Grant Shapps’ dangerous cycling law “the wrong answer to a rare problem”, says Cycling UK; USADA catch another big fish – oh, wait: Amateur racer receives lifetime ban; Protection vs Paint; Astana pro tests positive; MTB Pidcock + more on the live blog

It was a landmark day on the live blog, as road.cc regular brooksby reached that iconic internet milestone: the 10,000th comment.

So, how was this grand occasion marked, I hear you ask? Well, with all the gravitas it deserves:

Now, I just need to make sure that it's a serious and memorable comment, not just fluff.

(edit:) Dammit!

Here’s to the next 10,000! Although, maybe a hobby could come in handy...

The 20mph saga goes on…

This is not true Lynn. https://t.co/EF3NY4pjJt

— Chris Boardman (@Chris_Boardman) August 11, 2022

It appears Lynn didn’t pay too much attention to our article on this story last month:

> Wales set to reduce default speed limit to 20mph in residential areas

You say in the first paragraph "The Welsh Government has plans to change every 30mph road in Wales to 20mph".

That is not true. It is against @Change community guidelines to provide misleading information in petitions hosted on their platform.

— 🕹️ EᑎGᗩGEᔕᗷᖇᗩIᑎ 🎮 (@EngagesBrain) August 11, 2022

Some happy #TDA22 fans 😃 pic.twitter.com/scC8BgVxbx

— Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team (@qst_alphavinyl) August 11, 2022

You may remember, way, way, way back at the end of July, the live blog took a look at some of the criticisms surrounding the new cycling and pedestrian zone in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, with feedback ranging from “not ideal” to “absurd”, “awful” and “mind-boggling”…

Not to mention, that a few taxi drivers kept having to reverse out of the no-car area once they realised where they were…

Well, thanks to demolition works, things aren’t any better this week:

If you thought the cycleway through the Northern Quarter was shit…..well it just got shitter.@ManCityCouncil @Piccadilly_Lab pic.twitter.com/hXqjMXHrfm

— NQHQmcr (@NQHQmcr) August 11, 2022

Olympic mountain bike champion, world cyclocross champion, Tour de France stage winner on Alpe d’Huez…

Tom Pidcock has certainly proved over the past year that he can do almost anything on almost any kind of bike.

Well, next week, fresh from a few weeks of R&R following his spectacularly successful debut Grande Boucle, the 23-year-old will dust off the old MTB as he aims to add a European Champion’s jersey to that rapidly filling trophy room.

Pidcock will be joined in the mountain bike cross country event at the European Championships in Munich, where the track and BMX events get underway today, by national champion Cameron Orr, while Isla Short will compete in the women’s race.

Alex Broadway/SWPix.com

After a few weeks off since the Tour – and a birthday in between for good measure – it’s little wonder the Ineos man was taking every opportunity he could get, whatever the weather, to train on his mountain bike for next Friday’s race...

“Coming off the back of an incredibly successful Commonwealth Games, our athletes are ready and raring to go once again as they build towards their respective world championships later in the year,” said GB’s Cycling Team Performance Director, Stephen Park.

“Across the track, mountain bike and BMX freestyle park disciplines we have a fantastic depth of talent and I’m pleased to see a number of riders stepping up to the senior squads to make their debuts.”

Believe it or not, but it’s been ten long years since the Lance Armstrong empire was toppled by the “Reasoned Decision”; a watershed moment for professional cycling that resulted in that interview with Oprah, a plethora of (mostly decent) books and (mostly shoddy) films, and Brad Wiggins’ head scratching ‘Santa tripping on his sleigh’ analogy (or something along those lines).

In the decade following the long-awaited demise of “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”, the United States Anti-Doping Agency has – quite understandably – focused its mighty attention on the most illustrious dopers, cheaters and scoundrels of the American Cat 4 peloton.

The latest of these weekend warriors to be crushed by Travis Tygart’s long arm is crit botherer Jackson ‘Huntley’ Nash, who has received a lifetime ban from USADA for multiple anti-doping violations.

Nash, who came to the attention of the anti-doping agency in December 2021 after a tip from a whistleblower, has been found guilty of seven different violations, including possessing and using, or attempting to use, the banned substances testosterone, clenbuterol, oxandrolone, and anastrozole.

He was also deemed to have trafficked and administered banned substances to another athlete, including human growth hormone and clenbuterol, and encouraged another athlete to take banned drugs. According to USADA, Nash retaliated against the investigation by “filing a meritless petition for a protective order against an individual based in part on the individual’s report to USADA of Nash’s anti-doping rule violations”.

Nash, a former pro motorbike racer whose best results in recent years include wins at a Cat 1-3 criterium in Dahlonega, Georgia, in 2019 and two ‘Spin the District’ Cat 2-3 crits in 2018, has been banned for life from cycling, backdated to 30 June 2022, while all of his results since 15 December 2021 – the day evidence was first collected for the investigation – have been stripped.

For most of last year, he raced for Aminorip Factory Racing, a team sponsored by a nutritional supplement company distributing products to help amateur athletes “aim higher and push their limits.”

“This is yet another case that demonstrates the power of investigations in the shared fight to protect sport and athletes’ rights,” said USADA’s CEO Travis Tygart in a statement.

“As always, we will thoroughly investigate and act on evidence of doping violations, and greatly appreciate the assistance of those who come forward on behalf of clean sport.”

> New Zealand national road race champion Olivia Ray admits to using banned substances

Weekend racer Nash’s case does have implications, however, for the world of professional cycling. Last month, his former partner, New Zealand national road race champion Olivia Ray, admitted to taking banned substances, which she claimed owed to pressure from Nash.

PhotosportNZ/SWpix.com

Ray was dropped by Women’s World Tour team Human Powered Health earlier this year and is waiting for USADA’s final decision on a ban, which if imposed will last for four years.

“I took stuff from about November to December, just the month of November,” Ray told the New Zealand Herald.

“I wasn't racing. I wasn't going to have anything in me for when I raced. I thought in a way it was acceptable because I wasn't affecting the race, I wasn't cheating. I was doing it in a safe space on my own to see what it was like.

“In my head it was, I didn't hurt anyone and I did it when I wasn't racing, I wasn't tested, I've never tested positive, I will have it out of my system before I get tested again.”

Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps has announced plans to bring in a new offence of 'causing death by dangerous cycling'. But if government is to go ahead with this law, it must address the bigger picture. We're calling for a wider review of road traffic offences and penalties. pic.twitter.com/dwwrPVQWzk

— Cycling UK (@WeAreCyclingUK) August 10, 2022

Over the weekend, we were greeted with the news – via the Daily Mail’s typically bombastic front page – that Transport Secretary Grant Shapps plans to introduce a new ‘causing death by dangerous cycling’ law, as part of his Transport Bill which will begin its passage through Parliament later this year.

The new law would see bike riders who are found guilty of the offence face the same punishment as drivers convicted of causing death by dangerous driving, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Currently, cyclists involved in crashes in which a pedestrian is killed or injured can face prosecution, under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, for causing bodily harm through wanton or furious driving, which carries a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment, a legal situation Shapps described as “archaic” and a “relic of the horse-drawn era”.

> Government to crack down on “reckless” riders with causing death by dangerous cycling law

Of course, the campaign for a new law concerning dangerous cycling is not new. In 2016, 44-year-old mother Kim Briggs was killed after being hit by London cycle courier Charlie Alliston, who was riding a fixed wheel track bike with no front brake at the time of the fatal collision.

After being prosecuted for manslaughter and wanton and furious driving (and being found guilty of the latter), Alliston was sentenced to 18 months in a young offenders institution out of a possible maximum two-year sentence.

Since the cyclist’s conviction, Briggs’ husband Matthew has campaigned for new legislation and told the Today programme this week: “It's never been about the degree of punishment… it's been about the complication, the chaos and the hurt and the confusion that comes along with the fact that there are no (specific) laws which apply to cyclists.

“It is rare, but it keeps happening. And it needs to be sorted. It is a very simple clarification, a tidying up of the law.”

> "Where is the effort being put into dangerous driving which kills, maims and destroys lives?": All the reaction to government plan to introduce death by dangerous cycling law

However, charity Cycling UK has said this week that, while parity between motoring and cycling offences can be achieved, it must be done through a much wider review of road traffic offences and penalties, and that “you cannot have the former without the latter”.

“We made it clear that we have no objection in principle to seeking greater parity between cycling and motoring offences,” says Cycling UK’s Policy director Roger Geffen.

“But the Government's proposed solution – namely to copy-and-paste the existing offence of ‘causing death by dangerous driving’ to create an equivalent cycling offence – was the wrong solution to a problem that only arises a couple or so times per decade.

“The right solution, by contrast, would involve tackling a much wider problem which causes terrible distress to hundreds of seriously injured or bereaved road crash victims every year.”

He continued: “Specifically, Cycling UK has long argued for new laws to clarify or revise the distinction between 'dangerous' and 'careless' road traffic offences, including their variants involving causing death, causing serious injury, driving under the influence, driving without a licence or insurance, or driving while disqualified.

“Road crash victims still regularly face the double injustice of absurdly lenient sentencing – try Googling ‘driver spared jail’, and you’ll see what I mean.

“This is often because the driving which caused their injuries or death has been dismissed by prosecutors or the courts as being merely 'careless', despite having caused 'danger' that surely ought to have been ‘obvious to a competent and careful driver’.

“Cycling UK has always been clear though that its desire to clarify the distinction between 'careless' and dangerous' driving is NOT because we want to see more drivers locked up for causing death or serious injury – even though that is evidently what Shapps wants to happen to cyclists.

“On the contrary, we have long argued for less reliance on custodial sentences, and greater use of driving bans. Most (though not all) drivers who kill or maim through 'dangerous' driving are not dangerous people, who need to be locked up for public protection. A much fairer and more effective remedy is to ban them from driving for a suitable time-period, and only allow them to resume driving once they have passed an extended re-test.

“Long prison sentences, by contrast, should be reserved for those who have driven so obviously recklessly, or who have already flouted past driving bans, so that imposing (or re-imposing) a ban would NOT provide sufficient public protection.”

Cycling UK’s full statement can be read here.