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Good News Alert~ Thank you to everyone who has had my back for the last 8 months, family, friends, and sponsors. I would not be here today if it weren’t for you guys! You guys might be wondering, why am I thanking everyone? Well… I am super pumped to announce that I will be back racing in Italy for the next stop on the EWS calendar. Before I get back to racing I would like to fill everyone in on what has been going on in my world. Firstly, I would never do anything to harm this sport or jeopardize the result of another athlete or myself by cheating. Everyone works way too hard and a lot of sacrifices are made, I respect all my fellow competitors and love my fans and support system too much for that. So, in case some of you weren’t up to speed… Last year I had a doping infraction while racing in France. This whole thing was a shock to me. All in all it was accidental ingestion of the substance. I had run out of water and used someone else’s bottle as we climbed up to the start of another stage. Due to it being accidental and the French anti-doping authorities also seeing it in this light, my suspension was back dated to when I stopped racing last season, and now I am free continue the sport that I love. Im thankfully to be moving on from this. I hope this brings awareness and stands as a learning experience to others. Again, I want to say thank you to everyone who has stood by me and I look forward to seeing everyone at the races again soon! Scroll left for more -> @yeticycles @redbull @smithoptics @rynopower

A post shared by Richie Rude (@richie_rude1) on Jun 22, 2019 at 8:16am PDT

Just announced on insta, back racing from the next round.

Makes you wonder who’s bottle he drank from & was Jared sharing it too?
Sounds fishy…!

The water bottle sharing story sounds as fishy as it gets.

Even if it is indeed true, I would avoid mentioning it as much as possible if it was me

A professional athlete knows they can never risk using someone else’s bottle. As fishy as Bertie’s beef…

Complete and utter BS. Richie Armstrong Rude.

All seems very unlikely.

JP

CaptainFlashheart

Member

A professional athlete knows they can never risk using someone else’s bottle

I’ve raced two rounds of EWS and both times I had loads of pros cadge water off me, because I had a camelbak and they were doing it packless, and it turned out hot.

It’s a pretty flaky excuse as far as I’m concerned, but sharing water/bottles like that really isn’t unusual.

Backdated suspension is a **** joke, whatever the truth of the bottle story.

Is there a better explanation of all this anywhere, because Rude’s post is a bit selective, to put it kindly.

It really should be though, assistance shouldn’t be allowed. Proper odd/stupid that those at the elite end of the sport can’t even prepare properly

With Graves not issuing a statement, Rudes statement raises suspicion of him, I hope he makes a statement shortly.

I don’t believe either deliberately cheated but Rudes explanation is poor.

Is Graves not seriously ill or fighting a serious illness just now?

Does anyone know whose bottle it was?

Is Graves not seriously ill or fighting a serious illness just now?

Yep.

That’s dope!

Something about this leaves me feeling uneasy. The just leaves more questions about the identity of the other rider , and if it’s not Graves it opens up the question of how many of the top riders have all kinds of funky stuff in their water bottle .

does anyone know the current EWS position on this , I know they had some kind of lifetime ban on this but not sure how this works after their tie up with the UCI ?

They seem to have quietly dropped that.

Probably having learned more about the messy reality of doping cases, appeals and CAS in road cycling.

Rude obviously wasn’t caning the EPO but it feels a bit like he wants to be considered a victim, without really convincing anyone why the finger of blame should point anywhere else.

Must try harder.

(Coincidentally my phone just autocorrected harder to “Jared” – what are the chances eh?)

Is there no official line on this? Doping suspensions should not be shrouded in mystery, if EWS want everyone to believe that the sport is clean, it should be out in the open. Nobody has faith in justice being done behind closed doors with a nod and a wink.

I take it the EWS had changed the rule on banning anyone found guilty of using a banned substance.

Rude obviously wasn’t caning the EPO but it feels a bit like he wants to be considered a victim, without really convincing anyone why the finger of blame should point anywhere else.

All I could find on google was that it was allegedly a beta-2 agonist, so he should have claimed to be sucking on his inhaler too much.

Hmmm, I’m prepared not to rush to some of the conclusions others have expressed on the thread (Although I have sympathy for why people would express doubts) The substance (Hignamine) is found in quite a few energy drinks and doesn’t need to be labelled. It would be easy therefore for perhaps another competitor; perhaps an amateur or not professional enough to understand the impact it would have, or just not knowing what his drink contained.

Regardless, broke the rules, He didn’t unnecessarily contest it, He’s served his time, he should be allowed to race. He will, after all still have to go through doping test like every other racer.

assistance shouldn’t be allowed

Be careful what you wish for. The competition (IMO) is made better for the camaraderie between competitors. Banning assistance would have stopped Martin Meas rushing to help Sam Hill repair a puncture, or Katy Winton being helped back to the pits by Cecile Ravenel after a big smash on course

He’s served his time

Are you really happy with retrospectively applied bans which happen to coincide with a lengthy off-season?

Retrospective banning has been part of the arsenal of all the anti doping organisation since forever. In order presumably to make competitors own up and ensure that they serve some sort of ban without lengthy and costly counter claiming legal processes.That it fell conveniently for Rude probably went some way to making sure he owned up to it in the first place, I’d have thought.

Anti doping will always fall short of perfectly catching every competitor who’s taking PED. That he’s had to sit out 3 rounds, so the title is out of reach this year, seems pretty fair outcome for what in the scheme of things appears to be a minor infringement.

Does anyone know whose bottle it was?

Northwinds

Be careful what you wish for. The competition (IMO) is made better for the camaraderie between competitors. Banning assistance would have stopped Martin Meas rushing to help Sam Hill repair a puncture, or Katy Winton being helped back to the pits by Cecile Ravenel after a big smash on course

Sounds like racing. Unlikely the UCI will tolerate the same levels of help, see the case of a wheel being given between teams a season or two ago

Asking for a friend, of course, but what exactly can you put in your bottle that gives such a performance increase that it’s banned?

Amphetamine, but it might not taste very nice.

I’m a bit conflicted on this. EWS have always been vocal about their hardline no doping, but have backed down first time they’ve had to put their money where their mouth is.

I’m delighted to see him return and finally getting to see fully fit Maes, Dailly, Hill and Rude all going head to head.
It’s not like he tested for something super strong – an ingredient in a supplement is very different from Lance Armstrong. Yes, it’s his responsibility to know what he’s taking, but if EWS had never tested before, you can’t expect riders to be making that a priority.

On the flip side, I don’t buy his excuse. The first time they ever tested at EWS and he was busted – it’s very easy to say this was a one off accident when he wasn’t tested after any other race.

I also don’t like that the statement has come from him, and not UCI or EWS. Surely they should be announcing bans? If we are to believe he tested positive after borrowing a drink, I’ll presume it’s Graves’ drink, so what is his punishment?

If you trawl through the comments on pinkbike there is a fairly in-depth explanation from Jared Graves which I’m inclined to believe.

2 riders, 1 bottle

I think the contents of the “cup” is his statement…if you know what I mean?

Graves’ explanation of the circumstances of their positive results:

jaredgraves (11 hours ago)
Ok,I’ll try and clear a few things up, NO BS, just facts, hope it can help.

The supplemnet in question in this case is BPM labs “the one” which if you want to look it up. Now states Higenamine in the ingredients list, but in older versions, and in the tub in this case was listed as Nandina Domestica (fruit extract) and the oxilofrine component is still labelled as Synephrine HCL. Things get tricky when you type these ingredients into the WADA search and not a single result comes up, which tells you everything is OK. So we had to dive a bit deeper into finding out how these things got in our systems, and when we did, we found of that many ingredients have many different variations, and names, which is what has caught us out.
We also found out since learning the hard way, just how prevalent these ingredients are in off the shelf pre workout drinks, which is a bit scary when you first hand find out the consequences, and how unregulated products with these ingredients are. Even a teenager could walk in to a supplement store and buy this, no questions asked. I’ve also since learned that 1 in 5 off the shelf pre workout drinks (in Australia at least) have something banned in them.

Everything i’ve mentioned above had to be proven beyond doubt to the AFLD (french anti doping) theres no corruption, or loopholes, or lawyers spin put on it. Just facts and real consequences.

So i’ll put my hand up all day long and say im guilty of negligence. MY mindset was that I’v never sought anything performance enhancing, and Ive never had an issues with the Dozens and Dozens of in and out of competition doping tests ive had, so all will be good. I git a bit too relaxed with the whole process, I never thought there was any chance I could ever be in this situation, yet here we are. A moment of Negligence yes, premeditated cheaters, hell NO!!!!

Maybe ask yourself, would you ever think you need to do extensive study and research, on every ingredient of every thing you ever put in your body?

Combine that with what I said above, and hopefully you get a clearer picture of how this very unfortunate situation has come to be.

Possibly the main reason i’m writing this is the amount of uneducated and downright false comments here. Some of you really should be a bit more careful with your wild assumptions and accusations. There are real people on the other side of this. Its obvious that many just want to be hateful and drag people down, and that’s pretty sad. When road cycling and in Particular Lance Armstrongs name gets thrown in the ring, WOW, are you serious??? Consider the things iv’e mentioned, and maybe think again.

People all seem to think theres some kind of Magic pill out there, that will take them from weekend warrior to world class level podium guy. Nobody stops to think that maybe the 25+ hours a week spent training, in the gym, on the bike, not going out with your friends, 5am starts, the constant crahses, injuries and sacrifices, has a bit more to do with it. The work that goes in is simply incomprehendable to most, and it’s what makes the difference. Everyone who trains and competes at that level understands that, Which I would say is the main reason no other pros have spoken up about this.

Mistakes were made, and we’re both paying the biggest price for that. It’s added more stress to my life, on an already extremely stressful time. So maybe take the time to consider both sides of the equation before spreading some uneducated hate, and misinformation.

just think if they hadn’t bothered with these stupid supplyments none of this would have happened.

That’s a good response from Graves – I had looked for a statement from him, didn’t think to check pinkbike comments!

Richie in, Maes out…

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/martin-maes-tests-positive-for-masking-agent-at-ews-rotorua-and-tasmania-receives-90-day-ban.html