Commentary 0

The Overlord’s Dispatches from the Throne Volume 22

By admin · On August 12, 2011

There are times in Aigle where I unfortunately can’t be everywhere at once. Sometimes the minions that I have hired go rogue without truly consulting what my wishes are when it comes to rebuttals, media releases, or general commentary on events of the day.

This is my throne. This is my sport.

While I appreciate the initiative of the well-meaning Carpani in firing off a statement yesterday addressing the musings of Gerard Vroomen from his blog of Wednesday (you may read it here), there were some major flaws in the construction of said release:

The press release was a third too short.
It failed to ramble nonsensically for at least two paragraphs.
There weren’t the requisite shots at (minimum) two other individuals.
The accusations towards the individual, while marginally libelous, failed to completely insult the intelligence of the target.
Our smug factor barely hit the Ochre level.

So I felt it was necessary to dedicate an entire Dispatch to clearing up what was left out.

Firstly, I’m going to head some future comments off at the pass, as I know there is at least one journalist who contacted me today, and is conducting a witch hunt on the basis of some documents that were found on a variety of websites in the public domain. We will be ensuring that these documents are removed promptly so that there isn’t any confusion whatsoever. We’ll start with this one as outlined below:

While the illustrious Anne Gripper revealed this slide during her presentation at ANADO in the fall of 2008, we truly had no intention of following through with the idea of releasing the information to the public quarterly in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the programme. This would mean that we would have to have accountability, which in turn would mean that I and others within our organization would have to answer difficult questions. For example, why did we only do 10,603 tests in 2009 when Gripper went up and stated that our target was well over 11,000? Thankfully, no one has been smart enough to ask that question yet.

I wonder how many riders have actually received their results. Hmmm, I might have to check into that one. I wonder if we’ve followed protocol, or if we just gave the results to the teams without rider authorization. Might have to check into that as well. Never mind. Moving along.

The other difficult question that we fortunately haven’t had to answer is why the total amount of biological passport tests conducted in 2010 decreased by over 2,000 total tests in comparison to the previous year? The answer? Well we can safely surmise that threat of being tested, and the threat of positive tests in the biological passport programme keeps the entire herd in line. I mean, the collective fear we’ve created with Franco Pellizotti alone should give us an additional decrease of testing required by at least another 2,000 tests for 2011. Curious about these stats? They are published on the UCI website here:

Not awkward at all. Nope. Not trying to escape Gripper at all.

Don’t blame the fact that Rossi took over for Gripper as the reason for this decrease. There is no correlation in the slightest between the fact that Rossi replaced Gripper and that she might be swayed by our collective management committee’s minor rule change. That wouldn’t be within character whatsoever. The fact that we needed to find some excess cash from one of the revenue streams to seed our latest and greatest venture, Global Cycling Promotion SA, shouldn’t cross your collective simple minds, either. Never, never, never.

Needless to say, the other part of this whole equation is that we’ve managed to conjure up only one virgin bust this year. The fact that all these boys are toeing the party line and staying within programme protocols makes it tougher for me to decide who the sacrificial lamb is going to be for the Tour. Last year, we waited until August to throw up young Contador, but that choice absolutely blew up in our faces when the lad grew a conscience and went to the press without any authorization. We can’t attempt to crucify another one of our top ten, unless one of the fooks decides to go rogue again, but for the most part, gents like Cadel Evans will stay in line. Our man Rihs will make sure that he doesn’t have a Landis repeat.

Enough of history lessons, let’s get back to the meat of the situation. The trouble with all this is that we had to nip it in the bud before it spun out of control. And it all starts with one name. One very distinct name with a huge populist following.

Vroomen.

You see, Vroomen is someone who has plausible believability. He’s not a raving lunatic like Floyd Landis; he’s not a potentially manic-depressive-moody-slash-introspective Tyler Hamilton; he’s not a chip-on-my-shoulder-axe-to-grind Frankie Andreu; he’s not a the-sky-is-falling-marginally-maligned Paul Kimmage. He’s fooking Gerard Vroomen who has credibility, considering he’s one of the smartest blokes in cycling and has that clever methodical engineering mind of his with the high IQ that could be dangerous if he turned against us.

What is there not to like about Gerard? Seriously?

I even had to call in the reinforcements on twitter, when our new-found UCI friend Jonathan Vaughters received a phone call from Verbruggen Thursday morning, waking him out of his slumber after he spent the previous evening waxing philosophical about the merits of Chilean grapes being grafted with some Australian batch (thank Jaysus Christ almighty that Bruggy made the call and I didn’t; drives me crazy to listen to JV prattle on about the finer merits of vin ordinaire), and get him on twitter to refute the “crazy talk” emanating from Vroomen’s lips.

How else can you explain Vaughters making a public statement contrary to a major stakeholder in the company that is a title sponsor of his team? *Chuckle* Well, we now have young Vaughters on the UCI payroll after the agreements reached with him and Verbruggen over the race radios shite back in late May, which caused him to rescind that ridiculous “boycott,” in exchange for his sworn allegiance to our cause, no matter the situation. Unfortunately, however, the damage may have already been done.

Speaking of late May, it is quite thrilling that no one from the media has bothered to follow up and ask how we are doing on discovering or ascertaining the identity of the individual who leaked our index of suspicion. Funny how all these athletes and team owners were so gung-ho on filing fooking lawsuits and challenging us on this issue by divulging their double top secret super squirrel identities with this “scale of suspiciousnessyness.” The remote possibility of any one of those lemmings filing a lawsuit against us is as likely as someone actually submitting paperwork for a naturally “high” haematocrit level (oh yes, here’s the paperwork the peloton can submit, located here, which can be granted if we so desire). However, I’m digressing in a very large way.

Where was I?

Right. Vroomen.

We had to stop the lad in his tracks. And as I mentioned in the latest Overlord’s Mail Bag, I had to employ one of the 48 Laws of Power against him. But you can simply watch the video for more entertainment. Let’s just hope he gets the message and doesn’t start joining in with gents like Charles Pelkey, Richard Moore, or some of the other media types that are borderline dopage chasers. Borderline.

So, dear reader, don’t get any bright ideas and start asking questions about where the money goes, how it is spent, why we haven’t had any major busts in spite of the vast number of tests conducted (because they’re ALL clean? *chuckle* oh, that’s a funny one) and monies expended and the results of that effort failing to match the scale of the proposed undertaking.

Just grab your planket and your pony, and remember that even though this was one of the closest Tours of all time, it truly is the result of a clean peloton, rather than a controlled, organized doping network administered by Aigle and enforced by Russian mafia elements that may or may not sit on the management committee.