cyclist

Tuesday October 23, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Tuesday October 23, 2012

Lance Armstrong Is Stripped of His 7 Tour de France Titles

Tour de Fraud, Lance Armstrong gets new sponsors

The International Cycling Union announced Monday that it would not appeal the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s ruling to bar Lance Armstrong for life from Olympic sports for doping and for playing an instrumental role in the team-organized doping on his Tour de France-winning cycling squads.

Lance Armstrong won ultimate possession of the Tour de France’s yellow jersey for seven straight years, but his name is being removed from the Tour record books.

That decision to waive the right to take Armstrong’s case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the highest court in sports, formally stripped Armstrong of the seven Tour titles he won from 1999 to 2005.

“Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling; he deserves to be forgotten in cycling,” Pat McQuaid, the president of the cycling union, known as U.C.I., said in a news conference in Switzerland. “Something like this must never happen again.”

McQuaid said he was “sickened” by the facts in the 202-page report the antidoping agency made public two weeks ago regarding the evidence it had in the Armstrong case, and called it mind-boggling how former teammates like the five-time national time-trial champion David Zabriskie were pushed to use performance-enhancing drugs.

McQuaid said that Armstrong’s teams had a “win at all costs” attitude fueled by “deceit, intimidation, coercion and evasion,” and that all of the evidence was there to prove that Armstrong doped. He added that he was sorry the cycling union had not caught Armstrong and his teammates “red handed” so he could have thrown them out of the sport. (Source: NYTimes) 

 

Wednesday June 20, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday June 20, 2012

Hamilton Bylaw Enforcement

Sixty per cent of Hamilton’s dog population is not licensed. So it’s entirely appropriate that city council wants to take a hard line to get owners to obey the Responsible Pet Owner bylaw.

Dog owners who won’t obey the law get no sympathy here. Licensing a dog is pretty much a user fee. If you can’t afford to pay the $28 per year to license a spayed or neutered dog, you probably can’t afford the dog, period. The city’s 87,000- strong dog population costs money, everything from leash-free parks to disposing of pet waste to running animal care and euthanasia services. It only makes sense for the people taking advantage of those services — dog owners — to foot part or all of the bill.

And yet, thousands of owners don’t. It’s enough of a problem that Councillor Chad Collins is proposing spot checks by bylaw enforcement, so someone walking their leashed dog could be “pulled over”, so to speak. Random checks without due cause might be a step too far. Still, it’s good to see council and staff acting on this problem. There’s valuable revenue waiting to be collected, and the public would be well-served by a much greater degree of compliance. Source

Meanwhile, Ontario’s deputy chief coroner, Dr. Dan Cass, announced 14 recommendations Monday stemming from a review of 129 cycling deaths over five years, including several high-profile tragedies in Hamilton.

In addition to recommending helmets for adults, Cass also called for mandatory cycling safety lessons in school, side-guards on heavy trucks, more paved shoulders on highways, point-of-sale safety information and beefed-up educational campaigns for both two- and four-wheeled drivers. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)