martyrye's blog

Former World Duathlon Champion and current RideClean team member Paul Thomas is proof you can race against the best and not have to resort to extreme measures. A recent picture from the 2010 Tour of the Gila shows Paul and friends in the bunch.

In the light of recent UCI "blood passport" controls, the Giro organizers are claiming stricter controls for the running of the 93rd edition of this Grand Tour.

From a recent article on Cyclingnews.com... the relevance is that the quote below regarding Frei indicates there are still athletes that claim to be able to beat the testing with simple procedures -- similar to years past when velodrome specialists would take cocaine before competition.... secure in knowing that the test for cocaine actually looked for metabolites that would not show in the body until hours after the tests were administered.

From Cyclingnews.com....

BMC Racing Team rider Thomas Frei recently tested positive for EPO and claimed that he would have beaten the test for his microdosing had he drunk enough water after taking the injection.(UCI President Pat) McQuaid however implies that a rider in his situation would only get away with it for so long.

This quote from a Scientific American magazine article about applying "game theory" in order to understand and clarify the mentality of athletes who choose to dope cuts right to the heart of the matter. It is one of the reasons that RideClean exists - to support athletes that are clean so that those reasons lose meaning. The full quote is:

"Game theory highlights why it is rational for professional cyclists to dope: the drugs are extremely effective as well as difficult or impossible to detect; the payoffs for success are high; and as more riders use them, a “clean” rider may become so noncompetitive that he or she risks being cut from the team."

See the full article by Michael Shermer about the Doping Dilemma on their web page here:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-doping-dilemma

Disgraced cyclist and former pro Bernard Kohl, in an ongoing attempt to compensate for the damage done to the sport, confirms that his manager was involved in paying off the WADA clinic charged with testing in order to maintain the appearance of being clean.

Story here:

http://www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/wada-labs-corrupted-claims-ko...

RideClean gives back to the community through cycling. RideClean Volunteers recently conducted safety / orientation meetings for over 1,000 cyclists at the El Tour de Phoenix, connecting and creating positive role modeling for cyclists of all levels that took part in this charity ride on April 4, 2009.