David Blanco? How about David Loco?
In comments to Spanish website El Pedal de Frodo, the veteran Spanish rider rode to the defense of his training partner Ezequiel Mosquera.
“The biggest crime that Eze has committed is doing what he did in the Vuelta and being called Ezequiel Mosquera and riding for a small team,” said Blanco. “I’ve got no doubt that if he was called something else and was riding in a different team we wouldn’t be talking about this issue now.”
Well, there you have it, folks. See how easy these complicated doping cases are to clear up? Ezequiel is only guilty of having the wrong name, not for failing a test during the 2010 Vuelta for a masking agent.
Why the Spanish Cycling Protection Federation should supply Mosquera with a set of names and by next week he could have a new legal name and start racing for Vacansoleil. (Mosquera has been out of action and in legal limbo while the UI dithered and then the Spanish simply parked the case.)
Just to get the ball rolling, the eight most popular first names in Spain are as follows: Daniel, Alejandro, Pablo, Hugo, Alvaro, Adrian, David and Javier. Any one of those could possibly get Ezequiel off the hook.
The fact is, Blanco has this whole Hydroxyethyl starch-Vuelta-wrong name debacle figured out. “It’s the same tactic that was used with Operation Puerto, of saying that we aren’t doing anything because we know that by acting like that we’re doing a lot,” said Blanco.
That’s either convoluted brilliance of astonishing gibberish or a bad Spanish-to- English translation. We vote for number two and wonder if Blanco-Loco hasn’t been hitting the sangria hard in the off-season.
Blanco is clearly bothered by the way doping cases drag on forever with no resolution. No disagreement on that point but his take is certainly skewed. “I think cycling started to die with the establishment of the ProTour and it dug itself into its own grave with Operation Puerto,” Blanco declared. “Not because of the scandal related to the doping, but because of how the issue was dealt with.”
We’re not sure where the ProTour fits in his argument but most everyone agrees Operation Puerto was incredibly damaging and embarrassing for the sport. Blanco says that cycling dug its own grave. Perhaps the real problem with Puerto was that not enough graves were dug.
But back to Ezequiel Mosquera. This sounds like a simple two-step process according to Blanco. First, a name change, then exoneration. Of course, we would not select Alejandro because that clearly didn’t help Valverde escape justice.
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