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Thor Hushovd at the 2011 Tour de France Presentation © Simon MacMichaelUSADA chief slams Thor Hushovd for silence after Lance Armstrong doping admission
US anti-doping chief Travis Tygart has slammed Norwegian former pro rider Thor Hushovd for keeping silent after Lance Armstrong admitted doping to him in 2011.
Hushovd's autobiograohy, Thor, was published recently in Norwegian. In it, he tells of a lunch with Armstrong after the 2011 Tour of California. Armstrong's former team-mate Tyler Hamilton had recently admitted doping and accused Armstrong of being at the centre of doping at the US Postal Service team.
"We all did it," Armstrong told Hushovd.
But Hushovd subsequently gave non-committal answers when asked about Armstrong's doping.
Now Travis Tygart, the head of US Anti-Doping, has hit out at Hushovd for not coming forward with what he knew.
"You're no hero when you sit still without doing something about injustice against great athletes," Tygart told Norwegian news website VG.no. "It is especially difficult to [fight doping] when someone in the sport abusing his power by trying to attack the idea of a clean sport and clean athletes."
Hushovd maintains he rode clean for his whole career. Asked about doping at the launch of the book, he said: "It's not my job to clean up here."
Hushovd said that if he had gone to the anti-doping authorities in 2011, Armstrong and his friends would have destroyed his career.
Tygart wants to hear why Hushovd felt unable to speak.
"It's a sad day when athletes are afraid or unable to stand up for fair play and integrity in sport," he said. "Doping Norway and USADA would very much like to hear from him why he did not do anything, but instead sat quietly and let the lies and deception continue."
The World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) has told cycle racing website CyclingTips that it does not consider Hushovd to have broken the anti-doping code by staying quiet.
Meanwhile Hushovd says anti-doping authorities should stop what he calls the "witch hint for old sinners" and concentrate on improving tests so they are harder to fool and evade.
Tygart is unimpressed.
He said: "It is the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from someone who sat still and let the deception continue. Those who heard these things, however, should have said so.
"Sport will only be cleaned up if those who have cheated in the past are held accountable for what they did. If you cheated before without getting caught, so the chances are very much greater that you will continue later, in the belief that you will never be discovered. That gives little hope for all of us who love sport."
Tygart admitted that he was not sure if information from Hushovd would have made USADA's pursuit of Armstrong any easier.
"Eleven former teammates of Lance showed enough courage to talk to us," he said. "It is difficult to be absolutely certain. I hear among other things, about an episode where Hushovd saw someone with a syringe in a hotel room.
"But we might have missed a great opportunity with Hushovd not talking at the time. He could have at least given some of those who talked more credibility when the storm was bad. I'm thinking of Betsy Andreu who for years claimed to have heard Armstrong admit doping in the mid 90s."
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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...well, apparently Froome's amazing weight reduction from skinny to ultra-skinny had nothing to do with Sky's attention to the most minute detail in rider preparation - Oh no, it was all down to that well-renowned sports nutritionist: Michelle Cound.
I kid you not!!
Blimey, who knew ? Normally training regimes and rider preparation don't include any dietary factors.....
Here's a snippet from the interview with Michelle chirping in (which she does a lot during the interview):
CF: I have always been aware of the weight issue, but I had always taken it for granted that when I pushed my weight I could get it to about 69 (kg) and that was a good place to be. I don’t think I necessarily thought that I could go much lower than that, and apparently I have. I’ve gone a good three kilos lower which is huge.
MC: He starved himself before the Vuelta, and then he came back to South Africa and that’s when we started dating. I’ve always had a bit of an interest in sports nutrition and my view was that he could still train on more protein and cutting back on the carbs at certain times. And also making sure he wasn’t hungry, so having more meals, more often, things like that.
CF: But smaller portions. Basically, I think I lost the weight for that 2011 Vuelta in an unhealthy way; I was starving myself trying to get the weight off and I don’t think that’s healthy or sustainable. But since I’ve been with Michelle I’ve learned to do things in a . . .
MC: It also keeps your weight more stable throughout the year, so you’re not starving yourself, and then after a Tour you want to eat everything.
CF: (laughs) I still do.
MC: Especially the carbs, he’s got such a sweet tooth. But he’s found now that if he does cut back on carbs the weight does come down a lot easier than it did in the past. And cutting out foods like breakfast cereals and a lot of the wheat products and bread but still eating enough food – the right food – that he is able to not feel hungry during the day. If you look at his build from the 2011 Vuelta compared to now, he’s still lean but his muscles look a lot more defined. So now he has found a way of doing it . . .
CF: That doesn’t involve starving myself, basically.
...I hope you're listening Sky nutritionists - Carbs are no good for Grand Tour riders - Michelle says so, and her guy won the big one!!
...except she didn't say that, whatever her other oddities. Want to go back to the original point about power output and physiology or happy to carry on with your Sky obsession ?
I've responded to that!
Care to return to your 'house of marginal gains' label about Sky now that you know Froome had to starve himself to get to grand tour weight in 2011, and subsequently had his girlfriend sort his diet out!
No - you've not. You still don't seem to understand the similarities in the two disciplines that mean that a slightly-built rider can be good at both.
An interesting point I agree, surprised the Sky didn't have more of an assistance - but my point about Barloworld vs Sky wasn't just nutrition as you know, I talked about the training regime (including nutrition) and the expectation/intensity of work that he's had since joining Sky. I used the normal epithet as emphasis, perhaps that was a mistake as you seem to think it was meant to explain all the physiological changes since he joined.
As for the comment regarding Michelle - I merely pointed out to you that she didn't say 'carbs are no good for Grand Tour riders'.
Erm, yes I have - I explained that my original wording was misleading - I was asking by what means certain riders were able to get their body composition to a level where they could be world class (not just 'good') at both disciplines. Anyway, Froome answers that in the Kimmage interview:
PK: ...The second unfortunate coincidence is the rumoured abuse of a new drug – Aicar – that allows athletes to shed weight without losing their strength. Because that has always been the trade off, hasn’t it? When you shed weight, you lose power?
CF: Yeah, if you’re breaking down muscle that is, and that’s why the weight loss process is really important. If you look at me, as Michelle pointed out, in the Vuelta that year (2011), I think my muscles were probably lighter. I was quite gangly. You wouldn’t look at me and say, ‘That’s someone who’s strong’. Whereas now, my diet is a lot more protein based. I’ve cut back on carbs completely but I’m not losing muscle.
Regarding Michelle's nutritional guidance to Froome, of course I was exaggerating what she said - I did this to highlight how ridiculous the notion of Sky's 'marginal gains' are when one of their riders had to take nutrition advice from his untrained girlfriend to prepare for Grand Tours! But, if you look at the last sentence of what Froome says in the above answer to Kimmage's question on Aicar, he actually says: "I've cut back on carbs completely" - what absolute crap!!
But then the Kimmage interview is quite interesting - it leaves me thinking Froome is not telling the whole truth, maybe even making some things up. Plus, it is clear that Michelle Cound plays a big part in Froome's cycling career.
This excerpt is quite telling, where Froome can't see the difference between using an asthma drug before a 'big effort' and eating breakfast:
PK: What supplements are you taking?
CF: I take a protein drink, fish oils, energizer greens – a CMP vegetable drink -nothing out of the ordinary. I take Loratadine every day, an anti-histamine that helps me with skin reactions to sun creams and the rubbish that seems to flare up my skin. I take my inhaler every day.
PK: Is that Ventolin?
CF: Ventolin only if I’ve got effort. Fluticasone is a daily one, more a preventative, so I take two sprays.
PK: And it was Ventolin you used in the Dauphine?
CF: Yeah, so that was on the bike before a big effort.
PK: But is that using the inhaler to boost your performance? You’re taking it before a big effort, not because you . . .
CF: I eat breakfast before a long race. Is that not doing something to boost my performance? If I don’t eat I won’t have any energy; if I don’t have my inhaler before a really big effort I’m probably not going to be able to breathe very well. I know I’m not going to be able to breathe very well.
Anyway - bringing this full circle back to the story about Thor keeping the Armstrong revelation to himself, Froome says something very interesting in the Kimmage interview (given we are now post-Armstrong, supposedly in the new era of clean(er) cycling, and Froome is part of a supposedly cleaner-than-clean & transparent team). Is Froome's answer here not too dissimilar to Thor's view?:
PK: Okay, a couple of points about things in the book that ‘jar’. You saw your attitude to Basso changed when he went positive (‘You never get over that feeling of betrayal. Basso was my first and last hero of the peloton.’) and it’s a point you make several times about your attitude to people who cheat.
CF: Yeah.
PK: I’m trying to square that with the Vuelta in 2011. Brailsford has come back to the table and has offered you a new deal. Why would you meet Bjarne Riis, someone who, for me, epitomises cheating?
CF: Well . . .
MC: Bargaining.
CF: Yeah, bargaining power, I was interested to see what was on the table. I recognise that these guys are in the sport - guys who have doped or had a part in doping - but I also recognize that’s just not the way it is any more, and that just because riders ride for Bjarne doesn’t mean they dope.
PK: Vinokourov?
CF: Yeah, another guy who . . . he did test positive, right?
MC: I think for blood doping.
CF: Yeah, so another guy who has been involved in doping in the past but any involvement with him now wouldn’t necessarily mean . . . I wouldn’t say that (Vincenzo) Nibali and every rider on Astana is now doping because of Vinokourov. Times have changed and these characters are still in the sport - that’s just the way it is at the moment. That’s where Team Sky, with their code of ethics, is one way of ruling out that association.
MC: At the end of the day, all you can do is ride the best that you can within your own abilities and do it right.
PK: What price do you put on ethics?
CF: Yeah, (exhales) like you said, I don’t believe there should be . . . I mean it’s not as if Team Sky go around trying to (impose) their ethics on everyone else: ‘Why are you employing ex-dopers?’ They can’t hold everyone else to their set of ethics?
PK: What about your ethics? You use the word ‘betrayal’ about Basso and I’m thinking ‘That’s exactly what I want to hear.’ But then I see you at Vinokourov’s retirement party and being photographed with him. So what happens to betrayal?
CF: Yeah, I mean going to Vinokourov’s thing . . . this guy is a big icon in cycling. He has a retirement party here (Monaco),and there’s going to be a lot of influential cycling people here . . .
PK: He’s a fucking cheat.
CF: (Laughs) You said that.
MC: I don’t think Chris fully understood that (Vinokourov) had doped.
CF: No, I knew.
MC: Not fully.
PK: I want you to say it Chris. You say, ‘You said that’ but I want you to say it. As a cycling fan, I want you to say, ‘You know these fucking cheats? I’m sick of them. They’ve ruined the sport. They’re ruining my life. This is the price I’m paying for these fuckers, so I’m not going to have anything whatsoever to do with them.’
CF: Yeah.
PK: I want you to say that.
CF: I’m not going to point the finger at Lance or Vinokourov or Basso or Bjarne.
PK: Why not?
CF: Because it’s not one person who fucked it up for us. It’s a generation of cheats. I’m more pissed off with the governing body of cycling for allowing that to go on for so long. It was allowed to happen in the sport . . . well, I don’t want to say allowed but it did happen for so long, and I think that goes back to the UCI and it’s their mess that they didn’t sort this out sooner.
PK: That’s a fair point. But you’re not going to hold the riders to account for their part in that?
CF: No, no, the riders should be held to account for that.
PK: But you’re not going to do it?
CF: It’s not my job to do it.
PK: Whose job is it?
CF: It’s the UCI’s.
..and I was saying that there is no 'means' per se required. It is a consequence of their particular power output abilities and weight - all of which can be enhanced by many any number of variables, legitimate and illegal.
Indeed - partly by not having a relatively poor diet. Weight loss doesn't lose you peak power (as he pointed out), losing muscle fibres will.. and even given that it's a balance between what type of power you want to put out, for how long, over what terrain.
Yes it is bollocks if you take it to mean he doesn't eat carbs - but that's not what he's saying. As for Michelle - jeez I bet Sky love her... that said the diet they were talking about here and in the previous interview is a pretty bog standard sounding one for weight restriction under training - little and often, no carbs after 2, plenty of protein spread out and so on... and she didn't say, as you put it, 'carbs are no good for Grand Tour riders'.
What Froome does seem to be saying his old diet didn't have the right carb/protein balance to maximise the base-line weight, and sorting that out a bit meant he could drop a bit more weight and not lose much power. My main surprise is that Sky weren't all over him for some of that before (if, indeed, they weren't).
Whatever
Indeed, rather him than me. This is, i'll warrant, not a revelation to anyone whose heard them however.
That's the point Froome is making - whether you agree with him or not. It doesn't sit well with me either, although I can somewhat understand the argument that if you have an attack then the inhaler is only trying to bring back performance to a pre-attack level.
As so to go back to what you said, and I queried you one - the build of recent riders is a 'clear signal' of a particular type of drug abuse.. except it isn't a clear signal at all, and actually of all riders in the recent trend of very skinny builds you claim only one fits your definition of suspicious - Froome... who does look emaciated when he's prepared himself for spending long times in high mountains... as long as you look at his arms and not, say, his legs. There are undoubtably guys using AICAR and other crap in the pro-peloton, but I hardly think you can start talking about obvious evidence of that being a trend based on one man with no readily apparent physiological changes that couldn't be attributed to other causes.
Ironically the omerta has been protected by making LA the fall-guy whilst the cycling media has danced to the tune of the clean (recently revised to cleanER) cycling agenda. Whatever you think about LA, he was right about one thing, it was a witch-hunt, and it has done nothing but mask the fact that doping is still rife in cycling (as well as many other sports). Anyone who thinks Sky rode 'clean' in 2012 & 2013 are deluded, but hey, why should that matter?
I agree entirely about the Sky thing. But the above is quite possibly the best in a long line of brilliantly awful posts on this site.
So tell me, who today is shouting out loud about current doping in cycling? And further still (given that Lance was a global sports star), who is shouting out loud about doping in sports in general? Given that you agree about Sky, how can you not see that the omerta is as strong as its ever been? There is only one rider who I believe is truly clean, beyond that, who knows?
I do believe that there is still omerta. I'm not convinced that there are quite the same levels of team-driven doping programmes as there were in the past.
More than anything though, your use of 'fall guy' and 'witch hunt' are the problem here. It tends to negate anything else you say. Still too soon?
....because that is what it was. USADA didn't set out to uncover the whole truth, name names, and expose a sports doping network of doctors and agents - they set out to bring down one guy! And on the back of that, prominent commentators and journalists are claiming the sport is now largely clean! Seems like 'fall-guy' and 'witch hunt' are quite accurate descriptions.
Maybe it was a case that they knew if they tried to go after everyone, they would catch no-one. But if they aimed at LA and could prove a case against him, then maybe, just maybe, the house of cards would fall.
Now it may even be that once the case was overwhelming enough against LA, the omerta sacrificed him to keep the business going as he wasnt going to compete again. If they gave him up then it takes the spotlight off everything else.
What I've learnt (through this and other subjects) is that it is never a simple binary situation but incredibly complex with a lot of different politics coming into play.
...Bruyneel, del Moral, Marti, Ferrari all brought down by the same 'hunt'. As, to a lesser degree, were others. If you're going after a team, why on earth would you focus on the 'little guys' and let the leaders go? Armstrong and Bruyneel *ran* the show, to a level not seen previously. One of them in particular hid behind a bogus shield of righteousness whilst destroying lives and careers. Chaps like Ricco 'only' doped in a few bike races, ffs.
USADA would only be running a 'witch hunt' if they didn't go after anyone else. A quick look at their website shows a long, long list of riders and other athletes sanctioned.
Granted - more can/should be done. Agents in particular - and why on earth Vino is still able to have *anything* to do with cycling is mindboggling. But all about Armstrong? Come on.
I respect Thor more than the dopers who squealed for a reduced sentence (whilst retaining the more-than-substantial fruits of their ride on the Lance gravy train!).
certainly won't be spending my money to hear what else Thor has to say.
He also thought that Kristoff robbed him of what was rightfully his final stage to win in the Arctic Race, sad.
Of course, more cynical people than myself might say Thor is just whipping up a bit of controversy to generate a few more sales?
'Thor' coming soon in all good bookstores
Thats a good point - but he didn't say 'I kept quiet because I have seen what happened to others who spoke out'
no, he said 'Not my job' [to catch cheats] - which is something else entirely.
On the basis that Boonen rode for US Postal, should he also be crucified for not saying anything? I can't believe he knows nothing about what went on from what has emerged about the team since.
Pro cycling is a job, you can say you should be the whistle blower, but in how many jobs does the whistle blower find themselves shafted?
This witch hunt is becoming really tiresome. Why not have an unconditional amnesty from years xxxx to yyyy for a specific period of time with the understanding that there are NO prosecutions, punishments nor financial penalties whether criminal, civil or from WADA or from the UCI or sponsors, race organisers wanting monies re-paid or prize winnings returned - so ALL riders, ALL team managers, ALL bent UCI officials can come forward to confess any doping, cheating, organisation or administration of on what ever the scale, etc. so we can get to the bottom of what went on and what went wrong, and so we can learn from these huge mistakes - so we can start afresh, a clean slate and just put this shit behind us? What is done is done. The information that this amnesty would bring the current incumbents would be so valuable in helping us fight current and future doping and cheating it has go to be worth doing for that alone.
They already have this with the statute of limitations (or statue as some people would say). But the point that WADA and others are keen to avoid is not being able to prosecute people who they later find out doped. The problem is that the dopers are 1 step ahead of the authorities and if you give them the get-out-of-jail card some will walk away scot free. That would have happened to Lance if they had not persisted. The other side of it is that the riders will sit there sweating on the idea that 10 years down the line that frozen bottle of pee (or blood test) will reveal the secrets of their success, so it acts as a deterrent.
I'm guessing you believe the current set of riders are clean, which is not nearly the case.
I think you are being very naive, do you really think that people who have cheated and lied about it for years will suddenly speak up just because of an amnesty? I dont think that they will, they will be seen as liars by their friends, families and fans if they do. We cannot put this behind us and start again for the simple reason that the modern peleton is not, and will never be clean. All professional sports people (of any sport) have a limited time in which to make enough money to retire on and they are all highly motivated individuals with a desire to win. These two factors will always be a reason for some individuals to dope. No getting away from that I'm afraid.
I think you should mind your own business. Assuming you are not a professional cyclist in consultation with WADA.
Thor was of course near the end of his career at the time. I think you *should* judge him harshly.
Good point... maybe I mean bear this in mind?
Hushovd has gone down in my estimation after this.
Christophe Bassons and others found out what happens when you cannot keep your mouth shut; the omerta.
What he did was wrong, but going against Lance could end your career. I do not think you should judge him too harshly.
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