Published November 1, 2012 05:26PM
In light of recent doping confessions and resignations by members of Cycling Australia, the Australian government is set to launch a review of the organization, according to James Massola.
“The finishing touches are being put on the terms of reference for the review. Selection of the chairperson has not been finalised, but it is understood the government and the commission have identified who they want like to lead the examination of the sport,” Massola writes.
Anthony Schoettle shares his experience meeting the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency lawyer Bill Bock, one of two men — along with USADA CEO Travis Tygart — responsible for bringing down Lance Armstrong. Schoettle describes his surprise at meeting a lawyer who did not, in any way, match his expectations.
“But it wasn’t the aggressive, vindictive ax grinder that I thought might sit across the table from me in his ninth-floor office overlooking Monument Circle,” Schoettle writes. “And he wasn’t glowing even though just four hours before our meeting, the International Cycling Union had upheld USADA’s Armstrong findings.”
Matt Slater examines Team Sky’s self-mutilating efforts to clean out its ranks, outing and letting go of riders and staff with former ties to doping in a bid to seize cycling’s moral high ground.
“No longer satisfied with just Olympic domination, Team GB’s commander-in-chief was going to use BSkyB cash to take the first homegrown rider to victory in the Tour de France within five years, and he was going to do it with a team untainted by doping,” Slater writes.
Matt Dathan offers commentary on why Sky’s approach to cleaning out its team — firing riders and staff with past links to doping — is the wrong one.
Dathan gives three reasons why, in his view, Sky’s methods will not help in the long term.
Sky’s policy, he writes, “fails to recognize the value of having past dopers on the team who possess the knowledge and awareness of doping activity and might therefore be invaluable in preventing such practices from occurring in the future.”
Bob Babbitt interviews Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union Tribune about his coverage of the USADA investigation.
“The last time Mark Zeigler came on The Competitors was on March 4, 2012, a few weeks after the Department of Justice case against Lance Armstrong was thrown out by Andre Birotte Jr. During our interview at that time, Mark said that when that case had been thrown out, a friend of his at USADA sent him a four-word text: It’s Not Over Yet.”