Velobs

Under what circumstances was the MPCC created?

We put this question to the players (athletes, staff) of the MPCC. But this is Roger Legeay, President of the movement, who share the official story by relating this founding act.

Not everyone has the answer to this question. Yes, the massive arrival of new members seen in 2013, due in part to the Armstrong scandal, might have suggested it was the beginning of the movement, but the inception of the MPCC is dated more than six years before this turning point. The decision to create the MPCC had been motivated by a very particular episode:

Founding members of the MPCC - committed on a voluntary basis in July 2007 - were:

> AG2R Prévoyance (now called AG2R La Mondiale)

> Agritubel (Cessation of activity in the late 2009)

> Bouygues Telecom (now called Direct Energie)

> Cofidis 

> Crédit Agricole (Cessation of activity in the late 2009)

> Française des Jeux (now called FDJ)

> Gerolsteiner (Cessation of activity in the late 2008)

> List of all the members <

by Velobs

MPCC random testing... of the movement knowledge!

The MPCC went to meeting its members in order to share on the rules of the movement - especially with the riders, who most frequently embraced the principles. They will discuss it during off-season in future video episodes.

With the participation of:

Simon GESCHKE (Giant-Alpecin),   Jurgen ROELANDTS (Lotto-Soudal),   Bryan COQUARD (Direct Energie),   Geoffrey SOUPE (Cofidis),
Ignatas KONOVALOVAS (FDJ),   Benoît VAUGRENARD (FDJ),   Matteo MONTAGUTI (AG2R La Mondiale),   Samuel DUMOULIN (AG2R La Mondiale),
Leah KIRCHMANN (Liv-Plantur),   Amélie RIVAT (Poitou-Charentes - Futuroscope 86),   Aude BIANNIC (Poitou-Charentes - Futuroscope 86),
Emmanuel HUBERT (Fortuneo-Vital Concept) et   Jean-René BERNAUDEAU (Direct Energie)

by Velobs

Doping in 2016 was not only about Russia

That is unprecedented: since the beginning of the year, a baseball player has been busted every three days. Thanks to the headlines focusing on the Russian athletes suspected of doping, the fact has remained unnoticed. Our quarterly infography is made to highlight that the figures actually collected aren't the illustration of the scandals with a high impact on the media.

Today there is no simple way to collect the figures of the doping cases released accross the world. To paint a credible picture of the fight against doping, we had to deal with some events that sometimes were subject to contradiction within the whole olympic "family". For various reasons:

- prohibition of the use of the Meldonium since 1 January 2016 ;
- retrospective tests of 2008 Beijing and 2012 London OGs' samples ;
- WADA's decision to dissmiss many Russian athletes from 2016 Rio OGs because of the suspected organized doping spotted by the McLaren report.

The particular case of Meldonium

We have made the decision not to include those Meldonium positive tests released at the beginning of the year. The reason is that as early as the spring, WADA stated that the medication was not eliminated of the urine on the basis of a reliable period. In an important number of cases, that means we cannot demonstrate the Meldonium would have been taken in 2016 and not in 2015.

330 athletes - mostly from Eastern Europe - had been provisionally suspended for Meldonium use. The majority of them have since received from their respective federations the authorization to resume competition. To date, we cannot ensure a signifiant share of the open procedures will lead to actual sanctions. This applies to, amongst others, the three Russian cyclists involved in Meldonium cases.

We have however included in our table the high-profile case of Maria Sharapova because her 2-years ban - then reduced to 15 months by the CAS - has been officialy expressed by the ITF. In her very first statements, the tennis player admitted she was still under Meldonium treatment at the beginning of 2016. To public knowledge, she today remains the only athlete under a ban for a use of Meldonium (which will stay on the 2017 WADA's list of prohibited substances).

The Russian athletes out of Rio Olympic Games

On the other hand, we wanted to see in our infography (blue figures) the 111 McLaren-reported Russian athletes who have been dismissed from the Rio OGs from their respective sporting federations. We have to make it clear that not all of those exclusions led to disciplinary sanctions against involved athletes. Some of them had been dismissed from the OGs on the grounds that they had already been banned for earlier doping facts.

To quote a recent declaration from the report author Richard McLaren, who recently clarified that he would need several additional months to draft the final document: "This second phase focuses on the information regarding the athlete". The Canadian jurist also said he intends to provide this information to the federations.

Beijing and London samples reanalyzeD

If we focus on the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London samples reanalyzed by WADA, Russia is still the most affected nation. Among these retrospective tests (covering 1,200 samples), 98 positive results have been detected including 55 directly named athletes. These cases are highlighted in red in our infography. 43 subject-to-discretion cases remain: we don't know who are the concerned athletes, nor even which sports they are related to.

That is unfortunate because MPCC sees transparency as a guarantee of credibility in terms of fight against doping engaged by the international federations. Cycling is a very good example. It has the kind of behaviour our movement encourages: the UCI publishes all the provisional or definitive sanctions it imposes.

The major trends

The McLaren report thus brought Russia's suspected organized doping to light. But this scandal, too exposed by the media in a pre-olympic period, may have masked the fact that a major health problem also affected the American leagues. It has been a few years since the MLB strengthened his anti-doping policy by developing a toolbox of sanctions. It is symptomatic that the amount of disciplinary procedures hasn't stop increasing for 7 years, but also that for the very first time in MLB history, a player has been banned for life because of a third infraction in a row. Baseball is sufficient to make both United States and Dominican Republic the two most affected nation per positive tests.

Today it seems the NFL wants to follow the steps of the baseball league by implementing a program which weakness is the non-dissuasive penalty system. An athlete busted for the first time is suspended for 4 games. For the second time, the sanction ups to... 10 games! There is so much more we could say about the NHL (which includes 800 professional players): in a decade, only 4 doping cases touched this league!

Yet it is not unlikely that Russia may catch and drop the leading group when the McLaren final report will finally be released. The three sports which centralise the most suspicions - rowing, weightlifting, athletics - are very practiced at high level by Russian athletes. Athletics is the most denatured sport into the olympic landscape even if the number of positives tests is decreasing in 2016 - it was already the case in 2015. The decrease is the same for cycling. Both in 2014 and 2015, our sport faced about fifteen cases per year, classified itself in the 4th position of our table. This year, cycling is 7th with only 7 released cases. But it is going to to take three more months before stating the confirmation of this momentum.

TAKE A LOOK AT OUR doping cases INFOGRAPHY

TAKE A LOOK AT THE INFOGRAPHIES AS OF 31 MARCH AND 31 MAY

by Velobs

TUEs for corticosteroids? The problem isn't known within MPCC!

Within MPCC, there is no need to reflect on the corticosteroids TUEs issue. This is an automatic proccess: the rider who need to be treated with this medicine ceases to work for a 8-days period. The measure is effective and followed to the letter by the movement's members.

The 9th article of MPCC's regulation is clear since the inception of the movement.

This regulatory feature is one of the key commitments of MPCC, which have been able to lead many teams to membership.

IT STATES THAT :

> TUE must be validated by the physician in charge of the team.
>  It is mandatory for any racer who, due to his health condition, may need a cortisone treatment given systemically -via oral, rectal, intramuscular or intraveinous administration – to be prescribed a sick leave and a competition leave for a minimum of 8 days.
> It is mandatory for such cortisone treatments given systemically as reminded above to be validated by the physician in charge of the team.
> Competition participation will resume, subject to a cortisol levels control yielding normal results.
> Corticoïd infiltrations, which do not require AUT, will imperatively be validated by the physician in charge of the team, who will imperatively prescribe a minimum of 8 days of sick leave and competition leave, as well as a cortisol levels control.
> In case of unusually low cortisol levels, competition will resume after an additional 8-day rest minimum, and back-to-normal cortisol levels.

« Corticosteroid is still a legitimate medicine if you need it but you need to take a period of time to get well, says Anko Boelens, Giant-Alpecin's physician. It’s the same with corticosteroid injections. It’s a valid way of dealing with tendon problems, for example, but if you need to take it then you need to take eight days off from racing. The most important reason in all of this is because we want to eliminate the grey area. Some people might feel like that and it might seem like we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantages, he continued. I don’t see it like that because I think it gives us clarity and it gives us clear boundaries to compete in sport. Also the systems in place by WADA are there to stop people abusing the system but in order to eliminate all doubt we as the MPCC have our rules. »

Over the past few years, MPCC repeatedly asked WADA to add corticosteroids - but also tramadol - on the list of prohibited substances. To date no developments are to be reported. Such requests have been made to the UCI in order to support this goal, which is to recognize that a low cortisol level requires to stop competing.

As a reminder, MPCC carried out 2,315 cortisol level tests since 2010 (659 un 2016) in collaboration with the French National Association (FFC) and the French National League (LNC). 13 work stoppages have been notified. MPCC continues to invite all the teams to join the movement and its philosophy, by committing to its clear and immutables rules, which are stricter than international ones.

by Velobs

Bernaudeau : « MPCC is even more relevant today »

While his title partner Direct Energie has decided to join the MPCC’s college of sponsors, Jean-René Bernaudeau is going to complete his 10th year as a member of the movement. He explains why he considers that the MPCC remains a relevant actor in the cycling landscape.

Successively at the top of Bonjour - the team he created in 2000 -, Brioches La Boulangère, Bouygues Telecom, Europcar and now Direct Energie, Jean-René Bernaudeau has been a professional cycling team manager for 17 years. His team was one of the original members at the inception of the MPCC in London in July 2007. For nearly a decade, he has been renewing his commitment to the MPCC ; now he considers the purpose of the movement not only as remaining true but also as even more reasoned than before. Bernaudeau says in our interview that the MPCC maintains a « friendly pressure ».

Our interview of Jean-René Bernaudeau 

One special aspect of Direct Energie this year is that the title sponsor is now member of the MPCC as well as the cycling team. This summer, the company Direct Energie chose to join the mouvement. At this moment, the Branding, Sponsoring and Communications Director Martin Bertran stated that this membership «  appeared as an obvious move ». Direct Energie CEO Xavier Caïtucoli added: « We share common values with Jean-René Bernaudeau’s team. It is thus quite naturally that we have decided to be part of the MPCC. In this regard we invite all the others cycling teams’ sponsors to join our call. »

This is already the case with Bora, Cofidis, FDJ, IAM, AG2R La Mondiale and the Belgian national lotery.

by Velobs