Cavendish apparantly missed a dope test in 2011

[Little yellow Brompton]

I hope you haven't opened the floodgates there !

What? Me? Why? <eg>

 

[Noodley]

I reckon it is quite good to hear about someone missing a test, and the circumstances of it, rather than waiting until someone has missed three - by which point people have made up stories as to try to explain away some dodgy practices. No athlete should miss three tests, ever. For me, missing one seems to be just part of human error, two is just not being professional - and three does, in my opinion, reek of cheating.

As for Cav, I doubt he'll miss anymore. His whereabouts on the day he missed the test can easily be checked. Unlike The Chicken when he was in Mexico/Italy no sorry was it Spain or France?

 

[yello]

Unlike The Chicken when he was in Mexico/Italy no sorry was it Spain or France?

I was actually thinking of Rasmussen the other day in relation to missed tests. I don't think anyone (his team included) knew where he was. Just goes to show that there are missed tests and there are missed tests.

 

[Winnershsaint]

Not without precedent for Cav. He fell foul of this twice before according to his book 'Boy Racer'. The 'whereabouts system' for out of competition testing meant he had to give three addresses, home, training and an exception address. He'd gone back to the IoM just before Xmas 2005 having informed UK Sport he would be at his exception address (IoM). According to rules he should have been at Manchester Velodrome on any given Tuesday morning as that was the training address he had given even though he had told UKSport where he would be. UK Sport turn up to Manchester to test; no Cav.It happened a second time in 2006 when he went off to Germany at short notice and forgot fill in the 'whereabouts form' before leaving. UK Sport turned up at his IoM address the day after he left. Both these examples seem to show a naivety/human error that you could attribute to any 20 year old embarking on a dream career. In the book he recognises how these two oversights could have had a profound effect on his career.

 

[monnet]

Armstrong?

Bung the UCI a few grand and I'm sure there will be amnesia all round.

 

[yello]

If only they could shut pesky Swiss lab directors up eh?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

The whereabouts rules are really tough; there's been quite a lot of writing about them in sociology of sport literature as an example of contemporary social control. I wouldn't want to live under this kind of intense targeted surveillance. I expect most cyclists miss in one every now and again. The important thing is that there is not a pattern of missed tests or obvious deception involved. Now the testers can't necessarily spot deception, hence the 3 missed tests in 18 months rule which is a kind of compromise.

 

[oldroadman]

Let's be clear about this. The ADAMS system, - whereabouts for out of competition testing, asks for a one-hour slot per day. The testers can't turn up any time, and you miss if you are not there. Also it's possible to text changes a few hours in advance, so it is not too onerous and is a part of the job for any top sportsperson. The three miss rule allows for the errors which will happen sometimes. What is hard to accept is where an athlete misses three and then complains, because after a miss comes a notification/warning, so most don't miss again! Then of course there are certain sports where the performers say it's a breach of their human rights to have to comply, all of which sports sem to involve a ball one way or another, to which the proper response should be "tough, it goes with the territory of being a very highly paid elite performer".
I can't see a problem for someone who is being paid thousands of pounds a week, as much less well paiperformers seem to be ablke to cope quite well with this "invasion of privacy". Just don't tell 'em your whereabouts for the time you are in bed with a team-mates wife, if you must do that sort of thing between ball kicking sessions!