Tour de France 2007

Actually I'm starting to get into all the "severe" actions taken by the Tour, the Teams and their sponsors. I'd say keep kicking 'em out, impose lifetime bans, punish their teammates, etc. It will be the cyclists who break first before the Tour does...It does make me wish our own professional sports organizations had the same balls as the Tour. Why are Bonds and Sheffield - who are involved in their own little "Operacion Puerto" - still allowed to play? Don't even get me started on the NFL... I was one of those thinking that the send offs were too much and that the whole thing is one big charade. But I've come to the conclusion that I'd watch even if it was Team Letsrun.com in Yellow...

goulet wrote:

I believe Rabobank is just saying that they fired Rasmussen based on him lying about his whereabouts during testing because they know something that everyone else doesn't and thought they could save face by firing him before anything devastating got out. This seems obvious, but it is just another pathetic attempt at placating fans that are beginning to see what nonsense this event is. I have been a long-time fan throughout all the scandals and drama, but this is too much.

I think they were just looking for an excuse to get rid of him. His warnings from the UCI were not reason enough, as he's not the only rider in the Tour with such warnings. The whole thing was blown way out of proportion by the media and the sponsor (Rabobank) didn't like the negative publicity.

I'm glad they picked the reason they did. If Rasmussen wants to maintain he was in Mexico in June and not in Italy, all he has to do is show his passport, cell phone records, credit card receipts or whatever. If he can't show such proof, he lied. If he CAN show proof that he was in Mexico, then it starts to get really interesting.

Congrats to Contador on the win. Can Levi and Alberto coexist on the same team next year if they both have a shot to win?

well wrote:

Congrats to Contador on the win. Can Levi and Alberto coexist on the same team next year if they both have a shot to win?

They won't have to. Contador will be serving a two-year ban.

Unknown guy in the next grave wrote:

Rorkes Drift wrote:

So you take naturally talented athletes (which all of these elite cyclists are), and add in all of the above, and you're talking about an easy 20% improvement in performance (EPO alone is estimated to boost performance by 5-10%).

Estimated by whom? You? What a ridiculous argument

A 20% improvement in performance means that someone who rides a hard stage in 6 hours 22 minutes (like Rasumussen did yesterday) would ride it in almost 8 hours without those drugs. And since the rest of the field (or almost) also finished within 8 hours, they are all also on drugs.

Sorry not 20% Not 10% Not even 5%

Actually, the 5-10% is a very commonly cited figure for EPO use in endurance sports. In the doses athletes apply (typically >3000 IUs 3x per week, raising haematocrit from 42-44 range to just under 50), the change in oxygen-carrying capacity can offer that marginal percentage boost I refer to.

Also, your breakdown of the 20% figure shows you have very little knowledge on the sport of cycling. On a 120-mile mountain stage, the GC riders will typically stick together in the peloton for all of the flats and mountains before the last climb, with none of them really pushing the pace. It isn't until the last climb that the pace really kicks up, and even then it isn't until the last 5 or even 3k that the attack(s) come. It is then in just those last few miles that attacking riders put big chunks of time into their competitors. So the 20% isn't off the whole stage (after all, why do you think there is often still a fairly large pack at the base of the final climb!?), but rather really only comes into play in the last 10 or 15k.

Rorkes is right on.

Perhaps an interesting case in point of the magnitude of the doping effect is Alexander Vinokourov winning the time trial convincingly, losing 29 minutes the next day, then winning the following. You have to wonder if his blood bags weren't delivered on time, so he took the risk of using a secondary blood transfusion for the time trial, then decided not to take the same gamble two days in a row. Just conjecture, but the nature of those 3 days and his positive test (now confirmed by the B sample) certainly raise questions about what was going on there, and about just how much of an effect PEDs and blood doping can have.

not so fast wrote:

Phil Liggett keeps on living in Lala-land:

"The new leader of the race will be young Spaniard, Alberto Contador by 1:53 ahead of Cadel Evans and Levi Leipheimer who is +56 seconds in third.

Thank heavens none of these three riders have ever been remotely suspected in dealing with drugs and could now turn out to be the race’s saviors."

Excuse me??!??! Contador was excluded from the Tour last year when he was with Liberty Seguros, and at least one document ties him to Dr. Fuentes.

Good point. And before Liberty Seguros he was with its equally as dirty predecessor ONCE-Eroski.

Moreover, is memory serving me correctly that Levi Leipheimer formerly (I don't know about currently) associated with Michele Ferrari?

In the words of George Costanza: "This thing is like an onion; the more layers you peel..."

Of course I hope you know just because you improve hematocrit by 5% doesn't mean you'll improve race times by 5%. I do not believe there's ever been a study that shows how race peformance is effected by any PED. If so, I'd like to see it.

Alan

wsj wrote:

Rorkes is right on.

Perhaps an interesting case in point of the magnitude of the doping effect is Alexander Vinokourov winning the time trial convincingly, losing 29 minutes the next day, then winning the following. You have to wonder if his blood bags weren't delivered on time, so he took the risk of using a secondary blood transfusion for the time trial, then decided not to take the same gamble two days in a row. Just conjecture, but the nature of those 3 days and his positive test (now confirmed by the B sample) certainly raise questions about what was going on there, and about just how much of an effect PEDs and blood doping can have.

What I don't understand is why he would intentionally take a transfusion of someone else's blood, knowing that the blood tests should be able to detect it for at least a month. I just can't bring myself to believe that Vino was stupid enough to think that he wouldn't be tested for the rest of the tour... which to me suggests that there must be some sort of process to cover up these transfusions, and that it just failed on that day. I wonder what Dr. Ferrari does to hide it.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Of course I hope you know just because you improve hematocrit by 5% doesn't mean you'll improve race times by 5%. I do not believe there's ever been a study that shows how race peformance is effected by any PED. If so, I'd like to see it.

Alan

Please don't be so insulting as to suggest that I would conflate the two (btw, the hematocrit range jump I indicated was >12%, so obviously I was not confusing the two).

There have indeed been numerous studies on the effects of EPO, including its effects as a PED. See, for example, Sawka et al., 1996 and Birkeland et al., 2000. They find the performance enhancing effect to be 5% or more (hence the figure I cited -- I did not make the number up myself).

The effect may, however, be even greater. As I said, the normal hematocrit for "clean" elite cyclists is around 44% (see Saris et al., 1998; Schumacher et al., 2000). So it's possible for a cyclist to take enough EPO to increase the hematocrit to slightly more than 50%, then infuse saline intravenously just before the control test (they typically have 10 minutes before the control to "cool down") to bring the hematocrit back below the limit of 50% (technically 51%, because of measurement error).

Yeah, I wish Vino would drop the aged deny routine and just come clean (i.e. tell all). After all, he's 33, so it's not as if he'll ever be riding again competitively anyway, and he'd probably stand a better chance of getting a director sportif position if he were to come clean and advocate reform.

wsj wrote:

Yeah, I wish Vino would drop the aged deny routine and just come clean (i.e. tell all). After all, he's 33, so it's not as if he'll ever be riding again competitively anyway, and he'd probably stand a better chance of getting a director sportif position if he were to come clean and advocate reform.

I agree. Denial doesn't help him a bit. No one believes him. His reputation and career are now shot. He'll get a 2-year ban if he fights or if he doesn't. Just be honest and come clean. Both A & B samples tested positive. The test for this type of blood doping is very straightforward. The markers clearly indicate he had someone else's blood in him. There's no in vitro twin (ala Tyler's laughable defense) that can explain away that.

Rorkes Drift wrote:

Moreover, is memory serving me correctly that Levi Leipheimer formerly (I don't know about currently) associated with Michele Ferrari?

Here's a neat idea. Why don't you do some investigation before you throw that out there? As usual, you'll find references to their relationship ON MESSAGE BOARDS. Good luck finding references to their relationship from any credible agency. That's how this stuff propogates. Someone reads it on a message board and it becomes truth which is endlessly parroted.

Anyone who's interested in the truth about Contador's connection with Operacion Puerto ought to read below. If you want to mindlessly believe he was part of it, do not read link below.

Bye bye

Arch Stanton, the Team Discovery Channel apologist strikes again.

Lance was clean. Moreover he was Dr. Ferrari's only client who didn't dope. When an old sample from 1999 was retested after an EPO test became available and it turned out to be positive, it was simply a French conspiracy.

Hamilton and Landis never doped until they left US Postal. Never. Heras doped before AND after, but not during his time on USP/DSC.

Discovery only hired Contador and Basso because they were completely cleared of all charges related to Operacion Puerto. Especially Basso. Never mind that the Pro Tour teams had a gentlemen's agreement not to hire riders fired by other teams due to doping suspicions. CSC let him go because he complained about the food, doping had nothing to do with it.

Former riders who blow the whistle are simply jealous and out to get Lance. But some amateur mountain biker who comes out with a similar story about Rasmussen is telling the truth, no doubt.

Everybody's dirty, except the team with the most Tour wins in the last 15 years.

Arch Stanton wrote:

Rorkes Drift wrote:

Moreover, is memory serving me correctly that Levi Leipheimer formerly (I don't know about currently) associated with Michele Ferrari?

Here's a neat idea. Why don't you do some investigation before you throw that out there? As usual, you'll find references to their relationship ON MESSAGE BOARDS. Good luck finding references to their relationship from any credible agency. That's how this stuff propogates. Someone reads it on a message board and it becomes truth which is endlessly parroted.

Anyone who's interested in the truth about Contador's connection with Operacion Puerto ought to read below. If you want to mindlessly believe he was part of it, do not read link below.

Bye bye

Actually, the relationship was uncovered by an investigative journalist; I did not simply lift it from a messageboard. Cyclingnews reported the relationship on July 6, 2006, after the German press agency dpa reported that "Gerolsteiner team manager Hans-Michael Holczer had confirmed information according to which his Tour de France leader, American Levi Leipheimer, had possible contacts with controversial preparatore Michele Ferrari."

"At the start of stage five in Beauvais, Holczer admitted that Leipheimer had stayed in the same hotel during a training camp on Spanish island Tenerife last year. 'But he assured me once again that he isn't working with the Italian,' said Holczer."

There you go. In print, with quotes, in a reputable news source. Do you think dpa would just make such things up, at the risk of a massive lawsuit from Holczer, Leipheimer, or Gerolsteiner? Moreover, here is a German news agency investigating a German team, so it's not as if you can mobilize the hackneyed nationalist conspiracy theory.

It's time for people to stop relying on their emotional support for particular athletes in determining whether or not they might have doped, and to apply instead hard facts and simple logic. I used to insist to myself that Ullrich was clean; despite the glaring logical evidence of his association with Pevenage, his tendency to magically produce form for the TDF, his victory at age 23, etc. Then, in someone else's words, I finally "removed the tinfoil cap."

Rorkes Drift wrote:

There have indeed been numerous studies on the effects of EPO, including its effects as a PED. See, for example, Sawka et al., 1996 and Birkeland et al., 2000. They find the performance enhancing effect to be 5% or more (hence the figure I cited -- I did not make the number up myself).

Ah, now it's FIVE percent. Of course before you were talking 20% -- which is to say, you were talking out your ass. I don't know what "Sawka et al" or "Birkeland et al" are and I am not going to to spend hours delving into pub-med to try to prove your point for you. Why don't you quote the relevant sections which SHOW a 20% improvement

French conspiracy????

Everybody in the petloton knew that Armstrong was in drugs!

this is why he had bodyguards and no one could approach their caravan.

when you cheat you feel unsecure and this is why you have an army of lawyers around you.

who won?

Wow! They confirmed they said he as POSSIBLE contacts? Oh me oh my! He stayed in the same hotel? Oh the horror.

This is journalism, allright. Yellow journalism.

It is time for people to stop relying on innuendo and start relying on fact

...and promptly put on another one. Just because you feel stupid for insisting Ulrich was clean is no reason to suddenly believe everyone is guilty. But now you've "got religion", don't you? "They're all guilty. String 'em up!"

I always though Ulrich was clean too but I never insisted upon it. Now that we have something substantial showing he's dirty, I think so. Big deal. But you still need that something substantial in the first place.