I posted a while back on my frustration that those with economic power in cycling - and other sports as well - are never implicated or even much considered in the eternally recurrent drama of denunciation and punishment for performance enhancing drug use. Happily the economic engines of this spectacle are getting a bit of attention at a much higher profile outlet than NewAPPS. Below the break is a comment from a former professional cyclist Jorg Jaksche that gets to the heart of the matter, followed by a clause from a contract that cyclists signed with the team Rabobank, along with the corporate "explanation" - by which I mean "statement so insanely and obviously dishonest that in a just world one would burst into flames instantly upon completing it."
JJ: “We had just finished the Tour of Germany and were driving to Switzerland for the Swiss Tour when the article hit the newsstands,” [the first article alleging extensive doping on his team] Jaksche said. “I was in a car with Ullrich and the press officer that Telekom assigned to us, and I remember him telling us how to handle the press. They did not want to find out if Der Spiegel’s accusations were true or false. They never made any attempt to verify the allegations. In fact, they must have assumed they were right, because the only countermeasure they took was to make sure that none of us would say anything compromising.
“It was omertà all the way. The reason? With Ullrich’s success in the Tour, a relatively small amount of money had produced a huge marketing return. For them, it was an extraordinarily successful business model and they didn’t want to change it or, worse, ruin it.”
“In my entire career, I never had a sponsor asking me any question about doping,” Jaksche said. “They are only good at covering their back, for example through contracts with built-in deniability.”
NYT: Rabobank cyclists were asked to sign a contract that included a confidentiality clause pertaining to doping. It said that the rider “will not at present nor in the future make any disclosure to third parties except with the explicit permission of the employer about any matter directly or indirectly tied to ... the alleged use of banned substances.”
The contract clause, Rabobank said in a statement Monday, “is a standard clause, which is intended to prevent leakage of company secrets.”
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