So the emails are coming out...

http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/11/ ... ege_264011

I like this line from Vino: "Don’t worry, you did the right thing… You said yourself that what goes around comes around and God sees everything."

That being said, I wonder where the line should be drawn. If a GC contender is hauled to the finish by a breakaway artist from a different team and then lets the latter get the stage win, is that a problem? I assume a rider giving a victory to his teammate is fine?

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Giving a stage away to a teammate or breakaway mate is one thing; paying someone off to win is another.

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What! They've now got email in Kazakhstan?

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It's part of cycling. There's no reason why Kolobnev had to say yes, it's his fault.

What I don't like is when team managers swap money and plot because it's not decided on the road. I think getting this would be the greatest thing about getting rid of race radios and I've never seen it mentioned.

People can offer you dope, but you can say no.

Very good point.


As for buying (and, more importantly, selling) races ultyguy is right again. Been happening for as long as there has been bike racing. I know of more than a few Aussie races (including a national road race) where offers we made. Some accepted, some declined. Either way, it's almost passée to be making a fuss of this.

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Well, there could be payments involved between the teams who cooperate in a stage race... Not necessarily black and white.

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The problem comes when people start betting on race outcomes. If someone puts money on Vino coming first (or not), this creates a pot of money which can be used to pay off other riders to make it happen. Happens in horse racing, football....

I don't think Cycling has a illegal betting rings going on . Its just to difficult. This was pure bribery

It's not nice, not at all.
Still, Vino managed to beat the other 198 quite clearly, right? So it's not like someone totally unworthy won.
And was it 100% that Kolobnev would win?

Also, if they had not agreed, maybe they would not have worked 100%, and the chasers might have pulled them back.

this is just UCI trying to drag the attention from itself.

race fixing happens in cycling like in any other disciplines. mind you cyclists are rather underpaid compared to eg football or hockey players, which makes buying events a lot... cheaper. i also saw few national races won in a very strange way, e.g. a middle-of-the-table team with a new general sponsor suddenly takes the whole podium in a race held in the same county the said company has its HQ..

Well, admittedly I'm an old fart; but I aways just accepted the "deals" as just another layer of "tactics" in bike racing. I thought that is part of what made it interesting.

Why would you think so?

I believe there's a possibility and likelihood of rigging in every sport available for betting. I can even imagine stuff like this being organized through the race radios if there's live betting.. I'm not into betting at all, so I have no idea if there is any form of live betting in cycling? Wouldn't surprise me if there was.

As tymon_tm points out, the fact that cyclists are paid less than football or baseball players just makes rigging the outcome of an event much cheaper. There's even proven rigging of matches in the lower divisions of Norwegian football (soccer), supposedly controlled by mobsters. However I have to agree it seems somewhat unlikely, and that it is somewhat more difficult to rig a bike race than a football match, not to mention the more individual sports like tennis.

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If you think that Kolobnev thought he could win that and just took the money, you're kidding yourself (or you've never been there). I believe that he knew he was going to get beat and wanted to come away with something...

I tend to agree w/ Geoff's point above, but I guess there are certainly caveats as well as moral hazard in here too as others have mentioned w/ betting.

I'm a frequent better via Betfair and would put my record right up there with anyone's. Although I don't know if someone's making a deal, I damn well consider it when betting. What screws up my betting is stages w/in stage races (unless a pure sprint/big mountain stage) is the deals that are made between directors because the motiviations aren't as easy to read as those that are right on the roads and decided by the rider in what would be classic 'game theory' thought process.

I think if you chucked out radios, it's also massively decreases the probability that a rider could even relay the info to a person making a bet (I guess via falling back to talk to his car would be the only way and the the DS would have to call someone to make the bet).

edit- the most useful tool ever for betting was when SRM was giving live power data in last year's Tour. I can see why the UCI squashed that.

I think paying a rider to lose when he is you only rival is a pure bribe . Trying to control a whole bike race would be very difficult and need a lot teams on board which would take a lot of money and you cannot account for crashes mech damage etc etc . There would have to be some heavy bets laid down to make it worth it . What Vino did was simple. He just got caught wheres as others have not . This is worse than doping IMO .