USADA boss Travis Tygart says Team Sky zero tolerance policy wrong way to fight doping

Sponsors are nothing like as naive as to think that a "clean" team really is clean ... and probably don't really care that much - it's about what they get out for what they put in ... if we examine corporate ethics in many businesses, we find that they are not only not terribly ethical, but actually don't give a rats' ass about consumer response to their lack of ethics - Starbucks being *possibly* a rare example of an organisation that when caught with it's ethical pants down, at least made a gesture at pulling them up - others mentioned in the same breath haven't been queuing up to do the same thing.

So - from a perhaps ultra-cynical point of view, in a time of financial stricture, sponsors who flee the sport on the publically stated basis of adverse publicity are probably doing so at least in part because it offers a way for them to bail out of a financial commitment they are finding it hard to afford and appear holier-than-thou at the same time, without the potential for damage to share price that might go with just saying "we don't have the marketing dollars to allocate" ...

Professional cycling didn't die in 1999 in the wake of the Festina Affair, and hasn't taken a really serious hit since, despite confessions, rumours, innuendo and public hand-wringing - it's not likely to happen now, either, even in the face of widespread confessions from riders. There are just too many vested interests.

I have to agree with Tygart - so many involved in the sport have either been directly or peripherally involved with drug taking that the best thing IS to have some kind of truly one-off amnesty, followed by a proper Zero Tolerance approach. Otherwise, we will have damaging rumours and innuendo for the next ten or twenty years. The best way to handle it is to say - "OK, guys, 'fess up now, and "x" will happen (some penalty must apply) ... and if we find out later that you were not totally straight (bearing in mind all of the ongoing lines of enquiry at present), then you are out, for life, of cycle sport, period."

It's a case of a whole truckload of red faces now and the odd hard, decisive action later, rather than an ongoing series of tabloid-style "revelations" - which is what we'll get if there is too much incentive to sweep the past under the carpet, as could so easily happen with instant "Zero Tolerance" fixes.

I can understand Tygart and Howman going on about everyone who's doped, coming forward and confessing - because that's bang in line with the aims of the agencies they both head up. However, when it gets to those actively involved in cycling, I really wonder whats going on in their heads. How many sponsors do people really think would stick around in the sport in the face of mass numbers of riders, managers, DSs and support staff confessing? Unbelieveably naive. Its alright for Vaughters - his team's main backer is a wealthy businessman who's supported him from the get-go. But other teams? Forget it.

You want the quickest way for procycling to die? Mass confessions.

We seem to have been here before Stumpy. Zero tolerance and automatic life bans will only preserve the omerta. The sport will be no cleaner. The policy you suggest would have meant Armstrong got away with it, because others facing a life ban would have had nothing to gain by giving USADA evidence.

Zero tolerance is the only way to have a clean sport.

You cant keep giving these riders chances to be clean. It should be that they have to be clean or banned for life, there can be no middle / muddled ground.

If a rider takes meds for an ailment they should be cleared through a Dr approved by the UCI (oh dear might have gone to far there) to say its yes or no.

Once thats done anyone caught with "stuff" in them has to pay the consequences.

Why should Sky or any other European team have any interest in the maunderings of a small-time American bureaucrat?

Let's not forget that USPS (claimed to have) had a "Zero tolerance" policy. For them it was a good way of making sure the dirt stayed under the carpet. And as some think that any such policy is just dopers PR, when a clean team has one does it serve any purpose? Might not the policy in itself cause suspicion?

Would have to agree with you Manx rider. Like it or not, the approach that might be 'better for the sport' would consist of the non-cycling media reporting that the "...supposedly clean Team Sky actually includes numerous dopers, reports our correspondent. They all maintain that they have been clean since joining the team...". To say that wouldn't go down well is an understatement.

Sky (the media corporation) didn't sign up for that, they signed up to sponsor a clean team, and who can blame them?

There is no truth and reconciliation commission so that’s not really an option for Sky? The absence of which Sky have two options:

The Garmin model: work with ex drug users which you can get on the cheap to maximise their potential clean. Suitable for a poacher turned gamekeeper type like Vaughters, who knows the ins and outs of the game.

The Sky model: "I don't want anything to do with drugs or drug users". The zero tolerance model which suits Brailsford, as he doesn't have (or want) the knowledge about the drugs in the sport, budget is less of a consideration, and is the model which is least likely to embarrass the sponsor.

To me it looks like SKY have the right model for them. Perhaps Tygarts sentiments are influenced by having most of the top US riders in the peloton having some sort of drug history?