The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published here contain the opinions of the submitting authors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company, Inside Communications, Inc.

Let Rock roll!
Editor,

So, Jim Birrell of Medalist Sports declines inviting Rock Racing to the Tour de Georgia because team owner Ball's "renegade approach and his desire to steal the limelight away from the platform that has been created for everybody else is what troubles me."

Imagine ... a team owner and sponsor that wants to draw attention to his investment ... the gall of it all.

Well congratulations Mr. Birrell on your admission to the race-owner/organizers-who-make- headscratching-mind-numbingly-bizarre-decisions club! I'm sure that ASO and RCS will enjoy teaching you their secret handshake.
Marc Bertucco
New York, New York

Editor's note: the writer is quoting Birrell's comments in the March 10 issue of VeloNews

Enough politically correct thinking
Editor,

I have to voice my opinion regarding the Tour of Georgia and Tour of California decisions with Rock Racing. Whatever the reasons and public explanations, it sends a very negative statement about a top-level domestic team with top level athletes. I also see it as a personal attack on specific individuals.

If promoters want races attended by US teams and loyal US spectators, and they wish to be respected as the premiere races in the US, then their actions towards cyclists and the sport have to go beyond what's erroneously seen as politically correct thinking.

Assume the fellows on Rock Racing are guilty ... they served their sentence and the promoters are punishing a unique, exciting team, and individuals arbitrarily.

Assume Tyler is not guilty as he has stated ... Promoters look and act as if they have a personal ax to grind. By being way off base and too politically correct, they are playing with someone's professional and personal life as judge, jury, and executioner. All this to a team and individuals who have already paid their dues and may in fact be innocent.

David Millar and others who professed guilt will race. They're allowing them and their teams to race. To me, this is hypocrisy in its purist form.

I for one think this stinks, and I think the act of not allowing a top level domestic team to race in a domestic race is crap. It sends a bad message to existing and potential sponsors about our messy world of cycling these days.

I will be happy to tell my cycling friends all this, and to ask them to ride their own bike during the televised spots in protest. I will also make sure that I attempt to contact sponsors and let them know what I, and many others think of these obnoxious, capricious, and arbitrary decisions.
Jim Dunlap,
Fort Collins, Colorado

Facts
Editor,

In Response to the letter from Andrew Marais:

The UCI has been around longer than the Tour de France, and certainly longer than the ASO has been running the Tour de France. The UCI was formed in 1900 and the Tour de France started in 1903. L'Auto started the race and folded after WWII. It eventually became L'Equipe after the war. L'Equipe was purchased by EPA (Philippe Amaury Publications) in 1968. In 1992 the EPA formed the ASO to administer the race.

In conclusion the ASO has been in existence a mere 16 years. I bet you most of the readers of VeloNews are older than that. So the ASO has earned nothing. The EPA may have purchased a race, but it really belongs to the spectators and the racers. If the EPA stopped hosting the race, then we would resurrect it. If the fans and the athletes stop participating, then the tour would cease to exist. I thought Europe was more progressive about treating their customers and workers with more respect, maybe the ASO is simply an exception.
Alaric Falcon
San Francisco, California

Let Tyler Ride, Too!
Editor,

I attended a highly ranked law school, and I edited my law review. I am a reasonably smart guy. I’ve been an attorney for 25 years.. But I can’t understand the due process procedures of international cycling to save my life.

Tyler Hamilton has served his suspension. Unlike David Millar, he has not confessed to past transgressions with the zeal of a reformed sinner. He has, however, adhered to UCI rules regarding his suspension, and he deserves the right to practice his chosen profession.

AEG’s argument — that preventing Hamilton and Santiago Botero from riding in the Amgen Tour of California was based on an anti-doping agreement with the teams entered in the race — rings hollow. The UCI regulations permit riders to compete in events until a final decision has been made on any possible violation. This would indicate that Tyler deserves to ride — except, according to AEG, when he doesn’t. For AEG to violate a rule promulgated by the UCI, while simultaneously hiding behind the UCI regulations is craven and disingenuous.

Rock Racing’s Michael Ball needs clarity regarding the riders on his team who can and cannot enter races. Whatever one may think of his scorched-earth public relations tactics, he has made a substantial investment in the sport, based, at least in part, on the rules promulgated by the UCI and other governing bodies. He deserves a return on that investment — unless we intend to ignore the rules of free enterprise as well. The rule of law and due process should prevail here. These are the touchstones of civilization.

If I didn’t know the sport so well, I would swear that cycling is hell-bent on destroying its credibility and driving sponsors away. It is sad and painful when a sport eats its young.

I am pleased at the public outcry of the arbitrary decision of ASO to exclude Team Astana from their events. We need, however to extend our outrage to other unfair and arbitrary situations as well, and Tyler’s is among them.
Randall Nixon
West Friendship, Maryland

Arbitrary and capricious
Editor,

I read with dismay that Rock Racing has been excluded from this year’s Tour de Georgia. Rock is the most exciting thing to happen to domestic racing in the last decade. The exclusion of the team seems arbitrary and capricious, and difficult to reconcile with the inclusion of other teams and riders in the same race.

To be certain, I understand the interest of race promoters to protect sponsorship, branding, and general appearances; however, teams and riders are paying a heavy price for all the hand-wringing, and fans are being treated with a patronizing amount of paternalism. Seriously, I didn’t drop T-Mobile because they found bags of Jan Ullrich’s blood in Spain.

More to the point, there seems to be little rhyme or reason to the exclusions. AEG allowed Rock to line up for the Tour of California, but then disallowed three disfavored riders. But teams and riders that have been comparably implicated (or worse) were permitted to race. And of course, Astana was allowed to race, and in fact won the race.

Which necessarily brings us to the Tour. So, Astana gets singled out, and the first and third place riders have been excluded? Last time I checked, Alberto Contador had been exonerated by the Spanish Cycling Federation, and Levi Leipheimer has never been implicated for anything.

And yet, teams with similar problems (or worse) like High Road, Rabobank, and even poster child Slipstream, get the nod.

As a fan, I am tired of having my favorite riders and teams excluded from the best races. I can only imagine how it must be for these professionals who spend the entire year preparing for those races, only to have their seasons, or careers, cut short by the powers that be.
Justin Baxter,
Portland, Oregon

Slipstream not the only clean team
Editor,

I was glad to hear Jonathan Vaughters of team Slipstream-Chipotle, in the article "Slipstream-Chipotle gets a Tour invite," give recognition to the fact that his team is not the only squad in the peleton chock full of clean riders. Some of his past statements - especially stating that his riders had a "perceived disadvantage" from being clean- had made it sound as if his racers were the only clean riders around.

Although Slipstream's mission is great for the sport, there is no need to boost your own team's image by sending the signal that nobody else does things the right way. Now that the sport seems to be holding one another to the highest standards, maybe this idea that anyone who wins is dirty will slowly move to the periphery.
Ashton Rogers
Washington, DC

Re:re: the Vaughters article
Editor,

We all want to see clean racing, but when the testing agencies have the audacity to bother riders at funerals and while their wives are in labor (ala the Armstrong family), they have every right to feel violated.

Riders need to be tested. However, this needs to be done humanely, discretely, and ethically, rather than making the control of cheating uglier than the cheating itself. Intrusions like these are beyond unnecessary. They are wrong. You wouldn't tolerate a government showing up at your wife's funeral to take a urine sample for an actual illegal drug like cocaine or heroine. In this country, you'd find someone to sue.

As for watching pro cycling with the little ones when someone gets caught, use it to help teach them a fundamental life lesson: "Boys and Girls, when you don't play fair, you don't get to play anymore." Hiding them from the reality that some people cheat in life helps nothing.

Try to remember that cycling's doping scandals are public because something is actually being done to bring them to light. If only every professional sport had the conviction to call out its cheaters.
Erik Long
Ashland, Oregon

Takes issue with Mionske
Editor,

re: Bob Mionske's column

I wear my title of cyclist as proudly as I wear the badge of my profession; law enforcement. If the Deputy or his Department in the Cupertino crash were in any way negligent in regards to this tragedy, then they should suffer the consequences.

But, Mr. Mionske's sweeping generalizations and not so subtle doubt castings on the integrity of the investigation are completely uncalled for. I have the highest regard for the CHP and their integrity in investigating law enforcement collisions. I have personally seen them arrest fellow law enforcement officers for off-duty actions, and I have seen them place on-duty officer's at fault in collisions in police units. The CHP is an agency that pulls no punches in the world of professionalism.

As to the difference in rights afforded to an officer in California... There's a California Government Code referred to as POBR (Police Officer Bill of Rights). Had the CHP subjected the Deputy to an interrogation out of the provisions of that government code, or forced a blood draw, then they would have had the investigation and its findings tossed out. As an attorney, Mr. Mionske is well aware of the 'fruits of the poison tree' concept.

My heart goes out to those cyclists, their families, friends, and team mates and my thoughts are are with you. Mr. Mionske shouldn't further that grief with his own tainted views.
Corporal Curtis Bayer
Colton Police Department
Colton, California