In my last posting, the audio blog, I talked about Robbie Ventura at Downers Grove. It was 2004, and the pic shows two Posties: Robbie, with Floyd Landis doing a great job of working for him. Robbie is now doing a great job as DS for the Advantage Benefits Endeavour Cycling Team. The ABE cycling team had a busy schedule in 2005 and looked real good.

EPO-Gate: I am just appalled that the totally screwed-up testing process came up with a positive for the B sample of Roberto Heras. It’s just too, too fishy about the “delay” in the process because they couldn’t get a reading and then, with extra time, they came up with a positive...

It makes absolutely no logical sense at all that Roberto would use EPO at the end of the Vuelta when he was four minutes ahead of his nearest competitor. Roberto had already been tested something like twelve times with no problem. He knew, with no doubt, that when he won, he would be tested thoroughly. Why in the Hell would he use EPO? That’s just totally nutz - nobody with a brain in their head would use EPO at that time in a race... Especially since he had already won three times and knew exactly what the testing process would be.

People, there is something really wrong going on there, and the UCI and WADA have gone so far that they cannot afford to even consider the thought that they are screwing up badly, somehow, some way.. The bureaucracy has to do whatever to CYA, and riders are being ruined because of it. The UCI released a statement late Friday to express its "full satisfaction with the way the procedures relating to this case were carried out and reaffirms its unconditional confidence in the method used to trace EPO." The reality is that no procedure of any kind is flawless - human error always enters into the equation.

I was trying to locate the very small article that I read recently online about Santi Perez and his fight against his homologous blood transfusion findings. Santi’s case has kinda gone off the radar screen, but I recall reading that his legal team had produced proof that the samples used came from three different storage units. The article gave the numbers on the testing documents, showing three different storage locations. What does this mean? The question is: How could Santi’s blood sample be stored in three different locations? How easy is it for some lab tech to misread one digit and pull a sample from the wrong place? CYA... Who is going to admit that they made a mistake? CYA and keep your job... Whether it is lab tech, lab director, WADA official or UCI official... CYA is the name of the game.

And, no publicity at all for this Santi Perez article that might cast doubts on the testing process.. No thunderous headlines, not picked by much of the cycling media - not trumpeted in the headlines by L’Creep - CYA there, too...