Explainer

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When and if to sign that waiver

A reader wonders how and if there might ever be a test for autologous blood doping.

A reader wants to know why Roberto Heras' case is being handled in Spanish civil courts.

That questionable Tour de France podium - Updated list and an important postscript

A reader asks about the validity of Floyd Landis' whistleblower lawsuit against Lance Armstrong and whether Postal Service sponsorship of the old cycling team can really be called 'federal funding'

What does the passport do? How does it work? What are its limitations? Can athletes manipulate it?

A reader asks about "podium dudes" while another asks about application of doping rules.

After the Alberto Contador ruling, readers offer up a number of interesting questions

A reader wants to know why an unethical athlete would look to clenbuterol for performance-enhancement.

Now that evidence suggests the metabolites of plasticizers in Alberto Contador's urine samples a reader wants to know if that's proof of doping.

Many of the charges being leveled against Lance Armstrong have been around for years. Have they ever been proven or disproven?

The Explainer reflects on this week's hearing in Colorado in which a court accepted a plea deal for a wealthy defendant and explains why he won't be calling for a boycott of an entire community based on the actions of one public official.

An update on the Vail hit-and-run case ... and a look at the defendant's second failure to report.

A reader wants to know what an athletes options might be when that dreaded letter from USADA arrives at your door.

What do a couple of suspended masters racers have to do with the current Federal investigation of doping in cycling? Where are the big names?

Readers offer questions about testing in other sports, methods used in labs and why U.S. investigators are in France.

A reader wants to know how Yaroslav Popovych, a Ukrainian national, who lives in Italy, can be forced to appear before a U.S. grand jury.

A reader wants to know how much proof is required to convict an athlete on a doping charge.

A reader wants to know why the UCI is dragging its heels in addressing the doping charges against Tour de France winner Alberto Contador.

News of Alberto Contador's positive test for clenbuterol triggered a flood of reader questions.

A reader wants to recruit a foreign student to ride for an American pro team, but has concerns about immigration laws.

The Explainer offers a follow-up on a case involving a fatal encounter with a seriously bad driver.

Readers ask whether Floyd Landis has been suspended and what rule did Alejandro Valverde violate/

What biological values and ratios does the UCI's "Biological Passport" track?

A reader asks why a suspended rider keeps showing up at local training races.

Doping rules are consistent across Olympic sports. Are they applied consistently? Not always.

There's a big difference in pay days when it comes to golf and cycling.

Bad influences, poor choices and trash talk

A reader asks if it's really okay for a rider to raise a beer ... especially for a fee.

A reader asks about this year's Tour de France invitations.

A reader asks about those riders who have won in their first appearance at the Tour de France.

A reader asks how and why race officials can cut short a stage because of weather ... and we get some unbelievable news.

Okay, so the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was mostly a Wall Street bailout, but bicylists benefited, too, albeit in a very small way.

A reader asks just how dangerous is cycling on American roads and what we can do to make it safer.

Kevin Flock became a statistic when he was struck and killed by a van while cycling. But he was so much more than that.

While many cyclists were able to take some solace in the recent sentence handed down to the now-infamous road-rage doctor in California, we need to remember that the problem of rider safety continues to be a serious one on American roads.

Readers ask how long Puerto can last, why Aussie's kits don't match their flag and getting the Tour on satellite.

A look at options when a race prize check bounces.

A reader wonders how prosecutors were able to bring up Dr. Thompson's past behavior and then combine two separate charges in the same trial.

Dear VeloNews,
Could you please forward this to your ombudsman? I find it rather disturbing, perhaps even ironic, that a cycling news publication such as yours has an advertisement for a forbidden doping product - but there it is:

EPO-Boost Supplement $59

Enhanced Cycling Results. Buy Now! Increase EPO levels over 90%

Dear Explainer, By now, we’ve all probably seen the crash that highlighted the final kilometer of this year’s Giro d’Italia. While I was actually hoping for Danilo Di Luca to pull off a miracle win, I am pleased that he didn’t do it by having race leader Denis Menchov crash and lose enough time to lose the Giro.

Dear Explainer, Have racing tactics changed with the advent of race radios as riders now all seem to be communicating directly with team cars? Do you think the riders race more conservatively, knowing the whereabouts of their opponents or do radios make racing more exciting tactically? Stephen O'Sullivan Los Angeles, California Dear Stephen,

Dear Readers, While doing Live Updates during the Giro d’Italia this past week, I am pleased to see that our new update tool offers readers the chance to chime in with questions during our coverage. We do get to read all of them and I often try to include some of them during our coverage. Unfortunately, I can’t answer all of them personally. But there are some pretty interesting questions posed and I thought I’d use this week’s column to answer some of the more common questions I’ve received over the last few days.

Dear Explainer,
My question is a combination of a rant and query. I just read about the UCI’s decision not to allow the Astana team to ride the Tour of the Gila and it got me wondering. Who made them the boss? Under what authority are they acting and who gave them that authority? These are the bozos who allowed Graeme Obree to ride and then declared his bike wasn’t “legal.” LEGAL?!?! I don’t remember seeing anyone make a law.

Dear Explainer,
What does one do in order to secure a job as a cycling team soigneur? What are the qualifications? What are the limitations? What are the pros and cons?
Thanks,
David Barr Hello David,

Dear Explainer,
I am curious about the rules when it comes to national and international anti-doping agencies’ announcements of a positive doping test. I look back at the Landis case when it seemed that the newspapers knew about a positive A sample before the rider himself did. Like Landis, we all followed the testing process, the follow-ups and then a very public (often ugly) hearing and the appeal to CAS.

Dear Explainer,
A few years ago, the UCI banned a time trial position which was dubbed the "Praying Landis," named after its originator. It seems to me that Levi Leipheimer's current position on his time trial bike is very similar to that used by Floyd Landis. What am I missing?
Joseph Welsh
Banner Elk, North Carolina

Dear Explainer,
An announcer on a Birmingham, Alabama, sports talk show on WJOX 94.5 called “The Roundtable” recently went off on an inexplicable rant on cyclists, which included support for the idea of cars running down cyclists simply for being on the road. "I wish people would hit them, just clip them and send them flying over their handlebars," he said. It’s pretty sick and irresponsible for a radio announcer to advocate killing or severely injuring another person for any reason at all.
Jerry
Birmingham, Alabama

Dear Explainer,
After reading VeloNews.com’s recent article about the return of the Litespeed Blade, which features a picture of Lance Armstrong riding a Trek-badged Blade, I was reminded of a question that's been nagging me ever since I learned that some of Greg LeMond's Tour-winning "LeMonds" were, in fact, manufactured by Calfee.

Explainer,

Dear Explainer,
I am as much of an anti-doping advocate as the next guy, but isn’t it kind of ridiculous that we’ve been suffering through the on-again-off-again cycles of Operación Puerto for more than three years now? Doesn’t cycling have a freakin’ statute of limitations? We’ve seen Jan Ullrich driven out of the sport, Ivan Basso suspended and other riders implicated but never charged. Now we have Alejandro Valverde being charged by the Italians over something that supposedly happened in Spain.

Dear Explainer,
There is something that I don’t understand following the recent reports that A-Rod tested positive for steroids. Why is Major League Baseball not required to conduct drug testing in accordance with the rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency, given that baseball is an Olympic sport? It has been said many times in VeloNews and other publications that the UCI must test per WADA requirements in order to maintain IOC eligibility. Why the double standard?

Is it a fix?

Dear Explainer,
I just read that Alejandro Valverde is being brought before CONI in relation to Tour blood samples being linked via DNA to Puerto samples collected. I was just wondering how it is that an Italian Olympic Committee can pursue charges on a Spanish rider in relation to a Spanish investigation based on samples collected at a French event. Perhaps I'm confusing the roles of UCI and WADA, but are there not jurisdictional issues here?

Thanks for your consideration.
Gavin Eaton
Victoria, BC, Canada

Hello Gavin,
You are right.

Dear Explainer guy,
This isn’t your garden variety “explain the unexplainable” type question, but I thought I’d send it in anyway. Most of us readers know, more or less, what companies certain team sponsors are, like Columbia, Garmin and Cervelo. And we know, again, more or less, what certain team names represent or who/what they are, like High Road (why couldn’t they pick a better name?), Astana, Katusha (repeat bad name comment) and Slipstream.

Dear Explainer,

Explainer,
While the new Columbia kit may represent good graphic design, why does the Tour de France (Amaury Sport Organization) and the UCI, for that matter, allow yellow uniforms? With Saunier Duval already among the 189 riders that constitute the TDF peloton, even an informed television viewer has a difficult time trying to spot the maillot jaune. Why add nine more yellow jerseys to the melee?

Dear Explainer,

Dear Explainer,
I’ve been a long-time fan of Jonathan Page. To me, he’s a workingman’s hero, the sort of guy who approaches cycling like a lot of us approach our jobs; he just puts his head down and does what he has to do to get the job done. He works hard and doesn't spend a lot of his time show-boating or boosting his ego. Now I hear that he may be facing a suspension because he missed a doping test.

The problem I have is trying to figure out why he might be suspended by USADA for just missing a test, rather that tripping the dope-meter with a positive result.

Dear Explainer,
A good friend of mine recently got a contract offer from a bike team. While I am happy for her, I was floored when I learned that she would only get about $5000 a year for her efforts. Five thousand dollars a year? How can they sign someone up for what has to be less than the minimum wage? Even though she’s just happy for the chance to ride, how can that even be legal?
Marianne J
Westchester, New York

Dear Explainer,
Our morning group ride got cancelled this morning due to the blast of Arctic wind and snow that hit our part of the country this week. Fair enough. But as the guys who showed up for the ride hunkered down at our local coffee shop, the discussion turned to weather’s impact on the big races. Have there been cancellations due to crappy conditions? What triggers such a decision?
Robert L. Morgan
Chicago, Illinois Dear Robert,

Dear Explainer,
How is it that Sue Haywood ended up making more money by missing the mountain bike race at the 2004 Olympics in Athens than it appears Kristin Armstrong has earned off of her gold medal from the time trial in Beijing this year?

It seems like something is a little skewed here.
Alan Johnson
St. Paul, Minnesota

Dear readers,
This week’s question was originally submitted to our legal beagle Bob Mionske. He sent it on to The Explainer who, unfortunately, has been writing about doping questions longer than he would like to admit.
The Explainer

Dear Explainer,
Whenever I read about Floyd Landis’ disqualification from the Tour de France it’s always referred to as the first rider to be “stripped of his title of his title for a doping violation.” Why the qualification? Isn’t he just the first guy to lose the Tour after the fact, period?
Jon Byrnes
Bloomington, Indiana

Dear Explainer,
Katusha? Isn’t that the rockets that have and are killing Americans? Am I wrong? What does Katusha have to do with cycling and why does Katusha have a ProTour license?!?!
Jim Manning Dear Jim,
Well, for a short question we have a lot to cover. Where to start? Maybe, since we are a cycling publication, let’s first look at the team before we discuss the relevance of naming it after a mobile artillery unit.

Dear Explainer dude,
I know that most of us talk as if this time of year is known as the “off-season,” but for some of us — and me in particular — this is the height of the cycling season. I love ‘cross. When I ride on the road, I’m thinking of cyclocross; when I ride my mountain bike it’s because I’m working on my ‘cross technique.

Well, there have always been a couple of things that have bothered me when it comes to cyclocross.

One is: why isn’t cyclocross an Olympic event?

Dear Explainer,
Is there an instance in which a rider returning from a two-year ban has been caught doping again?

Dear Explainer,
I apologize if this is a dumb question, but when I heard Lance Armstrong was going to race the Giro next year I was confused. Wasn't there a warrant for his arrest or something of that nature in Italy for something akin to witness intimidation?
Rick Mattinson
Salt Lake City Utah Dear Rick,
No, it’s not a dumb question. Like my old boss used to say, “there are no dumb questions!” (Well, actually there are dumb questions - some really dumb ones in fact - but yours isn’t one of them.)

Dear Explainer guy,
Why is blocking such a rarely used tactic? It seems that when there is a long breakaway that teams with riders in the break do not block or slow down the chase. Why is that? More typically, these riders do not take a turn at the front. I would think it would be better if those riders took their turn at the front and slowed the pace.
Cosmo Scrivanich Hello Cosmo,
It does seem like there isn’t a lot of blocking going on in big races, but it does happen, albeit subtly.

Dear VeloNews,
For years, I’ve been watching the Tour, the Giro and the Vuelta and can’t understand how people — especially announcers — continually refer to riders having an advantage when they have teammates setting tempo on a big climb.

While I understand that drafting is a big advantage out on the flats, surely that benefit is negated at the slower speeds on a climb.

Dear VeloNews,
So now that Ricardo Riccò, Stefan Schumacher, Leonardo Piepoli and Bernhard Kohl have all tested positive for CERA, what happens to the results they achieved during the Tour de France? Riccò, Schumacher and Piepoli “won” five stages among them and Kohl finished third in Paris and “earned” the climber’s jersey.

Do they get to keep those honors? How does the Tour de France decide if they get taken away? What will the record books show?
Suzette Byrnes
Vancouver, Washington

Dear VeloNews,
Can someone explain this? Sure, I'm happy that Stefan Schumacher and Leonardo Piepoli have been caught using EPO, but can anyone explain why it took three months for these results to show up? It only took a few days to nail Riccardo Riccò for the same infraction. Why did it take so long this time around? Did it really take the lab three months to test those samples?
Robert Wilson
Redwood City, California Hello Robert,