A Rough Road for Cycling’s Clean Team – Wall Street Journal

Aug. 9, 2015 7:06 p.m. ET

“Listen, it really sucks,” Jonathan Vaughters said.

It had been a rough week for Vaughters, the high-profile boss of the Cannondale-Garmin cycling team, ever since he looked at his phone on the night of Aug. 2 and saw a flurry of messages from his veteran rider Tom Danielson.

Danielson would soon announce via his own Twitter account that he had received notice from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that he had tested positive in a July 9 out-of-competition test for synthetic testosterone, a banned substance. A 37-year-old pro who had admitted to doping earlier in his career while testifying in the USADA’s investigation of Lance Armstrong and his former team, Danielson insisted in a tweet that he had not taken synthetic testosterone “or any banned substance.”

“I would never take anything like this especially after all I have gone through the last years,” Danielson wrote. “This makes absolutely no sense.”

Danielson, who didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article, now awaits results of his “B” sample test, which may or may not corroborate the initial “A” sample positive. (An “A” sample positive needs a “B” confirmation to be considered an antidoping rules violation.) Danielson posted on Twitter that he intended to test the supplements he was taking “to see if this is what caused it.” He had been set to defend his title at the Tour of Utah stage race that began last week, but is now suspended from the team.

Travis Tygart, the CEO of USADA, said Sunday “it is early in the process and we are investigating the facts.”

At this point in the sport’s history, a positive doping test involving a cyclist seldom causes a stir. But Danielson’s case provoked a crisis for Vaughters and Cannondale-Garmin, a team that has spent has nearly a decade at cycling’s highest level building a reputation for clean, performance-enhancing-drug-free racing—a cycling team that fans and sponsors could trust.

Vaughters, who founded the team and has overseen it since its modest early days as a junior squad, has been hit especially hard. A former Postal Service rider who acknowledged doping in his own career, Vaughters launched Cannondale-Garmin (then known as Slipstream Sports, a name it retains to this day) with private investor Doug Ellis as a team that could be a haven from drug use in the sport. Slipstream implemented its own internal testing program, published the results and emphasized transparency. Riding clean would be considered more important than victories on the road.

That pledge won the Colorado-based team admiration from the media and fans. Over time, Slipstream grew to be influential within cycling’s ranks, as other teams adopted their own testing programs. Vaughters, 42, evolved into a leader in cycling, known for his taste for argyle (hints of which appeared on his team’s uniforms) and his frank opinions on how cycling needed to become a more stable, financially secure environment, to discourage the manic scrambling for results and contracts he believed led to doping.

Still, billing themselves as “the Clean Team”—while giving second chances to riders with doping histories—made Slipstream a bit of a target. Since the news of Danielson’s positive, schadenfreude has been in the air.

“ ‘This team is based on clean racing,’ ‘this team is based on ethical racing and nothing will change that’…that’s a very high-horse position,” Vaughters said in a telephone interview Saturday. “And there are a lot of people basically just sitting back not liking that and waiting for a moment for that to fail…those people are having their moment of glory right now.

“But that was always a risk. If for one moment anyone thinks that Doug and I didn’t realize the limb that we were putting ourselves out on, that’s crazy. Of course we realized that our position was extremely high-risk in a sport that tests so much and has had so many problems and culturally has had this issue embedded in it for such a long time.”

“Does that make it the wrong decision to really try to push that agenda forward?” Vaughters asked. “I don’t think so. Do we have to take the backlash right now and basically…eat some humble pie? Yup. Absolutely. We do.”

Previously, Vaughters had made statements that a single positive test would result in the dissolution of his team. But after discussions with Ellis, other investors and the team’s sponsors—Vaughters spent the evening of Danielson’s disclosure calling the team’s financial backers and telling them the news—it was decided Cannondale-Garmin should continue.

In a statement, Cannondale said it was “disappointed with what has taken place” but that it had “partnered with Slipstream because we believe in their mission and we will continue to work with them to do what is best for the sport and our team and we are focused on continuing to bring the excitement of racing to our fans worldwide.”

Garmin said it “remains committed to clean cycling and our support of the sport and the team is unchanged.”

Vaughters said it was “embarrassing” to backtrack on what he said was a statement purposefully designed to scare his own riders, but in conversations with Ellis and others he realized a shutdown would affect too many individuals who worked for the team. He estimated that Cannondale-Garmin employed and contracted around 90 people.

“To basically punt that all out the window because I’m feeling a sense of personal embarrassment and a need to make good on something I put out there publicly? Sorry,” Vaughters said. “It’s better I just basically say, ‘I’m sticking with this. Doug’s sticking with this. The team is going forward.’ ”

Ellis, who said he “spent some time in disbelief” after Sunday’s news, believes the team can continue to make an impact in the sport.

“We will operate the team under the same set of values we always have,” Ellis said in an email. “All of us at Slipstream want to field a competitive team, one that can animate races and get wins. And we want to do it the right way. This incident doesn’t change any of that.”

Vaughters, who is typically chatty with fans and rivals on social media, was unusually quiet most of last week. On Tuesday he posted on his Twitter account, “Selfishly, I’d like to disappear, but that hurts quite a few good people,” a statement that provoked a sharp Twitter response from his former teammate Armstrong: “Those good people would be better off without you.”

“I don’t really have a comment on that,” Vaughters said of Armstrong’s reply.

With the B sample pending, Vaughters didn’t want to elaborate on the specifics of Danielson’s initial positive. He did say, however, that the team’s own testing detected no “abnormalities” from Danielson.

Asked if the case pointed to any loopholes in the team’s testing protocols, Vaughters said that the testing program has been modified since the team’s pro-tour launch in 2008. Back then, all Slipstream riders submitted to a battery of internal tests. Recently, with cycling adopting a stronger (though not foolproof) testing program including a biological passport that examines a rider’s biological markers over time, Slipstream has dedicated most of its testing to team riders who are top contenders as well as riders it is considering signing later on.

“We definitely need to review all of our procedures and policies and maybe look at additional testing,” Vaughters said. “This warrants really digging down and improving everything we can improve.”

A cultural shift had already been under way within Slipstream. Early on, Vaughters said, hiring riders with doping pasts felt like a necessity given the prevalence of drug use in the sport’s elite. He also believed it would be hypocritical to deny a rider a chance for admitting to past doping, but take another who simply had never confessed or been caught. Slipstream gave an early slot to British rider David Millar, who had admitted to using banned EPO earlier in his career. It also hired riders like David Zabriskie, Christian Vande Velde and Danielson who would all later give testimony in USADA’s investigation of Armstrong’s tenure with Postal and Discovery. (Vaughters also testified in the case.) All three riders were given six-month suspensions.

These days, however, Slipstream is flush with young riders who have never been under any clouds of suspicion. On Sunday, 24-year-old Cannondale-Garmin rider Joe Dombrowski wound up winning the Tour of Utah, capping a surreal seven days for the team.

“Joe is an incredible young talent,” Vaughters said early Sunday evening. “I am super hopeful he can become one of the top stage racers in the world.”

Phil Gaimon, a pro rider who raced for Vaughters and Slipstream last season and is publicly adamant about his belief in clean racing—Gaimon went so far as to get a bar of soap with CLEAN written on it tattooed on his right biceps—supported his former employer’s decision to remain in the sport.

“Whatever happened with Tommy D, it would be a shame for the pioneer antidoping program—with a huge number of guys who aren’t doping—to go away,” said Gaimon, who raced the Tour of Utah for Optum-Kelly Benefit Strategies. “There are a couple of teams and owners I think cycling would be better off without, but [Cannondale-Garmin] isn’t one of them.”

Follow Jason Gay on Twitter: @jasongay. Write him at Jason.Gay@wsj.com