Banned cyclist Jonathan Tiernan-Locke has hit out at the UCI’s biological passport, claiming it would not bear scrutiny in a “proper court,” and that the proces is loaded against riders. The ex-Team Sky rider also compared his situation to that of Tinkoff-Saxo’s Roman Kreuziger, cleared on similar charges.
The UCI appealed the decision last September of the Czech authorities to clear Kreuziger to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) but the governing body dropped the case two days before the hearing, which had been scheduled for last week.
Tiernan-Locke, who said in April that he plans to return to racing next year when his ban ends, told the Western Morning News: “I’m really happy for Kreuziger that he has finally been cleared, but it’s so worrying that it got that far.
“I can only imagine the expense he must have incurred – and he must have been almost out the door on his way to Switzerland when the UCI decision came. It was so last-minute. His reputation has taken a massive hit, just like mine has, and also that of his team.”
Tiernan-Locke himself was handed a partly backdated two-year ban last July for irregularities in his athlete biological passport dating back to September 2012, when he was with Endura Racing.
He said the values in question, relating to the week between him winning the Tour of Britain and riding in the UCI Road World Championships, were due to dehydration after a night out celebrating his move to Sky with his girlfriend, claiming he drank 33 units of alcohol.
UK Anti-Doping’s National Anti-Doping panel dismissed his defence, however, and stripped him of that Tour of Britain win. He was also sacked by Team Sky, and while he has continued to assert his innocence.
He did not exercise his right to appeal the decision to the CAS, and said: “As far as taking my own case further, the small window of opportunity to go to CAS has long since passed, even if I could have afforded it.
“However, should the chance arise in the future where I could be heard at a proper court, I would grab it with both hands, as I’m confident the ‘passport’ would not stand up to the same scrutiny applied to forensics there.”
He added: “I’ve never wanted to hurt the sport of cycling – I hope to race again next year. But as I found out, the process is so weighted against the athlete.
“For the UCI, the passport has to seem infallible, so they need to win cases at almost any cost. And it’s wrong that, on the back of that, they have the power of God, it seems.”
37 thoughts on “Banned cyclist Jonathan Tiernan-Locke says bio passport wouldn’t stand up in “proper court””
He needs to set up a charity
He needs to set up a charity or something, like Lance did with Livestrong. He’ll get more mileage.
Maybe one for IBS sufferers, they seem under represented when it’s London Marathon time. You rarely hear of people collecting for Irritable Bowl research.
He should call it BowelStrong and give out brown wristbands.
It’s the only way he’s going to get back into the sport now.
The passport is biased
The passport is biased against false positives. In other words it is designed for most cases to be open and shut, like JTL, who had no credible defence.
It sounds like Kreuziger did have a credible defence.
I hope everyone saw the
I hope everyone saw the recent BBC Panorama programme, on the subject of drugs in sport.
The reporter, a keen triathlete, got himself a ‘blood passport’ and then micro-dosed EPO (bought from China on the interweb) for about 6 weeks. Both his power and his VO2max increased very significantly (as did his performance on the road) … but he stayed within the ‘normal’ range on the blood-passport.
There was also this France 2
There was also this France 2 documentary http://hedgehogcycling.co.uk/france-2-micro-dosing-experiment.html which showed you could take EPO, HGH, and a blood transfusion, and still remain within the bio passport parameters. That’s a bigger problem than the one Tiernan-Locke is highlighting.
Of course JTL’s excuse was
Of course JTL’s excuse was high farce how many top athletes after their event do excess. The bio passport is a very good idea and forget court, if you are a pro athlete you sign up tot he rules of the sport, in this case the UCI.
Fed up of them complaining, very few have legitimate excuses and the quicker WADA and sports spend real cash in getting in research, the better !
Of course some sports will not be interested in actual finding out the truth
Anyone who believes the bio
Anyone who believes the bio passport is fit for purpose is fooling themselves, its a means to an end for UCI/WADA, it makes them look like they are doing something, when it theory, they aren’t doing much at all
Gkam84 wrote:Anyone who
The bio passport is an excellent idea but it obviously needs real work on it an research to perfect it …
What the documentaries show
What the documentaries show is that it may be possible to get a false negative.
If you have any understanding of science or stats, that shows exactly nothing about the probability of what Tiernan-Locke claims, a false negative.
Toro Toro wrote:What the
I think you meant ‘false positive’ at the end, and of course you are right
Stratman wrote:Toro Toro
I think you meant ‘false positive’ at the end, and of course you are right— Toro Toro
No, he means false negative. The threshold is set deliberately high so you don’t get false positives. The evidence that you can cheat and still not test positive makes it worse for JTL.
Stratman wrote:Toro Toro
I think you meant ‘false positive’ at the end, and of course you are right— Toro Toro
D’oh, yes!
Who goes out the day b4 the
Who goes out the day b4 the biggest race of ure life and gets hammered? Worst excuse i’ve ever heard. Guilty as sin when i heard that one!
Hoof Hearted wrote:Who goes
Yes, the probability that he went out and doped before the biggest race of his life seems a more likely corollary of the evidence.
JTL’s claim is the weak claim of a doper, it’s the claim that Armstrong hid behind, which is that in a court it has to be ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ – it used to be harder back in the day because they could not detect exogenous EPO or blood doping, but that has changed.
The biggest problem is the cost of testing. The bio-passport is just a 50% hematocrit test in another form. It limits the doping, but doesn’t get rid of it…..which is better than nothing. Has anyone read this:
Colin Peyresourde wrote:Has
Interesting – Rollands level was inbetween a ‘normal’ level for morning and afternoon in an adult.
I feel sorry for JTL. Another
I feel sorry for JTL. Another one low down in the food chain popped, while stars higher up get away with it! Something smells fishy here. I don’t think he really believes he’s innocent, but I think he’s really pissed-off because he knows others (including Brits) are doping and getting away with it! Of course he can’t say anything because he wants a team to sign him when his ban ends.
daddyELVIS wrote:I feel sorry
Are you saying he’s Floyd Landis?
daddyELVIS wrote:I feel sorry
and that is Omertà in action for you. Some teams have been shown to take on repentant dopers, Garmin. However if what you say is true then of course we will never get to the bottom of it.
daddyELVIS wrote:I feel sorry
To be honest the timing of JTLs misfortune always sucked for me.
Like it was Fat Pat’s parting gift to a his English successor.
Any number of riders could have got popped, but here, in the last days of a falling empire, attention was focused on a lowly Englishman.
And yes, its rarely the big stars that are in favour that get done, they tend to fall foul of the police or a local anti doping office. I doubt the UCI really want their big names getting caught and messing up the gravy train. But a few lowly riders, yep throw them under the bus.
‘I feel sorry for JTL.’
I
‘I feel sorry for JTL.’
I don’t. He doped.
andyp wrote:’I feel sorry for
Just like all the others (in fact his programme probably not as sophisticated as the top riders). I don’t live in the land of fairies!
daddyELVIS wrote:andyp
Just like all the others (in fact his programme probably not as sophisticated as the top riders). I don’t live in the land of fairies!— andyp
You are if you believe that everyone else is definitely doping.
fukawitribe wrote:daddyELVIS
Just like all the others (in fact his programme probably not as sophisticated as the top riders). I don’t live in the land of fairies!— daddyELVIS
You are if you believe that everyone else is definitely doping.— andyp
You are if you believe most are not! – but then you probably don’t class TUE abuse and corticosteroid abuse as doping.
daddyELVIS wrote:fukawitribe
Just like all the others (in fact his programme probably not as sophisticated as the top riders). I don’t live in the land of fairies!— fukawitribe
You are if you believe that everyone else is definitely doping.— daddyELVIS
You are if you believe most are not! – but then you probably don’t class TUE abuse and corticosteroid abuse as doping.— andyp
I didn’t say ‘most’, I said everyone- just as you keep saying. Stop the over generalisations or back it up.
fukawitribe wrote:daddyELVIS
Just like all the others (in fact his programme probably not as sophisticated as the top riders). I don’t live in the land of fairies!— daddyELVIS
You are if you believe that everyone else is definitely doping.— fukawitribe
You are if you believe most are not! – but then you probably don’t class TUE abuse and corticosteroid abuse as doping.— daddyELVIS
I didn’t say ‘most’, I said everyone- just as you keep saying. Stop the over generalisations or back it up.— andyp
It’s a turn-of-phrase, you know that. I’m certain Taylor Phinney doesn’t dope, but then a cyclist with that much talent hardly winning anything is sad!
daddyELVIS wrote:fukawitribe
You keep using it, and in more certain terms than this (as you also know) – the same as Colin asserting that the top 20% of all endurance sports are doping. It’s almost certainly bollocks so just stop doing it and say what you think rather than for effect.
fukawitribe wrote:daddyELVIS
You keep using it, and in more certain terms than this (as you also know) – the same as Colin asserting that the top 20% of all endurance sports are doping. It’s almost certainly bollocks so just stop doing it and say what you think rather than for effect.— fukawitribe
Keep believing! You’ll no doubt believe Farah is clean then?
daddyELVIS wrote:fukawitribe
You keep using it, and in more certain terms than this (as you also know) – the same as Colin asserting that the top 20% of all endurance sports are doping. It’s almost certainly bollocks so just stop doing it and say what you think rather than for effect.— daddyELVIS
Keep believing! You’ll no doubt believe Farah is clean then?— fukawitribe
Grow up.
fukawitribe wrote:daddyELVIS
You keep using it, and in more certain terms than this (as you also know) – the same as Colin asserting that the top 20% of all endurance sports are doping. It’s almost certainly bollocks so just stop doing it and say what you think rather than for effect.— fukawitribe
Keep believing! You’ll no doubt believe Farah is clean then?— daddyELVIS
Grow up.— fukawitribe
You said ‘it’s almost certainly bollocks’. I say, when it comes to distance running it’s clearly almost certainly certain!
daddyELVIS wrote:andyp
Just like all the others (in fact his programme probably not as sophisticated as the top riders). I don’t live in the land of fairies!— andyp
Nor do I. It doesn’t matter a jot whether everyone else is doing it. He did, and he got caught. Tough shit.
Same goes for anyone else doping, whatever the level.
andyp wrote:daddyELVIS
Just like all the others (in fact his programme probably not as sophisticated as the top riders). I don’t live in the land of fairies!— daddyELVIS
Nor do I. It doesn’t matter a jot whether everyone else is doing it. He did, and he got caught. Tough shit.
Same goes for anyone else doping, whatever the level.— andyp
The issue isn’t as simple as that, I’m afraid. And unless you understand that nearly every top-class athlete is doping (‘legal’ doping included), then you can’t even start to address the problem. Banning a few bad apples won’t work.
andyp wrote:daddyELVIS
Just like all the others (in fact his programme probably not as sophisticated as the top riders). I don’t live in the land of fairies!— daddyELVIS
Nor do I. It doesn’t matter a jot whether everyone else is doing it. He did, and he got caught. Tough shit.
Same goes for anyone else doping, whatever the level.— andyp
The issue isn’t as simple as that, I’m afraid. And unless you understand that nearly every top-class athlete is doping (‘legal’ doping included), then you can’t even start to address the problem. Banning a few bad apples won’t work.
I would feel sorry for him if
I would feel sorry for him if he just held his hands up admitted he doped, apologised to his fans and promised to ride clean on his return.
He said the values in
He said the values in question, were due to dehydration after a night out claiming he drank 33 units of alcohol.
That’s approx 15 pints, now I am not a skinny super fit cyclist instead I am quite a big lad and a bit of a drinker but not that bloody much!
FATBEGGARONABIKE wrote:He
I find drinking that amount fairly believable.
However, drinking that amount in 6 hours is a bit more difficult to fathom.
But drinking that amount, in six hours and then flying out and managing to be the fastest British rider at the world championships? Pull the other one JTL, it’s got bells on.
FATBEGGARONABIKE wrote:He
…only if it’s really weak beer 🙂
33 units is only a bottle of
33 units is only a bottle of Absolut Vodka, I remember in my younger days between four guys in a flat, we could easily polish off 6 bottles of it in the course of a night, talking 6-2, so 8 hours, but we weren’t just necking it, you could easily consume that much in 6 hours and still be able to cycle, to what level would depend on your level of coping, you’d have a rather sore head.
Gkam84 wrote:33 units is only
What level did you race to?