Alberto Contador Tests Positive at the Tour de France

whatever911 wrote:

I'd like to be reasonably confident someone's career wasn't ruined because they ate the wrong hot dog. The objective is to eliminate cheaters from the sport, not to maximize the body count.

It was actually pork, quite an expensive delicacy. The choicest cut from a flying pig

Yes, that how Landis got caught, he was blood doping and his blood has testosterone.

Sprint Geezer wrote:

Too bad track doesn't have the same courage as cycling.

I used to think the same, but I've become convinced the UCI is also corrupt. The fact that Lance was able to make large donations should be huge red flag for anyone thinking cylcing is trying to clean up. Has Lance ever received "favors" in return for his "donations?" There are rumors of a positive test from the Tour of Switzerland back in 2002.

If cycling had courage, more people would be honest about the drug use and corruption, including spilling the beans on Lance. I was once a fan, but am now convinced he was the biggest (most sophisticaed?) doper of all.

Landis put the issue in the forefront, creating a great opportunity for cycling to show some "courage," but very few people at the top level really want to see it clean up. Too much money at stake.

I asked him if the drug testing protocal of a US track meet of similar scope to the Amgen, say the Payton Jordan, can match what you saw at Amgen. He smiled and said, "As far as I know, payton jordan has no after event testing."[/quote]

There is not a standard payton jordon event testing, but after Solinsky ran the American Record 10k, he was not allowed to leave the track until a WADA representative was able to take a urine sample.

Yes, at 11pm on a friday night, solinsky just had to chill several hours for a WADA rep to get in his car and drive all the way to Palo, Alto.

We don't necessarily test everyone, but if something big happens, measures are taken to make sure a record holder was not juiced beyond imagine at the time of competition.

LI Runner wrote:

The small doses are in line with what Landis said was the M.O. at the time, micro dosing.

I've heard people say something along the lines of "why would he have a positive test on a rest day", and it seems to me that he wouldn't expect to be tested on a day when he wasn't racing.

If he doped immediately after his previous test, perhaps he thought he'd get away with a very small dose?

Interesting article and about Contrador's positive and the UCI...

http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/5846/German-journalist-claims-UCI-denied-Alberto-Contador-positive-test-says-rider-may-have-received-transfusions.aspx

body builders use it to cut, so maybe he was using it for the same reason?

If the governing bodies of ALL professional sports had any balls and adapted one of the following two protocols we would not have to speculate on who is clean or dirty any longer.

1. Allow athletes to take whatever substances they want (good luck trying to live past 50).

2. When an athlete tests positive for a banned substance the first time he/she is banned for life from all professional sports.

End of story, anything else is total bullshit regarding PEDs.

This last post really caught me funny. Thanks for that.

whthfu wrote:

Interesting article and about Contrador's positive and the UCI...

http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/5846/German-journalist-claims-UCI-denied-Alberto-Contador-positive-test-says-rider-may-have-received-transfusions.aspx

Interesting, and consistent with my earlier post that we can expect UCI (and McQuaid in particular, although his predecessor was probably no better) to try to protect Contador's reputation and minimize the significance of the positive test. UCI seems to go out of its way to attack sources of evidence that its stars, especially Armstrong and Contador, are dopers.

UCI seems to go out of its way to attack sources of evidence that its stars, especially Armstrong and Contador, are dopers.

Well, we're talking 10 to the minus 15 millilitres here; 50 picograms per millilitre is virtually nothing, an effect of improved detection tools rather than evidence of doping. To destroy another champion over such a finding is itself a crime.

ggilder wrote:

Well, we're talking 10 to the minus 15 millilitres here; 50 picograms per millilitre is virtually nothing, an effect of improved detection tools rather than evidence of doping.

I don't agree. It is very strong evidence of doping, although it obviously isn't conclusive on the issue of Contador's intent (which, of course, isn't a requirement for a positive doping finding in any event). The alleged evidence of plasticizers in his blood sample would provide additional evidence of intentional doping.

I'm admittedly a little pissed off about this whole situation. I now know he at the gift basket of meat I sent him, and he didn't even bother to send me a thank you card. You really "porked" me on this one Alberto.

Not a bad guess, but completely wrong -- he would expect to be tested every day in yellow, racing or not. The concentration is so low, that that explanation does not work either. The only thing that makes sense as a doping offense is that he re-injected his own blood and that blood contained traces of the drug, and that trace level was low enough that they did not detect it themselves. The guy doing his defense is a pretty good anti-doping guy, but of course he is being paid by Contador.

markeroon wrote:

LI Runner wrote:

The small doses are in line with what Landis said was the M.O. at the time, micro dosing.

I've heard people say something along the lines of "why would he have a positive test on a rest day", and it seems to me that he wouldn't expect to be tested on a day when he wasn't racing.

If he doped immediately after his previous test, perhaps he thought he'd get away with a very small dose?

Anyone see that Mosquera (sp?), and his other spanish teammate got popped at the Vuelta?

And looks like Ricco is implicated again - dumb and reckless I guess.

Oh boy cycling.

Citizen, you said that "At every level there are athletes who are simply more talented so it is not an unreasonable supposition, even at the elite level, that a particular super-elite is a natural outlier among outliers..."

This statement is confusing and needs unraveling.

The idea of "a level"--an infinitely thin level would include only one athlete, an infinitely thick one would include all athletes. The correctness of your statement depends on how thickly you slice the baloney.

The thinner the stratum, the less variability there will be within it--until the stratum is an individual athlete, in which case there is zero variability.

If you consider a VERY thin stratum, like the top 10 in an event in a year, the variability should be VERY small.

If you consider an EXTREMELY thin stratum, like the top 10 in an event all-time, the variability should be EXTREMELY small.

I forget the exact relationship, but the variability should shrink in some proportion to a thinning stratum.

An "outlier among outliers", if that is possible given de minimis variability, would be separated by a hair's breadth--maybe a minimal fraction of quantity in quantified events, and maybe a minimal increase in consistency in competition events.

All of this applies to activities where participation is not unduly restricted, where motive to win exceeds political and other motives, and where motivation and training levels are not insanely disparate. Track and cycling are both covered, in my opinion.

I'm condemning Bolt not because he is the fastest, but because his performances are worthy of ridicule--they are every bit as ridiculous as they are impressive. And by

"impressive", I mean "they make an impression". It's obvious what impression they made on me.

And sure there is reason to continue the sport--just catch, humiliate, and throw out the cheating bums. There is no good reason that the achievements of clean athletes should not be celebrated, and no good reason that they should be deprived of their full experience by a bunch of scumbags.

Greg Lemond is happy.

“I find it hard to believe that a professional like Alberto Contador would risk a detectable drug and I can’t believe how many people have left a certain team and then gone positive,” LeMond told Cyclingnews after hearing the news.

whthfu: "I used to think the same, but I've become convinced the UCI is also corrupt."

I have no specific knowledge of the UCI, but I have no reason to suspect it is substantially different than any other similar governing body, and that the TdF organization is not substantially different than any other similar event organizer.

That said, no organization I've ever seen has been squeaky clean.

In the TdF, because it is team-driven and corporate-sponsored, there is money and image at stake--and more than merely those of the athletes. It seems to me that it is more of a bloodsport among the corporate team sponsors, than it is in track among nation-states, the analogous sovereign team sponsors.

We see eruptions in track now and then, but I think that political considerations dampen the rhetoric relative to what goes on in the TdF. Sometimes in distance events we see team tactics and strategy, and it is sometimes complained about and sometimes even results in sanctions, but that's as far as it goes.

And justifiably so. There are many other interests at stake.

Just look at Lewis-Johnson. Regardless of what he did himself, Lewis was right about Johnson. Of course, nobody liked him for having said it--but he was right.

But he, as an individual athlete, was marginalized by the political machinery, which took care of the situation in its own particular way. In that exceptional case, the result was a particular outcome, which is by no means the universal outcome in such cases.

My point is that all Lewis could do was throw stones, until the machinery rolled into the situation and left him in the dust.

Although I don't know, I'm sure that before Ben was caught, the various levels in the track/olympic hierarchy were coming down on all levels below them to be quiet, with Lewis at the very bottom of the food chain.

At least he got SOME play in the U.S. media, but it was NOTHING LIKE THE DOPING ALLEGATIONS MADE AND MAINTAINED AGAINST ARMSTRONG IN THE FRENCH PRESS.

By "cycling", I didn't mean exclusively the UCI, I meant the entire "cycling" machinery, from UCI to WADA to CAS to TdF to national federations to corporate sponsors to the media.

The whole system is more courageous, or at least much less restricted, than is the track system.

Dear Aghast,

The method you tslk of 'pig farmers give clenbuterol to their animals' is BANNED in Europe and does not occur. Asia is one of the few places this is permitted.

Also there are other, very, very incriminating suspicious facts against Contador. Other values have appeared that are ten times over the higher value from so-called plasticizers [such as di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) – ed.] which are used in blood bags. These values were measured one day before the positive dope control. These blood bag softener values could indicate that autologous blood doping may have been performed.