That’s why I thought it could be good news he is out of the tour. At least this way he can’t be busted…
Oh yeah, I forgot to factor in the fact that Eddy Mazzoleni and Mattias Kessler of Astana tested positive for drugs in the weeks leading up to the Tour. This doesn’t bode well for Astana. It seems that Astana is just another version of Liberty Seguros. There is systematic doping in Astana.
It is important to note that Mazzoleni, Kessler, Kloden, and Vino were all team mates of Jan Ullrich at Team T-Mobile and rode for Ullrich in the Tour de France. Given that Ullrich is practically guilty of doping with the infamous Dr. Fuentes and the culture of doping at T-Mobile, it doesn’t surprise me there are doping issues surrounding these people.
I think that the UCI should make a Facebook type account for all the pro cyclists and support staff. You would note who rides with who, who is friends with who, who has got caught doping, who is under suspicion, and so on. Then, you can make a web of connections between people and predict who is doping or helping to dope. Although, it might just show that everyone is doping. :smack:
Who is Rasmussen friends with in the peleton? Does he have his own personal masseur? Maybe we can find a series of connections and predict which doctor he is doping with.
I just hope the lab did a better job on Vino’s test then they did on Floyd Landis’ tests.
But I’m not holding my breath.
I have an actual racing question, mostly because I don’t want to talk about the doping. It’s depressing.
On Sunday when Rasmussen and Contador were out front, Contador basically made Rasmussen take the lead up the mountain and set himself up for the stage win. You could see them discussing/arguing about something, and that was the announcers’ speculation.
My question is how unusual is it for the White Jersey to tell the Yellow Jersey to go race. I understand that if Rasmussen does not lead out, both of them risk getting caught by the rest of the riders and that hurts Rasmussen even more than it does Contador. So I appreciated the strategy, but it still seemed like it would take enormous balls for Contador to do.
Thoughts?
That would be true if it were someone Eddy Merckx, Lance Armstrong, or Bernard Hinault in the yellow jersey. Those guys could dominate the race and demanded some level of respect. Rasmussen, not so much.
And I’m sure Contador knows what every bike racer knows: Sometimes you just have to be a dick if you want to win.
Bobke would be Bob Roll. Despite his craziness, he’s been there, done that.
Heh. I did not know that. He’s still wrong though. Of course, I now won’t get proven right.
I believe that Bob Roll was talking about next years tour. Of course that has all changed in the last 24 hours. If I am not mistaken Vino is facing a 2 year mandatory suspension. Unless he can show the lab somehow screwed up.
Hmmmph! All my predictions from a week ago are out the window!
Evans didn’t make up the 2’30" on Rasmussen in the ITT as I predicted. Rasmussen rode a particularly inspired ITT by his standards. Kloden also didn’t make up the time on Rasmussen that I thought he would. And Oscar Pereiro has just kinda faded off the radar.
And out of the blue, riding an absolute barnstorming blockbuster comes young Contador. Good luck to him. He’s earnt his current 2nd place on GC. Great riding. It’s always exciting to see Mountain stages where the race is for GC is unfolding organically in real time. During the Armstrong years I didn’t see that too often. I don’t recall Armstrong ever having to race someone up a climb who could really rattle him with surges and attacks. I’ve missed that sort of action this past decade. Last year’s Tour with Landis in the lead was one of the most boring Tours I can ever remember.
As for Vinokourov? I never rated him as a true GC contender. His mountain form has never been higher than the bottom half of the Top 10 riders if you know what I mean. But he’s an exciting competitor, clearly blessed with lots of top end speed and oodles of aggression etc. Still, the doping thing is just so institutionally entrenched that the sport can’t continue the way it is. Something really drastic has to be done regarding permanent 24 x 7 monitoring of the riders - which of course is a massive breach of privacy etc etc.
I’ll say this, however… every single rider who finished in the Top 5 in every year that Armstrong won his 7 tours has since been busted or banned from racing for doping of some sort or another. Given the nature of how incredibly tough the Tour de France is, and how demonstrably Armstrong beat those guys, Armstrong’s name will always have a question hanging over him. Guilt by association etc.
:rolleyes: Over here on this side of the Pacific we have this thing called innocent until proven guilty. :dubious:
It does not matter what other in the peloton did, what matters is: Was LA guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Since Lance never popped a positive drug test ever, any rational person would have to agree that Lance is innocent. If you disagree show me the positive drug test.
However with that said, based on the cluster fuck that is the Floyd Landis case, I am not sure that the French lab could find their own ass with both hands and a road map. This case is so fucked up, you would think Mike Nifong is in charge.
You seem to be assuming that I agree with the message. I’m just the messenger. There’s a guilt by association aspect attached to Lance Armstrong and his Tour de France wins because 20 or more top flight pro cyclists all getting busted creates the speculation. That speculation is never going to go away. Again, I’m just the messenger on that one.
Yes it does. It matters immensely what the peloton did because in the abscence of that peloton, Armstrong’s achievements would have been pittance. If Armstrong had raced against under 15 year olds for his 7 Tour wins, would anyone care? Of course not. We care because he beat the absolute best in the world, for 7 years straight, and since then, every single one of those guys he beat in the Top 5 have since been suspended or banned. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t applaud Armstrong for his achievements for beating the absolute best for 7 years and then deny the fact that so many of his close competitors were doping cheats. There’s an inevitable question which immediately arises from this logical dillemna - namely, is it possible for someone to stay clean and so demonstrably beat all those other magnificent athletes who weren’t clean?
Get as angry as you want with me Rick, but that’s a question which will never go away, and everybody in the cycling world, absolutely everybody, asks that question every single time a new doping bust comes along.
In the context of my observation about guilt by association, all you’ve just said is that you, personally, would like to believe Armstrong is innocent of doping. But if we also use your rationality arguement, the converse could also hold true - that is, to beat 20+ Top 5 riders for 7 years and have all of them go positive for doping would cause any rational person to suspect that it was too good to be true. Rick, you’ve got to ask this question… why didn’t Miguel Indurain ever get hounded like Armstrong did? Nobody ever once said something smeary about Big Mig. The answer lies in the doubt factor. There was no doubt regarding Big Mig’s natural magnificent superiority.
If it weren’t for the amazing advances in cancer treatment and medicine in general, Armstrong wouldn’t even be alive by all accounts. The incredible changes to his physique, the change in his ability to climb pre and post cancer - all of it results in loads and loads of doubt - ESPECIALLY in the context of all the guys he beat who have since gone positive. It’s a shame, because if he truly was clean all along, the question hanging over him is a cruel fate. Personally, I think he was on a truckload of anti-remission wonder drugs which helped him stay incredibly gaunt and lean. The weight loss was what tipped the tables in him becoming a guy capable of winning a Grand Tour.
Something else Rick… the abscence of a positive dope test simply means you never got busted. Even back in the mid 90’s, the word was out all over the cycling world that Bjarne Rjiis was known as “Mr 60%” - that is, his hematocrit ratio was 60% red, gooey thick blood. It wasn’t until 1998 that the UCI started stopping riders entering races based on their hematocrit levels - there was no other way to detect the abuse of EPO - which, by the way, is a drug which Armstrong freely admits he used during his cancer recovery. That is, after all, why the drug was invented - to counter the white pale skin which comes from radiation treatment. My point is this… loads and loads of riders were on all sorts of gear during the latter 90’s - and very few of them got busted. But even fewer of them were innocent. So the “positive drug bust” arguement doesn’t hold much water for me. The goal of chemists is always to stay one step ahead of the testing equipment. In Armstrong’s case, he had quite a list of medical exemptions as part of his anti-remission regimen, and fair enough. But it’s disingenuous to wilfully ignore that.
Why is that? Are we charging him with a criminal offence? I think we’re a bunch of people offering inconsequential opinions about whether we think a sportsman cheated in a sport where the type of cheating in question is utterly rife. I’m really not sure that the standard of proof applicable to an official judgment which may result in state mandated punishment is appropriate.
So any rational person would have to agree that David Millar was wrongly convicted. But he kinda confessed. So how does that work?
Which of the six would you like?
Look, barring a confession we’ll probably never know whether LA doped for sure. It has to be odds on. He consistently beat people who doped. Subsequent testing of his samples was positive (and pretending the French are all idiots might make you feel better, but really I find the conspiracy theory stuff just a bit silly). People close to him have fingered him based on (admittedly less than utterly convincing) things they saw. He was a great mate of a doctor up to his neck in doping.
“Proof beyond a reasonable doubt” - no. “Proof at a level we’d all think highly, highly suspicious if we were talking about Kirev Uzbekhislov, the Russian no name guy who we have no emotional stake in thinking innocent?” Abso-frickin-lutely.
After following prof cycling for a few years I’ve reached the conclusion it’s just naive to assume anything other than that any given cyclist (especially those who are winning) may well be doping. I’ve been cheering for Cadel the last couple of years. I’d really like to think he’s clean. If evidence comes out that he isn’t, well there’s not even going to be a perceptible twitch towards me falling off my chair, trust me. It’s sad, but there it is.
Why does the Tour even bother to try and be drug free? Until the day comes, and probably never will, when every rider is tested every day, there will be cheating.
When EPO was first being used, riders (particularly Dutch riders) were dying because they were using too much of it. If you were to ignore doping altogether, then riders would be free to return to testing the limits of what is safe vs unsafe. Doping may still be a huge problem is cycling, but if anything positive could be said about it at least it’s relatively safer than it used to be. The fact that you have to try very hard to stay undetectable rules out using dangerous amount of drugs.
Of course, there may still be detrimental long term effects and it’s just not fair to a rider that he has to risk his long term health in order to race. I personally know of one young rider who was offered a contract on a European developmental team (about 10 years ago). The contract had words that basically said “You will take whatever the team doctor gives you”. He quit, returned home, and started selling used cars with his dad. That’s a damn shame, because he had talent as a rider.
And another team is out.
Everybody cheats.
Wow! Apparently Rasmussen has just been kicked out of the Tour - by his own team! While wearing Yellow! Holy Fuck!
So there ya go Rick… Rasmussen never failed a dope test either… but his own team didn’t even let him finish the race, even though he was leading the bloody thing. It’s not about the empirical results sometimes Rick, sometimes it’s about hunches too.
Can the sport survive this? I’m not kidding. Who has faith in this anymore?
Latest team standings:
- Team Big Wheel
- Team Penny Farthing
- Team Clown on a Unicylcle Holding an Umbrella
Frankly, I am filled with hope because of this. It’s one thing for the tour to kick him out but Rabobank did it. I will grant you that I don’t think next years tour will be drug free by any stretch but I do sense a swing. There ain’t no way Ras will admit anything but it’s a step in the right direction, anyhow.
Anybody else think that perhaps Rabobank knew that Ras was gonna fail one? That sort of puts a damper on what I think is, kind of, good news.
Essentially someone spotted him in Italy when he was supposedly vacationing in Mexico when he missed all of his drug tests.
So the question now is, can Cadel or Levi catch Puerto Contador.