SEASIDE, Calif. — They swept onto the international cycling scene from Boulder as the new wave of cycling ethics, all testing and transparency and cyclists willing to toe the line. Team Slipstream/Chipotle, nicknamed “Team Clean,” opened the eyes of fans and international cycling officials alike.
But has the team opened the eyes of the competition? It has with its cycling and cyclists.
After Saturday’s Stage 6 of the Tour of California, won by Luciano Pagliarini of Brazil, three Slipstream/Chipotle riders, led by David Millar at second overall and Christian Vande Velde in third, were in the top six going into today’s final stage.
As for the team’s ballyhooed weekly drug testing? Well, yes, all cyclists are in favor of teams going out of their way to stay clean. But, they say, what’s the big deal?
“From what I’ve heard it’s not an anti-doping program. It’s a health program,” said Bjarne Riis, team director of CSC of Denmark. “That’s different.”
CSC and Slipstream/Chipotle were two of the trailblazers into wide-sweeping independent testing. CSC does 800 to 900 tests a year and Slipstream/Chipotle does 1,200. The difference is, Riis said, all of CSC’s testing is unannounced. Some of Slipstream/Chipotle’s testing is done with 24 hours notice.
“I cannot tell you exactly but if you know you are going to control a test, then it’s not an out-of-competition test,” Riis said.
CSC’s tests are conducted at the University of Copenhagen and are sent to the governing body of international cycling (UCI) and the World Anti-Doping Agency before it returns. After six months, all results are placed on the CSC website.
Some of Slipstream/Chipotle’s results go to UCI and WADA first and others go to the Agency for Cycling Ethics before they go to the team. Any positive tests are made public.
“No matter what, it’s good that they do something,” Riis said. “Maybe they get more credit than they should have had compared to us, but I think they show a good way and I appreciate very much what (director Jonathan Vaughters) is doing. I have nothing against that.”
Said Vaughters: “They think fewer tests and 100 percent unannounced is better, and we think higher volume and 50 percent unannounced is better. At the end of the day we get to same point.”
Rabobank of the Netherlands has four doctors who conduct regular tests, but director Erik Breukink doesn’t think going to an independent agency is necessary.
“What is independent, huh?” he said. “When somebody works five years together with a team, that’s already not independent.”
However, it’s clear Slipstream/Chipotle and CSC helped start a trend. Other Tour of California teams doing independent testing are Rock Racing of the U.S. and Astana of Kazakhstan, although its new program wasn’t enough for the Tour de France to overlook three doping cyclists and send an invitation.
“(Slipstream/Chipotle) is good because we do the exact same thing,” said Astana’s Levi Leipheimer, who leads this race by 49 seconds. “We do it to prove to the world that we’ve changed the way cycling’s been the last three years. It’s what we have to do now after what’s happened.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
