Sounds like Eurosport is announcing some pretty big doping accusations.
http://eurosport.de/radsport/tour-de-france/2006/sport_sto916701.shtml
I don’t know if it says they all tested positive, or were just named in some indictments or what, but it could be big with the Tour starting soon.
You could always try the English version
http://www.eurosport.co.uk/cycling/tour-de-france/2006/sport_sto916732.shtml
You might want to put on your ‘German’ hat - the artice is German not Dutch.
I don’t really follow the Tour de France as much as I did back home, but I say that is pretty big. The names mentioned are quite well known cyclists.
Seems like typical European press hysteria to me. After reading the article, all I see is that some lawyers have leaked a list of people who were “in contact” with a doctor who is under investigation for doping. There’s just too many degrees of separation from any actual evidence there for me to think this should qualify as any sort of news.
Wow.
Looks like Ullrich and Basso are both out of teh TdF.
Seems like a pretty big story, and there’s not a hint of it at velonews.com.
Botero, Mancebo, Beloki, Heras.
This is huge. And Tyler Hamilton’s name was on the list, too. Ain’t gonna do much for his “vanishing twin” defense.
To continue my spate of posts about this, Velonews now has the full list of names up:
http://velonews.com/tour2006/news/articles/10176.0.html
Looks like Vino’s team might get tossed, too, which would mean the remaining 4 out of last year’s top 5 (Lance excepted, since he’s not racing) would have been suspended from the race.
I really hate this “guilty until proven innocent” mentality about all of this. Bjarne Riis said about his decision to suspend Basso, “I trust Ivan Basso, but now it is up to him and his lawyers to show he has nothing to do with this affair.”
That’s a long list. We have no idea what qualifies someone to be on that list. I suspect a number of people are on the list simply for “contact” with the Spanish doctors who are at the center of this. But people are getting bumped left and right any just because they might have done something wrong.
Are the Europeans trying to kill this sport?
With Ullrich and Basso out, I’m not sure I’ll even watch any of the Tour.
Actually, this is more than a tempest in a teapot - it pretty much guts the top contenders from the TdF, and hits some 50+ pro cyclists (including the previously-suspended Tyler Hamilton). The riders placing 2nd to 4th in last year’s race (Armstrong was first, remember) have all apparently been pulled, along with many others and at least one team entirely, in accordance with the "Code of Conduct for UCI ProTeams (warning pdf):