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Live blog: Jiffy Bag probe MP fears “concerted effort” to stop ex-Team Sky doc Richard Freeman giving evidence, OUCHY! Cattle grid vid with MacAskill, Olympic champ rower turned cyclist heads back to the water, inspirational quotes + more
All today’s news from the site and beyond
Wed, Mar 06, 2019 22:08
SUMMARY
6 March 2019, 22:08
British Cycling "extremely disappointed" as tribunal into Dr Richard Freeman adjourned
British Cycling says it is “extremely disappointed” that the tribunal into its former doctor Richard Freeman, who also worked at Team Sky, has been adjourned and is now unlikely to take place until next year – if at all.
The doctor, who resigned from the governing body in 2017, citing ill health, is charged by the General Medical Council (GMC) on several counts relating to the delivery of testosterone patches to the National Cycling Centre in 2011 – most seriously, that he ordered them for the use of an unnamed athlete.
Freeman, who denies the allegations, was due to appear at a medical tribunal in Manchester last month, but the hearing was delayed due to preliminary arguments understood to relate to his mental health.
Yesterday, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service said: “The case will be re-listed and heard by a new tribunal in due course.”
A GMC spokesperson, quoted on BBC Sport, said: “It is frustrating that this case has not yet got under way.
“We remain ready to open our case in public and hope we will be permitted to do so as soon as possible.”
British Cycling said: “It is in the public interest and in the best interests of the sport that the allegations against Dr Richard Freeman are heard and examined openly by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.
“British Cycling is a co-referrer in this case and we will continue to support the General Medical Council’s work as there remain historic questions to be answered.”
6 March 2019, 22:08
Emotional scenes as winner of Belgian race Le Samyn greeted by wife moments after biggest victory of career
Emotional scenes in Belgium yesterday where Deceuninck-Quick Step rider Florian Senechal was greeted by his wife Margaux moments after taking his biggest career win to date in the 50th edition of the one-day race, Le Samyn.
First held in 1968 as the Grand Prix de Fayt-le-Franc, the race was renamed in 1970 in honour of its first winner, French rider Jose Samyn, who had been killed in a crash during a race in Belgium the previous year.
L’émotion de @flosenech et de son épouse Margaux a l’arrivée du #GPSamyn Elle me fait plez celle-là ! pic.twitter.com/sDix7dZlEt
— Fred Retsin (@FRETSIN) March 5, 2019
6 March 2019, 22:08
Inspirational quotes from the Mayor of Bogota - a politician who really gets cycling
Here’s a rarity – a politician who really gets cycling, as well as how increasing public transport provision and limiting private car use makes cities safer, nicer and fairer places to live.
The website shitenriquesays.com contains a series of inspirational quotes from Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Colombia’s capital, Bogota.
An expert in transport policy, he was re-elected in 2015 and during his first spell as mayor from 1998-2001 began the city’s extensive cycle path network.
Here is a selection of some of his quotes – you will find many more here.
6 March 2019, 22:08
Video: Danny MacAskill – be careful of that cattle gri…! Oh
One to make you gasp, but luckily not puke. It’s a video from Danny MacAskill that doesn’t star the great man himself instead it’s his unfortunate friend Duncan Shaw – and the cattle grid at Gavinburn who star. It could have been so much nastier we all hope Duncan’s leg is okay and yet another warning that you always need to be careful on cattle grids – even when your tyres are fat.
6 March 2019, 22:08
MP who led Jiffy Bag probe raises fears of "concerted effort to make sure that Dr Freeman never has to give evidence"
Conservative MP Damian Collins says questions need to be asked over why the medical tribunal into former British Cycling and Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman has been adjourned.
He told BBC Sport: “We should be concerned that there is a concerted effort to make sure that Dr Freeman never has to give evidence, and we should rightly question why that might be the case.”
It’s a sentence that lends itself to much reading between the lines.
Collins chairs the House of Commons Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which as part of its 2017-18 inquiry into doping in sport focused on Team Sky, British Cycling and Freeman following the disclosure of Therapeutic Use Exemptions to 2012 Tour de France winner Sir Bradley Wiggins plus the contents of thee Jiffy Bag delivered to the doctor at the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine.
The committee’s report was highly critical of Freeman, who missed a scheduled appearance before it to give evidence citing ill-health, and recommended that he be investigated by the General Medical Council.
6 March 2019, 22:08
Olympic champ rower gives up Tokyo 2020 cycling dream and heads back to the water
A double Olympic champion rower from New Zealand who switched sports with hopes of winning a cycling medal in Tokyo next year has rethought his plans and now intends to return to the water.
Hamish Bond, aged 33, focused on cycling after he and Eric Murray successfully defended the coxless pair Olympic title won at London 2012 in Rio three years ago.
The pair enjoyed a phenomenal unbeaten run in the event of 69 international races from 2009-16, including winning the world championship six times.
After switching to cycling following Rio, last year, Bond won the time trial at both the Oceania Road Championships and the New Zealand National Road Championships as well as bronze in the same event at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
Last month at the National Track Championships, he set a New Zealand national record for the individual pursuit, but now he has told Stuff.co.nz that he feels at a “crossroads” after he failed to make the team pursuit line-up for the world championships in Pruszkow, Poland.
Admitting that rowing may represent his best chance of competing in what is likely to be his final Olympic Games, he is now aiming for a seat in the men’s eight.
“Your heart has to be in the right place to really commit to something like that and perhaps it wasn’t [with cycling],” he said.
“What day to day training and environment was I going to enjoy the most? I thought the eight.”
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Latest Comments
tomlew 1 hour ago
@Rendel Harris I absolutely know all that. But that's exactly what I said: he is risking a lot, but the reward might be worth it. It is only a matter of judgment. And by the way, AFAIK nobody said he's going to ride to win the GC. Maybe the plan is exactly to learn his lessons this year so that next year nobody can say he's too inexperienced to really go for victory. Of course, he could ride the Vuelta, but what better place is there to learn the TdF than TdF itself? Times have changed. No more pecking orders, 16-year-old footballers are already shaking the world (even though most of them do indeed get chewed and spat out badly, but again: that's a risk they take). Why wouldn't the same happen in cycling?
darnac 2 hours ago
Sôme interesting comments from Wright and Stewart about 'losing' thé team élément a bit with thé new format
choddo 8 hours ago
And I don’t know when you wrote this but I think it was published 9 days after Onley was confirmed out of the Tour.
choddo 8 hours ago
Paul Seixas’ team is Decathlon CMA CGM
GravelIsNothingNew 9 hours ago
The best thing about the TTT as Stage 1 is that it emphasises the fact that cycling grand tours incl the TDF are a team sport.
mdavidford 9 hours ago
If you click through and read the story you'll see that the first motorist hit the cyclist, and the second, following, motorist then also hit them while they were lying in the road - both were convicted of causing the cyclist's death.
Rendel Harris 11 hours ago
I may be reading far too much into it, but I felt as though Pogacar and UAE weren't actually that bothered about winning today. Not having yellow to defend and all the extra press etc to do this early in the race is an indisputable advantage; I just got the impression that they were out to lose no more than a handful of seconds but not to bury themselves for the win. With about 2.5kms to go I thought that if Pogacar really wanted it he would have gone from there, but he stayed with Del Toro for nearly another kilometre even though the body language was saying that no way was Del Toro in as good shape as Pogacar. Even after the finish he didn't seem as wiped out as Ganna (whom I don't think I've ever seen quite so shattered) or Jonas. As I say, might be reading too much into it but I would not be surprised if UAE had played a very clever hand not to lose any meaningful time but to avoid the burden of yellow from the get go.
Rendel Harris 11 hours ago
@tomlew It's not his youth so much as his inexperience. He's never ridden a race longer than eight days before. Pogacar won his first Tour, it's true, but he'd already finished a Vuelta. There's simply to much for him to learn and become accustomed to in my opinion for him to have a realistic chance of victory, particularly as he's up against probably the greatest of all time and a double Tour winner, both of whom seem to be at the peak of their powers. It's not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility but he'd need a hatful of luck and something fairly catastrophic to happen to both of those guys before he'd realistically be in with a shout. Don't forget nobody has won their first Grand Tour since Hinault in 1978, forty-eight years is a hell of a lot of precedent.
tomlew 13 hours ago
There is no rational reason for a rider this young not to dominate the race, other than some of us believing this is "not right" based purely on opinion. Younger athletes recover much, much faster. They adapt more easily. They are typically more eager to take risks, which is... well, risky, but could pay off big time if the stars align. Burnout? Yes, that is a risk. But it's not a given. See how long Leo Messi has been absolutely top-notch. The risks are high, but the potential is even more so. And even if Seixas does burn out early, it may just be his choice despite the awareness of the risk. If I were a prodigy cyclist youngster with a realistic shot at winning, I might take it even if I knew it might be the end of my career. After all, it's winning the TdF we're talking about!
tomlew 13 hours ago
@Rendel Harris Let's turn this around. One can hack their electronic shifting and nobody will believe them!
14 thoughts on “Live blog: Jiffy Bag probe MP fears “concerted effort” to stop ex-Team Sky doc Richard Freeman giving evidence, OUCHY! Cattle grid vid with MacAskill, Olympic champ rower turned cyclist heads back to the water, inspirational quotes + more”
Expensive lawyer/barrister
Expensive lawyer/barrister type says: “We remain ready to open our case in public and hope we will be permitted to do so as soon as possible.”
British Cycling said: “It is in the public interest and in the best interests of the sport that the allegations against Dr Richard Freeman are heard and examined openly by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.
“British Cycling is a co-referrer in this case and we will continue to support the General Medical Council’s work as there remain historic questions to be answered.”
NO IT DOESN’T, it doesn’t help any public in the cycling community to keep dragging this case on and on.. nine years afterwards.. what can be proven now and what good will come from it, that he didn’t keep records very well.. it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to crack that case.. that he ordered some testosterone patches.. well getting the receipt doesn’t take millions £ to find, but did he use them, on whom.. you’ll never know so why wank money away making law people rich, it should be used trying to make our failing GB track team a bit faster in time for Tokyo, or giving those boys from Derbados some funds to have a crack at the hour.
peted76 wrote:
100% This ^^^^^^^^
peted76 wrote:
Don’t worry about it – that’s a GMC funded tribunal so you’re not paying for it and neither is British Cycling. The GMC would argue that it is in the public interest to uphold their standards across the medical profession which is what this is all about.
There’s a cafe stop near me
There’s a cafe stop near me (Hockey’s Farm Shop) popular with cyclists that has a cattle grid. I’ve seen people try to walk across it in road cleats, or have to stop sharpish whilst riding across it with the inevitable “arse, where did the ground go” expression. And another on a bend at the bottom of a descent where you really need to make sure you’ve got the bike stood up. Occupational hazard round here.
The shit that enrique says is
The shit that enrique says is good.
This man cannot be left in
This man cannot be left in charge of himself and keep the kind of records any health professional is required to keep as a fundamental of practice. Why should this go unchecked? Contravening prescribing regulations, wrong type of drugs to the wrong person. Would you leave your relative in his hands??
Put more clearly you own a very expensive hypercar, would you leave it to be serviced by your mate who just bought some new spanners and Haynes manual from Halfords, but said it’s just like his 1983 Mini Metro and he maintains that.
Just how do you get to see
Just how do you get to see the Danny MacAskill video? Oh, wait I’ve found a candidate on YouTube, by searching for ‘cattle grid shaw’. Why isn’t the video embedded in this page?
I’d like to clone the Mayor of Bogota and have an Enrique Peñalosa in every town and city hall, every county council and in the Department for Transport. Would it be pushing it too far to ask him to be take the place of Prince Charles as our next monarch?
Just how do you get to see
[quote=janusz0]
Just how do you get to see the Danny MacAskill video? Oh, wait I’ve found a candidate on YouTube, by searching for ‘cattle grid danny shaw’. Why isn’t the video embedded in this page?
It’s there, or here, just below the blurb (just watched it again) video embeds can take longer to load than the rest of the page, refreshing the page often hurries them along.
Tony Farrelly]
Hmm, not with Firefox 65.0.1 on MacOS 10.14.3, even with all scripts allowed, UBlock Origin turned off, a refresh and a long wait! I’ve just tried Safari and the video is there.
For reference Firefox version 15.0 on iOS 12.1.4 doesn’t show it either. (Scripts aren’t blocked). Safari on iOS does show the video.
This is not the first time I’ve noticed missing videos recently, but it’s the first one where I’ve wanted to watch the video! I’m still not sure why you have this “blog” feature, I can’t see why you don’t just start a new articles.
janusz0]
My Firefox doesn’t show it either, but to be fair it’s somewhat locked down with NoScript, Privacy Badger etc.
When testing the same page on Chromium (running on Ubuntu), it shows the video and I can see that it’s hosted on FarceBook, so that’s probably why it doesn’t work on my Firefox.
It shouldn’t be the case that
It shouldn’t be the case that the simple common sense views of Enrique Peñalosa make headlines, yet sadly it really is the case. If a few more people thought about things in the same way here it would be a very different place to live.
Perhaps he can come over here and be deputy to lord Boardman when he’s finally swept to power on a common sense manifesto.
RobD wrote:
Да товарищ!
Dear Conservative MP Damian
Dear Conservative MP Damian Collins,
Your party seemed quite proud of the Stevenson/Farmer report into mental health and the responsibility of employers. Your party has stated it will introduce a new Mental Health Bill to transform mental health care, following publication of the final report from the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983 accepting 2 of the review’s recommendations to modernise the Mental Health Act.
So if a Doctor says he has mental health issues, are you sure you should be questioning his integrity in the public domain? Are you confident that the harrasment you are commiting won’t lead to further issues for the person involved? Or are you just trying to gain some publicity through a half-arsed media soundbite after being paid a fortune to waste thousands of pounds on taxpayers money to conclude ‘something seems a little fishy but we found no fish’?
Kind regards,
Those whom you represent
Dear Conservative MP Damian
Dear Conservative MP Damian Collins,
Your party seemed quite proud of the Stevenson/Farmer report into mental health and the responsibility of employers. Your party has stated it will introduce a new Mental Health Bill to transform mental health care, following publication of the final report from the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983 accepting 2 of the review’s recommendations to modernise the Mental Health Act.
So if a Doctor says he has mental health issues, are you sure you should be questioning his integrity in the public domain? Are you confident that the harrasment you are commiting won’t lead to further issues for the person involved? Or are you just trying to gain some publicity through a half-arsed media soundbite after being paid a fortune to waste thousands of pounds on taxpayers money to conclude ‘something seems a little fishy but we found no fish’?
Kind regards,
Those whom you represent