OK, now I’m getting you. You quoted this: “The concentration of free testosterone and/or epitestosterone in the specimen is not to exceed 5% of the respective glucuroconjugates” without explaining that more than 5% free testosterone was evidence of contamination.
Before I spend any more time on this, let me ask you this: Do you think that it is more probable than not that Landis and LA doped? Or do you just think that it is not proved beyond reasonable doubt that they did?
Rumour has it that there was another positive after stage 14…
These were tested after Stage 14
Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne), Schleck (CSC), Verdugo (Euskaltel), Valjavec (Lampre), Le Mevel (Crédit Agricole) and Scheirlinckx (Cofidis), + Rasmussen (Maillot Jaune) and Contador (stage winner)
I don’t have a cite yet but it appears that the guilty party is a Maillot distinctif so either a national champion (Valjavec - Slovenian Champ) or Contador or Ras.
Ah, sorry for the confusion. What I posted is a direct quote of WADA Technical Document TD2004EAAS.
Do I think Floyd or Lance doped? No I do not. I believe they are both extremely gifted athletes who have trained to a level above the rest of the peloton.
I was wrong…Soler was the one who tested positive. He was King of the Mountain though so I was part right, I guess.
So just to be quite clear about this, you think it is less probable that they doped than that they did not?
What part of No I do not is not clear? Is there a gray area in that sentence somewhere? If so please point it out to me.
:rolleyes:
Here I will try again.
No I don’t think that either Lance Armstrong or Floyd Landis took drugs during their TDF wins.
Is that clear enough?
Meanwhile, back in France…
Another dog collision today, which Casar turned into a stage win. The surprises keep coming. Along with various other substances, there will be a huge amount of adrenaline pumping tomorrow.
Yeah, I saw the crash and then the stage win. By all rights, he should be sore as hell tonight. I am guessing that a stage win is better than any aspirin for his pains.
Good for him.
I have my alarm and TIVO both set for the AM
I’m thinking people in France should be curbing their dogs.
Neither did Tyler Hamilton. He didn’t take drugs either. (Well he probably did but he never got busted for that) The goal isn’t to take drugs specifically. The goal is to get as much red blood in your body as possible. The goal, also, is to raise your VO2 max to it’s highest level. And lastly, the goal is also to lower your body fat percentage to it’s lowest possible amount before getting REALLY sick.
You don’t need to specificaly take EPO to achieve the first goal. EPO simply became an incredibly easy way to achieve the goal because you could just shoot up the stuff in your leg. It was just SO easy to use. However, Operation Peurto has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that autologous blood doping is a cottage industry in it’s own right - servicing more than just pro cyclists of course. Many European based pro footballers are doing it too. There’s a sting in the tale in that story we’ve yet to fully hear about I reckon.
Just a note on Armstrong… he was a maniacal trainer. Focused to the point of taking far more from the sport than he gave to it. But so are the other guys he beat. I’ve heard him say a million times “I never once took a performance enhancing drug.” I think he’s actually telling the truth - well, his version of it. But by his own admission he was on a truckload of anti-remission therapies after he returned to pro cycling, and still is. And let’s not forget something either… recombinant EPO was invented specifically to fight anaemia after cancer radiation treatment. It was the first drug of choice while he was recovering from all those drill holes in his head. I don’t have a problem in the world with someone taking EPO to save their life. He had a great run, almost 15 months of training without a single drug test - and back in 1998 - 99 they couldn’t even test for EPO back then.
So he never took a drug which he got busted for? So what? He took drugs, lots of 'em - granted, for medical reasons. Hey, if they helped him stay 8 kilos lighter than he ever was before he lost his nuts, in my book, that’s taking drugs to win a race. But I think that’s largely irrelevant. Blood doping is the scourge of all high end cardio sports in 2007 - from track and field to pro cycling to soccer to cross-country skiiing. I reckon Armstrong used to filter 20 litres of his own blood each year and whack it in while he was doing all that secret training while everyone else was busting their guts in the real races. He just never got caught. He also was a magnificent natural talent, but he was NOT a Grand Tour winner prior to his cancer. Then he came out of secret training each year, raced one month and then won the Tour de France 7 years in a row. If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, if it looks like a duck, it’s a duck.
What Armstrong proved conclusively is that you could win a Tour de France with secret training and not require traditional race fitness. 100 years of pro cycling says that’s abnormal - abnormal to the point of setting off a galaxy of warning lights. When you combine the fact he beat so many guys who were using the absolute state of the art medical science to cheat, well, nothing will ever convince me he was straight - ever.
The problem I have with Americans so blindly defending the likes of Armstrong or Landis, is that the glasses they’re wearing aren’t rose coloured, they’re star spangled banner coloured. The day I hear an American defending a positive doping case (with even one quarter of the veracity) of a person who happens to be a nationality OTHER than American is the day I’ll start taking them seriously. There’s only one American who’s opinion I trust talking about cyclists, and that’s Greg Lemond. The 80’s were a funny decade. Amphetamine bombs were still common, but steroids were useless at a high aerobic sport. Hi tech red blood cell doping hadn’t yet been perfected to any great degree outside of East Germany.
I honestly believe Landis is so dumb he was jabbed by his own doctors without even knowing what he was jabbed with. But then, Christian Moreni was man enough to admit doing exactly the same thing Landis is accused of. See the difference?
I see Barry Bonds is about to break Hank Aaron’s record. Oh yes… no American would ever cheat… no… never…
Glad I was wrong about Soler - like him.
Just came in to say that LL is absolutely flying.
Back to France. . .
Yes, Levi’s riding right now. . . It makes me nervous-- we keep having these riders who crush the TT, and then have a test that evening. . . Be clean, Levi!
Ok, looks like Contador may have made it.
The top three guys had the ride of their lives today. 53kph on that time trial after three weeks in the saddle, pretty impressive.
Is the race over now? Only 31 seconds separates 1st from 3rd. Tradition says the ride tomorrow will be ceremonial…but with all the twists this year, you never know.
Boo go back and read my post 84. If the evidence comes out that Vino test was hinkey I will be at the front of the line of people that are protesting. I would like to be in that line, believe me I would. I am afraid I won’t be as I have a feeling his B sample will confirm the A, and there won’t be any funny business. To even get back on a bike with however many stitches he had shows guts and determination that did not come out of a syringe.
My glasses are not rose colored, or blue with red and white stripes. It just seems like the French have painted bulls eyes on the jersey of the American riders.
I think when it is all said and done you and I want the same thing for pro cycling. We both want assurances that the guys are running clean.
Where our differences come is that I see issues with the testing process, and you don’t.
Impressive is one word for it…
Just gone done watching it on my TIVO.
Wow, just wow. What a race. did anybody check to see if Levi’s bike was a special one made by Harley Davidson?
I thought for sure Contador was going to lose the yellow. Somehow he managed to have the ride of his life to hang on.
Evans did a superb job to hold off Levi. He actually picked up enough time in the final Kilometers to hold Levi off.
In the interview Levi said he will not attack Evans tomorrow. No idea what Evans is planning.
BTW I nominate the following out of todays LA times as the TDF quote of the day
The cream always rises to the top in the final ITT of a Grand Tour, without exception. In reality, there are usually only 15 guys or so who give it a really tough shake - primarily because the majority of riders have settled their GC positions and there isn’t all that much on the line. Yesterday was kinda different insofar as the Top 10 on GC included an unusually high number of Spaniards noted for their climbing abilities, as compared to their ITT abilities. That gave riders like Popovych and Vladimir Karpets the opportunity to really give it a serious go and move up on GC within the TOP 10, and I think both of them managed that.
Also, assuming you haven’t crashed and that your body is healthy and free of stuff like a flu or a bronchial infection, the rule of thumb is that you actually end a Grand Tour in better form than when you started it - after all, racing 180+km a day at world best practice levels for 3 weeks is literally the best training you can get. Given the advances in medicine and sports science (disregarding the doping debate), and given the advances in wind tunnel and machine technology, I’m not surprised the majority of the pro’s are capable of nudging 50+ kph. I’ll say this however, when I rode the 100km TT as an amateur in the 80’s, the best time we ever cracked as an Australian team was 2h 02m - at an average speed of just around 49kph. It wasn’t until the World Championships in Austria in 1987 that the Italians broke the 2 hour barrier for the first time, and the East Germans did it a 2nd time the next year at the Seoul Olympics. Most world class amateurs in the 80’s were happy to break 46 47 kph over a 50km ITT, and the top pros could maybe crack 49-51 kph. Greg Lemond’s famous 1989 effort which followed the storming of the Bastille dropped a total of 320m over the 24km course.
I was really closely watching the gearing those guys were riding in yesterday’s ITT. Most all of the top guys were spinning, really spinning at least a 53 x 14, if not a 53 x 13 - which is just an outrageous gear to be able to spin at a high cadence. But the other side of the coin is that they’ve just done 3 weeks of ultra high speed racing, and the bikes they’re riding nowadays are wickedly aerodynamic. I was rather surprised by Levi’s good showing. I didn’t predict that, based on the first ITT in Albi.
But for mine, young Contador deserves the Yellow Jersey. He was the guy who really shook up the race in the mountains, and with hindsight, when Cadel evans cracked and lost 1’54" to Rasmussen and Contador on the first day in the Pyrenees, he lost his Tour de France right then and there. He should have done what Leipheimer did and just ridden at his own maximum tempo over the last 6km of the climb. Instead, he backed himself (and you can’t blame him for that) and went into the red zone big time and tried to follow every major surge and attack that Rasmussen and Contador threw at him. Conversely, Leipheimer rode his own tempo and initially lost time to Evans and then rode past him with Carlos Sastre and took quite a bit of time out of him. Such is racing!
But Contador deserves the win. His 5th place in the ITT carrying yellow is a ride which he doubtless would have never believed he was capable of doing prior to the start of this years Tour.
As I noted earlier, finishing a Grand Tour in better form than you started isn’t uncommon. If you were to take the Top 10 of this year’s Tour de France, and next week throw each of them into ten separate Category One amateur races around the world, I guarantee you that every single one of them would simply blitz the competition and ride away for solo wins at the end of each race.
I forgot to ask this earlier. What was up with David Millar and his bikes? He broke two of them in the first couple of minutes. The bike he started on broke a chain and blew up the rear wheel.
Was he just putting too much power down, or was this a prep issue?
ETA: I agree that Contador deserves the win. He was awesome all tour long.
When considering evidence and what it means to one’s opinion, one needs to decide first what standard one is going to take to be convinced. In your posts above you have quoted extensively from arbitrations, and mentioned “beyond reasonable doubt” as a standard to be applied. I want to know what standard you are applying before you would be convinced, and whether I am wasting my time.
Twice now I’ve specifically asked you whether you think it more probable than not that LA and Landis do not dope, and twice now you’ve posted something that may or may not be an answer to that specific question. In your post #123 you rephrased my question to leave the standard of proof out before answering it, and the same again the second. I appreciate that as a trial lawyer I might just be being pedantic and you may have intended to answer my specific question, but I want to be crystal about what you are saying before I start.
Heh, what I thought was funny was how when interviewed afterwards he pointedly and repeatedly referred to the wheels using the manufacturer’s name. Clearly he was looking to kick them where it hurts.
No surprises on the last day. A memorable Tour for various reasons. Let’s keep the dogs and drugs off the course next year, eh?