Tag: Cycling

Cycling and the Securities and Exchange Commission

The big news in cycling over the weekend was the end of the Tour de France. Other news is a personnel change at the Securities and Exchange Commission because of cycling.

sky and froome

Chris Froome and his Team Sky dominated the General Classification of the Tour de France. He finished more that four minutes ahead of his nearest rival. He took the yellow jersey and the initial time advantage in an unusual manner. He attacked at the top of a big climb while his rivals paused. He was gone before they realized what happened. In a later stage he gained more time in an unusual attack paired with Peter Sagan, the holder of the sprinters’ green jersey, and two teammates when crosswinds fractured the peloton. In the usual manner Froome gained time on his rivals in the time trials and held off their attacks in the mountains using his incredibly strong team.

For the SEC, the Chief Accountant, James V. Schnurr, was in a serious bicycle crash. Serious enough that the SEC appointed Wesley R. Bricker as the Interim Chief Accountant.

I was disappointed that the SEC chose to use the word “accident” in the press release. Accident applies that there was no fault and perhaps was not preventable. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a news story about the crash.

As someone who regularly bikes to work, I can tell you that there are few accidents. Of course there are cyclists breaking the law. (I still don’t understand why so many run red lights.) But a bike is going to little damage if it crashes into a car. A car will do tremendous damage if it crashes into a cyclist.

I see many, many distracted drivers while on my bike commute: watching videos, texting, emailing, facebooking, catching pokemons. They seem oblivious that they are directing 3000 pounds of metal with potentially deadly force.

It’s not an “accident” when the driver has chosen to be distracted. “I didn’t see him,” is more often because the driver chose to pay attention to some other distraction instead of the other cars, cyclists and pedestrians in and around the roadway.

I hope you are not one of those distracted drivers.

On a happy note, this is one of the great watercolors by Greig Leach for sale at The Art of Cycling. This one captures the battle of sprinters at the end of stage 3. But you’ll have to pick one of the other watercolors because this one is in my living room.

If you enjoy Compliance Building, please support my Pan-Mass Challenge ride to fight cancer on August 5-7. 100% of your donation goes to the fight against cancer. You can read more and donate here: http://profile.pmc.org/DC0176

Photo Finish in Angers small

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Compliance, Cycling and the Tour de France

For me, July starts with the red, white and blue, then quickly turns to yellow. The yellow jersey worn by the overall leader of the Tour de France.

 

compliance-and-the-tour-de-france

I’ve been a big fan of the Tour de France for the past decade and a half. I admit that it was the success of Lance Armstrong that brought me to it. The dethroned champion taught us a few compliance lessons. The cheating did not keep me from sticking with the sport.

Any fan of professional cycling knows that there is long history of drug abuse in the peleton. Many Tour de France riders had been subject to disciplinary action for doping. Only two of the podium finishers in the Tour de France from 1996 through 2005 have not been directly tied to likely doping through admission, sanctions, public investigation or exceeding the UCI hematocrit threshold.  The sole exceptions were Bobby Julich – third place in 1998, and Fernando Escartin – third place in 1999. The official records have no winners during the Lance Armstrong years.

You can’t ignore the history of cheating in the Tour de France, just as you cannot ignore the steroid era of baseball. The cheaters were ahead of the organization’s will to enforce and ahead of the organization’s ability to catch the cheaters.

Those with incentives to win are going throw resources at staying ahead of the regulators. We saw that in cycling. We saw that in baseball. We saw it on Wall Street.

It now seems that cycling’s governing bodies are serious about keeping doping out of the sport. It also appears that the science of detection has caught up to the science of cheating. There is less incentive to cheat if you think the chances of getting caught are remote. Mr. Armstrong was tested hundreds of times. The few times that an anomaly was spotted, it was washed away by the poor testing or whitewashed by the governing body.

Sports, as with finance, are filled with rules that don’t always make sense. We can look at football and the enforcement being levied against Tom Brady and the Patriots organization. Missing from all of this is whether it matters how the balls are inflated.

I think some will see some parallels between the competition of sports and the competition of finance.

Weekend Riding: Midnight Boston Marathon Bike Ride

While marathon runners were sleeping in anticipation of the race on Patriots Day, I joined hundreds of cyclists to bike the 26.2 miles in the middle of the night. The Midnight Marathon Bike Ride was back for its seventh year in a row. Short of actually running, I thought it was a great way to honor the marathon tradition.

Plus, I signed up to ride the Pan-Mass Challenge to raise money for cancer research. So, I need to spend a lot of time in my bike saddle to prepare for that two-day ride across the state

Please donate to my PMC ride at one of the following links:

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The roads were still open to vehicular traffic at midnight before the marathon, but there are few cars on the road that time of  the day. The road were mostly recovered from the winter stress and were spruced up for the marathon’s start several hours later.

The ride actually starts in South Station. You can jump on the commuter rail and load your bike in a truck to re-join you at the Southborough station at midnight. I convinced Mrs. Doug to drive me and two fellow riders out to Southborough instead.

start of the midnight ride

There were dozens and dozens of riders at the train station who had also been dropped off. That’s lots of riders with an assortment of lights, bikes, skill levels and motivations.

It was cold. We were dressed to ride, not stand around in the cold. So we jumped on our saddles and rode off just before midnight and before the train arrived. As we left the the parking a lot, a half-dozen moving trucks full of the train riders’ bikes pulled into the parking lot.

midnight marathon route

It was a few miles from the train station to the Marathon’s starting line in Hopkinton. A few miles that went mostly uphill, with a nasty half-mile stretch in excess of a 5% grade. It’s a tough enough hill that there is a plan B route that goes around the hill.

At the start line we found several hundred more cyclists already in place waiting for midnight or the train riders to come. We kept pedaling.

And pedaling and pedaling.

It was a continuous stream of bikes from start to finish.

Marathon security was nice enough to leave the finish line open for us to take pictures.

end of the marathon ride

Boston Common Coffee Company hosted a charity pancake breakfast after the ride. Pancakes taste great after 30 miles in the saddle.

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Please donate to my PMC ride at one of the following links:

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Compliance and the Tour de France

tour de france

For me, July starts with the red, white and blue, then quickly turns to yellow. The yellow jersey worn by the overall leader of the Tour de France.

I’ve been a big fan of the Tour de France for the past decade and a half. I admit that it was the success of Lance Armstrong that brought me to it. The dethroned champion taught us a few compliance lessons.

You can’t ignore the history of cheating in the Tour de France, just as you cannot ignore the steroid era of baseball. The cheaters were ahead of the organization’s will to enforce and ahead of the organization’s ability to catch the cheaters.

It now seems that cycling’s governing bodies are serious about keeping doping out of the sport. It also appears that the science of detection has caught up to the science of cheating. There is less disincentive to cheat if you think the chances of getting caught are remote. Mr. Armstrong was tested hundreds of times. The few times that an anomaly was spotted, it was washed away by the poor testing or whitewashed by the governing body.

You can’t have compliance if the rules are not backed by testing and enforcement.

—

If you like the watercolor above, there is a kickstarter project for a book of these paintings: Book de Tour. The artist, Greig Leach, painted that scene from the 2013 edition of the Tour de France and I purchased it from him. Mr. Leach is painting key scenes from the 2014 edition of the Tour de France and compiling them in Book de Tour. If you like cycling, it’s a great project to sponsor.

Veni… Vidi… Wiggins!

Wiggins and Cavendish stuck together all day. Photo: Casey B. Gibson

I would guess that most of you reading this story do not share my love of the Tour de France. (Except Tom Fox.) The race can be a confusing mix of skinny guys, tarted up with sponsors like a NASCAR racer, with hard to pronounce names, following tactics unusual outside of cycling. But I since I became a fan a decade ago, I continue to be enthralled by drama and athletic heroism on display.

This year, Bradley Wiggins and his Team Sky dominated the race in a way that has not been seen for several years. In a act of selfless teamwork, the yellow jersey was the second to last lead out man for his sprinter Mark Cavendish as he wheeled across the finish line on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

George Hincapie led the peloton into Paris Sunday, a celebration of  the American’s 17th Tour de France — the most ever, by any rider — and his last. He completed 16 of the 17  Tours.  (Just for perspective of the 198 riders that stared the race, 47 dropped out or crashed out of the race.) The big American was part of nine Tour de France wins: seven with Lance Armstrong; one with Alberto Contador; and the final with Cadel Evans, in 2011.

The race was not without its incidents. A spectator threw tacks in the road a top a mountain pass causing dozens of flat tires. An owner let his enormous dog off his leash causing a high speed crash. Frank Schleck was kicked out of the Tour for a possible doping violation.

Compliance Lessons from the Tour de France

I would guess that most of you reading this story do not share my love of the Tour de France. It can be a confusing mix of skinny guys, tarted up with sponsors like a NASCAR racer, with hard to pronounce names, following tactics unusual outside of cycling. But I since I became a fan a decade ago, I continue to be enthralled by drama and athletic heroism on display.

I also saw compliance lessons.

Stage 18 was a brutal day of riding up big mountains in the Alps. The riders started with the Col Agnel, a climb of almost 24km, averaging 6.6 percent, but most importantly averaging 10 percent for the final 9km. Down, then up the Col d’Izoard 15km at 7.1 percent gradient. Down and then up to the 23km to the finish on top of the Col du Galibier. A moonscape at 8,678 feet that had a fresh snowfall just days before the cyclists arrived.

One of the rules of the Tour is that riders who finish too far behind the winner get eliminated from the race. In these big mountain stages the non-climbers fall off the back of the peloton and form a group of riders form that just hopes to finish the stage. Their primary concern is beating the elimination time to ensure the can ride the next day. effectively, the riders self-organize to fight the rule.

At the end of stage 18, 80 riders (nearly half the racers) arrived in the grupetto more than 35 minutes after the winner. This was after the cut-off time. They were not kicked out of the rice, but some were given meaningless penalties.

Stage 19 was another brutal climbing day, going up the Col du Telegraph, back up Galibier, and then scampering up the legendary Alp d’Huez. For the second day in a row, the huge grupetto finished beyond the time cut, with 82 riders crossing the line beyond the limit. The day’s time cut was set at 13 percent of the winner’s time. The race officials allowed the group to remain in the race. All riders in that group were penalized 20 points in the points classification, but both green jersey contenders, Mark Cavendish and Jose Rojas, were in the group. The one poor victim was Bjorn Leukemans, who finished well behind the grupetto and was eliminated.

A rule was broken by almost half the participants but there was no meaningful discipline. How would that work inside your company? If the rule is being broken by that many people, maybe it’s a bad rule?

Photo: Casey B. Gibson | www.cbgphoto.com