Thursday 22 January 2009

Those Schumacher questions in full.


The life and times of the three stooges.

Bernhard Kohl may, or may not be going to train as a chimney sweep as has been claimed in some quarters, which is a shame, I fight for the front of the queue in an effort to brick the bastard up in one if the chance became available.
Still we have had the odd pearl of wisdom from the 'man':
"My attorney found part of the justification of the suspension incomprehensible" He is reported as saying. Now 'call me old fashioned, call me straight laced....' but how is this possible? Unless the attorney in question is as deranged as his client. It's very simple it really is, you take CERA, you get caught, you fail to give up the name of the dealer, you get a two year ban. There are vegetables in our house that can grasp that.

Hey now, I'm glad to see Kohl's suffering financial difficulties and whilst I have no wish to see a man suffer unduly there's no unduly in this case, so as far as I'm concerned I hope he enojys the suffering.
His statement as to why he refused to go into details about his suppliers is quite something though isn't it? He claims that naming a supplier 'would neither have uncovered a doping ring nor uncovered the doping of another athlete' Well, as you're never going to name names, we can but guess, but I for one don't believe that Kohl was the only athlete that was supplied by Mr X. So naming him I'm sure would have prevented doping products going to other athletes.

And then of course we had : "I know, of course, that I didn't help cycling any with my behavior, but I am also not responsible for the general situation in cycling."
Who's a clever boy then? As Basil Fawlty would say 'Stating the bleeding obvious' are we? No, on your own you are not solely responsible for the current mess, but you sure as hell contributed to it and worst of all it's your mentality and the mentality of scum like you that dropped us in the deep end that we currently find ourselves in.

But on the bright side he has admitted that he is not currently considering a comeback, which is good news and sadly more than can said for Schumacher.
The German federation, has, apparently, a list of questions for Kohl's best friend. We may, or may not, have had a sneak preview of those questions and even if we haven't we'll take a guess at exactly what they are:
Question 1) Are you a cheating scumbag?
Question 2) Are you a cheating scumbag?
Question 3) Are you a cheating scumbag?
And so on for another 200 pages.

Exactly what is the problem here? Schumacher tested positive for CERA on both his samples, but has some how got the anti doping authorities running scared by threatening to sue them and indeed the entire French nation. WTF! Just ban the tosser for the maximum period allowable and be done with it, don't surcome to his playground bully tactics, for God sake.

Why the inaction on the Schumacher case? From what I can understand the UCI can take no steps until they have a full notification from the French Anti Doping authorities, who where the ones that did the original tests. What's the issue here? Afraid? Lost the results? Have some pathetic political point to make? Whilst the authorities drag their heals there is precious little to stop Schumacher applying for a license.

Now whilst I for one would quite enjoy the prospect of seeing Schumacher sitting in tears by the roadside as the peloton road past and he was left with no team, I don't actually want to take the risk of that actually happening. Even in the supposeed current climate of zeroish tollerance I'm sure there is some fool out there who would offer him a jersey, maybe a green and black one with a skull and the initials RR?

It has been confirmed that a certain Mr Chicken really is banned, but this hasn't stopped him training with a view to making a return.
Quite which continent he's training on is anyone's guess, hopefully Antarctica.


Tie me Kangaroo down sport.

I know as far as the worlds media goes the Tour de Downunder is the only show in town, but for God sake do we really need newsflashes every time Lancey boy takes a drink from his bottle? In fact the whole thing has got so out of hand that any rider in the race is under a microscope they normally never see until July. Today someone (not Mr Armstrong) got into a break for a whole 1k and it made it to the news wires (or should that be the news RSS feeds?)

Now I'm all for a bike race getting talked up, I'm all for the media reporting on our sport, riders being interviewed and sprint finishes making the evening bulletins, so I'm actually rather pleased with it all, but surely there needs to be a little perspective here? Ah well, maybe not. So it looks like that cool million, or whatever it was, is perhaps one of the shrewdest race marketing moves ever seen. What's it gonna be like come July is anyone's guess.

To be honest I'm watching the stages and feeling a little jealousy, not so much for watching the racing, but just for sitting somewhere warm, sipping the local wines and putting the world to rights, South Australia is a wonderful place, it's been a long time, too long.



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