Contador - not innocent until proven guilty AT ALL!!!

Miss FeeDee made an interesting point on her blog the other day: she comments on the way Contador simply flew up Mount Etna when all around him were panting and collapsing.

This had led her to a crisis of conscience on the theme of "I should give him the courtesy of saying he's innocent until proven guilty, but blimey, the way he shot up that hill like a rocket makes me think that he must be on something - oh, confusion!"

Well, here's my two-penn'th, as we say in England in the late 1950s:

The phrase "innocent until proven guilty" relates to English law.

Now, Contador is a cyclist, and his ruling body is the UCI, who are based in Switzerland - not in England - and they have Rules, but they don't make laws.

If you break a UCI rule, you get penalised by them, but you don't go to jail.

The worst that can happen is things  like fines, bans, and having past wins taken away from you. A cyclist who breaks UCI rules (not laws, rules) may never be able to cycle professionally at that level again, but he doesn't go to jail, and he won't have a criminal record for the rest of his life.

So, "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply. Especially as Contador has already been proven guilty - the lab results showed that on several days he had Clenbuterol in his system. He can't deny that, but he is trying to prove that that he didn't do it deliberately.

Not quite the same thing!

So we don't have to worry about being fair to Conti, we just have to wait for CAS to get their act together and decide what they are going to do about it.

In the meantime, blimey, he flew up Mount Etna like a rocket, was he on something???!!

As several people have said on Miss FeeDee's blog, we all want Conti to be clean, we all want cycling to be clean, but really? To drop everyone else like that?

On the one hand, I can't imagine anyone being stupid enough to use PEDs when in Conti's position, ie the eyes of the world upon him and the likelihood of testing being about 100%.

But on the other hand, he went up that hill like a rocket!

And this is someone who spent months under suspension and suspicion, who was frequently seen nearly in tears, who didn't have a relaxing winter break like everyone else, who was stressed to a severe degree, who didn't have a proper training regime, and who allegedly only had 30 days' warning before his first race this season.  And who already has four stage wins and two overall wins.

It reminds me so much of one of my early Tours de France, when a young rider shot past everyone else on the hill, and LLB explained to me that he was looking so surprised because no-one should be able to ride uphill like that, at that stage in a race. Yup, it was Floyd Landis.

Sigh.

And another sigh - I haven't seen any footage of the Amgen Tour of California yet, it's all sitting on LLB's recorder, waiting for the weekend.  Apparently the first stage was cancelled due to snow:

So, in order to present the usual cheerful face to my fellow fangirls, here is a picture that I thought might amuse you/us/me.

Here are Anders Lund and a highly-muffled Andy Schleck talking to the Sky car:

"So, Andy, why don't you make life easier for Cougar Girl and join us here at Sky? You could come and live in England, which would be nice for Coug, Kara, Eli, Original Kara, and all your other UK fans: and it means that Coug wouldn't have to support two teams."

Andy: "Smmmmfff mmfffffff nkkk mmmfffff."

"Well, you already speak very good English, you'd feel right at home here."

Andy "Hffff mffff mmf-mfffnfffff?"

"Yes, we have McDonalds."

Andy: (*pauses to think*) "Mffffff -"

At that moment Brian Nygaard appeared with a big stick and the interview was over.