New anti-doping cycling team

David Millar changes gear to sign for anti-doping team Slipstream

David Millar yesterday confirmed recent rumours that he will race next year for Slipstream, the team from the United States which is close to being guaranteed a ride in the 2008 Tour de France because it was founded on ethical principles with the aim of preventing their riders doping. Millar has been with the Spanish team Saunier Duval since his June comeback last year from a two-year doping ban.

Since Millar made contact in January with Jonathan Vaughters, the former US professional who runs Slipstream, the team's accession to the bigger races and their expansion to ride the Tour while remaining "clean" has become a joint project for both men. "I gave JV my ideas, my opinions," Millar said. "We picked each others' brains and it became clear that we wanted to do the same thing, which is to create the first of the next generation of cycling teams."Such projects have taken on a new urgency, given the way that this year's Tour turned into a shambles, with positive drugs tests, including one for the pre-race favourite Alexandr Vinokourov, and a week of doubt before the ejection of the apparent shoo-in for overall victory, Michael Rasmussen.

"It's taken on more validity in the last few weeks," agrees Millar. "Before it was our little mission, now it is being recognised that we are not just mad preachers. There is a lot of vision there, but it is pragmatic at the same time."

Slipstream is almost unique in that it is funded largely by the cycling equivalent of one of professional rugby union's "sugar-daddies", an American Doug Ellis who made his money in computer software.

"We have been working on this since January," said Millar. In March he and Vaughters made a joint visit to the Tour organisers, Amaury Sport Organisation. "We wanted to get their opinion, find out if it was a valid project for them, whether we stood a chance of getting in their races. They seemed charmed by the whole thing."

Slipstream, says Millar, "differs from other teams in that the baseline is purely ethical. Doug Ellis wants a cycling team but he wants one that doesn't win at all costs. He feels he can only be proud of it if he has no doubts about it. He needs guarantees, even for a rider like me. He needs hard copy to prove I am clean."

This year 30% of the team budget, between £150,000 to £200,000, was devoted to setting up a medical profiling system for the team's cyclists. "The team works with an independent ethics group and JV was the first cycling team manager to go to the World Anti-Doping Agency to ask their opinion," said Millar.

The profiling system will include a blood volume test, which is the only reliable way of detecting whether a cyclist has used a blood transfusion. An independent body will monitor whether or not the riders are fit to race.

"There will be background tests on riders' personalities, if there are rumours about their background they will get medical tests," said Millar.

In a new departure for professional cycling, the bulk of the team will be based in Gerona, Spain, where the ambition is to build a support network that will prevent riders becoming "just hired guns who turn up at races," as Millar puts it. "We've taken that idea from what Dave Brailsford and British Cycling do and put it into a top-level professional team," he said.

"There are no 100% guarantees but we are trying to create a group of guys who trust each other and don't want to win at all costs. If we don't win a race in year one, that's not the thing. We want to have fun, enjoy racing, give it 100% and race well."

Returning to this year's Tour, Millar yesterday explained his tearful response on hearing that Vinokourov had tested positive for blood doping. "For a year and a half every interview I do has been about anti-doping. I was blindsided by it," he said.

"I'm trying to do something constructive, doing everything I can to help, and I found out just like that about one of my favourite riders, to whom I've given the benefit of the doubt, who I wanted to believe was doing it clean. I'd been defending him to my peers and suddenly I had to turn around and produce a response for the world's press."

On the road to Understanding (Ken)

(from http://www.petemccormack.com)

All first drafts are shit.
—Ernest Hemingway

Writing the first draft of Understanding Ken was the fastest and easiest large bit of decent writing I have ever done. From word one to the end of the manuscript took about 6 or 7 weeks—done by March of ’97, I believe—which was gratifying.

But what’s important to make clear is that the book came out in a sort of huge relief after nearly three years of intense, ultimately futile effort writing a novel called The Beaver Rebellion: Divide and Conquer, Part II. There was no part 1. It was about four Vancouver revolutionaries (an oxymoron), who wanted to change the world, change the system, change themselves.

Despite an endless dream to inspire the masses, I just couldn’t get it right. This brings to mind a wonderful quote from Mark Twain:

“There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written—it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.”

How to tell a story about Vancouver Revolutionaries eluded me. Deluded me. Secluded me. On a positive note, I did get to quote mad anarchists from the eighteenth century and dower Trilateralists from today, and juxtapose all kinds of conspiracy theories towards the solution of the world’s problems—all long before the arrival of George W (you mean there were problems before George W?).

I was also years ahead of Dan Brown’s mega-selling book The DaVinci Code, but unfortunately not nearly as interesting. Even having not read The DaVinci Code, I know this to be true.

And as I kept pounding on the keypad, and the creative exasperation of The Beaver began to solidify, thoughts of my childhood kept popping forth, until finally the past exploded onto paper, and I let loose.

And so was birthed Understanding Ken.

I never worked on The Beaver Rebellion again. In fact I lost for years all the copies (manuscripts and computer back ups) of TBR: Part II—all of them—until a former CSIS (Canadian CIA) liaison friend of mine called me up one day and said, “I say, young Pete, I found a stack of papers some three inches thick of yours in my office—that crazy manuscript you were writing.” I felt pleased, picked it up, read it over, and it still stunk the joint out.

But anyway, I’m talking about Understanding Ken, not some strident political comedy that isn’t funny. I’m serious. Stop bringing it up. Although how about this for drama?

Finally, Adam’s mind joins his heart and abandons the need to know. Supported, listened to and cared for—unusual happenings indeed—not to mention floating with intoxication, he could not be more content.

The cadre, it would seem, is complete; their mission clear, the date still unknown. Adam’s honesty in the interrogation has acted as a sort of moral super-glue, and the yin-yang balancing may be of no small contribution. Sitting in a small circle in the Anarbunker, mildly buzzed, taking turns petting Rolf’s moulting and fetid coat, the power of life surrounds their tired bodies like the massage of a late-night desert breeze.

Outside, snowflakes dance waltz-like and free against the backdrop of night, round and round in the cold Canadian wind, as unconcerned as ever with human affairs.

Doesn’t it just reek of Steinbeck? No, I just couldn’t make it resound. Two more important notes on Understanding Ken: One, it still took another good eighteen months to edit and re-edit, which is a lot more than six weeks. And two…I can’t remember two, but when I do, it’ll sum up the entire journey, and probably leave you deeply moved and unable to speak.

And I will say this: When I finished the Understanding Ken manuscript, because of its autobiographical feel (in a James Frey kind of way, God love him), I gave it to my (divorced) parents to read. I told them if it made them uncomfortable, I wouldn’t put it out. My mom cried the whole way through and my dad laughed the whole way through. They both said put it out. So I did. I told you they were great.

Oh, yeah, now I remember point two. I wrote Understanding Ken after a good chunk of therapy and some vipassana meditation, which was fortunate, because it gave me enough space between my self and my perception of self to have fun with the memories. And I still enjoy glancing through Understanding Ken—and the letters and comments I occasionally get are gratifying. The fact that it became a perennial best-seller and a major motion picture is all the more fulfilling because…oh, shit, no. That’s Dan Brown again.

By the way, I know it’s hard to find UK in bookstores. That’s a side-effect of small publishing companies in a big world. There’s not much I can do about that, except sell online, where the world is all ones and zeros. No offense.

The Route - July 7-29