Guilty Until Proven Guilty

If you're a regular reader of this page, you know that I friggin' hate guys who cheat. Basically, I think if you're going to go out and take drugs to do better at bike races, its no different than cutting the course, and guys who do it ought to be stripped town naked, tarred and feathered, then kicked in the balls in front everyone whom they tried to get over on.

That being said, an individual doper is just that, and in all walks of life corrupt systems are much more difficult to deal with than corrupt individuals.

So what have we learned this week about the corrupt organization that is the UCI?

1. That, in what is a slap in the face to the concept of "equality before the law," they've been targeting individual riders with extra scrutiny based on some as-yet-unknown criteria. Basically, a case of "we've already decided you're a doper, so now we're going to prove it."

2. The UCI is strong-arming riders into signing an "anti-doping" pledge in which individual riders would be forced to surrender a year's salary against a hope that the UCI wouldn't falsely declare them positive. Of course, officials at the UCI or their supporting laboratories would not be required to forfeit anything if they violated their rules, (e,g., failing to follow proper procedure when managing samples or conducting tests, leaking results to the press, etc.).

Cycling enthusiasts worry that the doping scandals in cycling will push fans and sponsors away, ostensibly because they think the riders are corrupt. In my case, they're right about pushing fans away...because I can't support a sport that has a governing body as blatantly politicized and corrupt as the UCI.