“Following the CAS’s decision, Mr Valverde will not be allowed to participate in any cycling events before 31 December 2011,” reads today’s statement from the International Cycling Union (UCI). “Furthermore, he has been disqualified from all competitions in which he has competed since the beginning of the year and all points allocated to him have been removed. Mr Valverde must also return all prizes received.
“The UCI World Ranking has been modified accordingly.”
Effectively, what this means is that inside the UCI’s equivalent of the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith must now “rectify” the 2010 season to remove Valverde the “unperson”, 1984 style.
Sadly for all the clerks in “minitrue” Valverde has had a big impact on the season to date; in fact until this afternoon he was leading the UCI’s own World Ranking classification and is the number 1 in the World by just about everyone’s measure. To remove him from existence in all of his races this year is a doubleplusbig task.
Okay, that’s enough Orwell.
To remove Valverde from the World Rankings is not just the simple job of crossing him off the list; to take his name off the result is to move everyone that he beat up one place. That person must be allocated his points, the person behind them must have theirs, and so on.
The process begins at the beginning of the World Calendar itself and the Tour Down Under, where he finished 19th overall. He didn’t get any points for that overall finish, but he finished second in stage 3 to Unley and third on stage 5 to Willunga netting him 6 points in all. His disqualification moves World champion Cadel Evans (BMC Racing), Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Doimo) up into the points in stage 3, and Luke Roberts (Milram) and Evans again up in stage 5.
Things are further complicated on the move back to Europe where he won the Tour Meditérranéen, came second in Paris-Nice, then came second in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco and won the Tour de Romandie.
At the Tour Meditérranéen the victory will be awarded to Rinaldo Nocentini (AG2R-La Mondiale) with Maxim Iglinskiy (Astana) moving up to second and Johnny Hoogerland stepping up to third. At Paris-Nice Valverde’s Caisse d’Epargne teammate moves up to take his second place and Roman Kreuziger (Liquigas-Doimo) will take the third place on the podium. Exactly what Hoogerland and Kreuziger will tell their grandchildren when they ask him why Grandad’s not in any of the pictures of those Côte d’Azur podiums has not yet been released. Whether the UCI’s minitrue can do the same for photographs as they can with results is not known (sorry, I said no more Orwell.).
Similarly Beñat Intxausti (Euskaltel-Euskadi) gets promoted to second and Joaquin Rodriguez steps up to the podium in Pais Vasco. Young Slovenian Simon Spilak (Lampre-Farnese Vini) is belatedly awarded the Tour de Romandie, Denis Menchov’s season looks slightly less disastrous as he moves up to second and Michael Rogers (HTC-Columbia), who’d led the race into the final stage gets awarded third.
With the removal of Valverde’s third place in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Belgian Philippe Gilbert (OmegaPharma-Lotto) gets a well-deserved podium place in his home classic.
Whether or not Rogers would have been able to hang on to his leader’s jersey and win the race overall had Valverde not been there to drive the stage winning break will never be known.
Evans will move to the top of the as-yet unpublished rectified World Ranking.
The announcement that Valverde will be required to hand back his prize money at least means that those riders will be properly rewarded in a financial sense. The big prize for winning for most riders though is not the money, but the glory; these riders were all denied the chance to take the plaudits of victory, get the kisses from the podium girls and spray the champagne.
A retrospective ban denies them all this; prompt decisive action would not have done.
Speakwrite off.