-authored an in-depth denial of the allegations leveled against him.

Floyd Landis took the matter to court, which resulted in the bizarre and emotional testimony of three-time Tour de france winner Greg Lemond, who testified under oath that he had implored Landis to "save cycling" with a simple admission to doping. Lemond further testified that he had shared confidential details of his childhood sexual abuse with Landis in an attempt to draw him into an honest confession and help clear his conscience. A 2007 report from ESPN details the matter here:

The only sure bet is that Landis' battle to win over public opinion took a massive hit Thursday after his business manager, former teammate and close friend Will Geoghegan was revealed to have made a legally ill-advised and personally vicious phone call to LeMond on the eve of LeMond's appearance at Landis' arbitration hearing.

Everyone in the courtroom knew LeMond agreed to testify for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency because he was out to help the agency's case against Landis. Case insiders also knew that the two riders had an acrimonious phone conversation last August, shortly after Landis' positive tests were announced, and assumed LeMond would describe that call in unflattering terms.

But few people were prepared for the broadside LeMond delivered with the simple, modern act of handing his BlackBerry to USADA lawyer Matt Barnett, who placed it on the podium to display the phone number on an overhead projector.

The number shown was one reporters covering the case had entered in their cell phones many times over the past few months as Geoghegan barnstormed the country with his friend Landis, rallying support for Landis and asking fans for contributions to fund his defense.

One can only imagine how donors to the Floyd Fairness Fund felt when they learned about what LeMond said next.

The courtroom was silent and still, except for Landis lawyer Maurice Suh, who whirled toward Geoghegan at the first mention of the phone call and began whispering to him intensely. Geoghegan, a former rider who first befriended Landis when Landis was a teenager, sat with his head bowed and his exposed neck flushed crimson in the row of seats behind the defense table.

LeMond earlier had said that during the August phone call, he confided details of his own childhood sexual abuse to Landis and implored him to admit that he had doped, a confession LeMond said could "save cycling" and Landis' own mental health.

"You were sharing this in an effort to help him?" Barnett asked.

"Yes," LeMond said.

According to LeMond, Geoghegan tried to use that information in a threatening phone call placed at 6:53 p.m. Wednesday night.

"I'm your uncle, and I'll be there tomorrow," LeMond said a then-anonymous man told him, and continued with references to vocabulary best known to pedophiles. LeMond later traced the number using a paid Internet search.

With his reputation in tatters and a two year ban, Landis has recently attempted to revive his career with a few middling results for Rock Racing; a team that cultivated a "bad boy" image through its liberal employment of ex-dopers and tainted names. In 2010, Rock Racing was not issued a professional license and was relegated to amateur status. The downgrade caused the team's big names to seek their fortunes elsewhere and Landis has failed to get picked up by a new team.

This is why I view the latest allegations with a little caution. It seems that Landis is in desperate need of publicity and more importantly-- income. Accusing some of the most decorated figures in the sport of doping is a very great way to generate a new stream of revenue. Seeing as we are now in the middle of cycling season and in the lead up to the Tour de France, these new revelations are guaranteed to keep Floyd Landis' name in the headlines a little bit longer. Not only does his sudden need to come clean feel oddly timed, but his allegations and insinuations that Mellow Johnny himself taught Landis how to dope seems a little extravagant. Again, Landis seems to be mislaying blame from himself onto others. In his admission he is again attempting to avoid taking responsibility by painting himself as a victim of a corrupt system and corrupt leadership.

I don't know if Armstrong or others doped. I know they have yet to test positive and I know they are routinely tested and I know the French have prayed for a positive result for nearly a decade. I also know that Floyd Landis holds zero credibility at this point and these allegations, whether true or not, make him appear to be a troubled and vindictive individual who was denied the full glory of the podium by doping and so he hopes to drag everyone else down with him. If Floyd can not shine... then nobody else shall either.

It just sounds like a sad way to win.

Updates:

Link to one of the actual letters: here

New York Times Article: here

VeloNews Ongoing Coverage: here

UCI Denies Allegations: here

Armstrong Responds: here

Quote From NYT:

I think Landis is in a very sad situation and I feel sorry for the guy because I don’t accept anything he says as true,” McQuaid said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “This is a guy who has been condemned in court, who has stood up in court and stated that he never saw any doping in cycling. He’s written a book saying he won the Tour de France clean. Where does that leave his credibility? He has an agenda and is obviously out to seek revenge.”