Surprising that this win has not been discussed more on here. This guy is the most recent of a long line of cycling legends that America has produced over the last 30 years:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/15/sport/cycling-horner-vuelta-oldest-winner/?hpt=hp_bn2
And the latest doper. Sad.
Winning the Vuelta is a pretty big deal. He held of Nibali (won the Giro), Valverde (convicted doper but one of the greatest riders in the peleton) and Rodriguez (third in the Tour de France).
The oldest grand tour winner before Horner (so in like 250 grand tours), won at age 36. Horner is almost 6 years older.
Horner has long, long, long been implemented in doping. Rumors in the peloton from a decade ago were all about him and Klasna driving up and down the west coast in their van, doping themselves to the gills.
Through Saturn and Mercury and everything.
Plus, as we now know, every SINGLE major player from the early 2000s in American cycling doped.
Horner was THE MAN in US domestic racing during that time period.
Totally doped.
vlmn wrote:
Winning the Vuelta is a pretty big deal. He held of Nibali (won the Giro), Valverde (convicted doper but one of the greatest riders in the peleton) and Rodriguez (third in the Tour de France).
The oldest grand tour winner before Horner (so in like 250 grand tours), won at age 36. Horner is almost 6 years older.
Valverde one of the greatest riders?
Ha. A shell of his former self since the doping news.
Just like a whole slew of them.
In the same boat with Cunego. Remember him? HAHAHA. Wow.
I hope the doppers will be punished by WADA!!!
UH OH! Horner supposedly missed the post-Vuelta anti-doping control.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/report-horner-misses-post-vuelta-anti-doping-test
If it looks like crap, and smells like crap... guess what.
In reality, I have no idea what to believe. But given the history of cycling, I am often skeptical.
I thought Horner rode a great race - even while it was very apparent that he was not the best rider there. He certainly forced some big errors out of Nibali, whose ride up the Angliru was just awful.
I simply couldn't understand what Nibali thought he was doing. He had a three second deficit, over the last three weeks Horner has always been vulnerable to sudden accelerations, so why attack with 5k to go? All he had to do was sit in Horner's wheel until 150 - 100 metres to the summit and take a sprint from there.
Hopefully Horner will find a team for next year (if they make this missed test stick it will be difficult for him) if he wants it - although based on his post-race interviews over the last few weeks he'd make a good commentator too.
(BTW, "legend" isn't really appropriate, you need more than one Grand Tour win to achieve that status.)
he's doped
crying for you wrote:
Valverde one of the greatest riders?
Ha. A shell of his former self since the doping news.
Just like a whole slew of them.
In the same boat with Cunego. Remember him? HAHAHA. Wow.
Name 5 riders that were better than him this year.
Sagan
Froome
Nibali
Rodriguez (I'd argue against it but okay)
Who else? Cavendish? Quintana? Contador? Kittel? Give me a break.
If you don't consider someone that has been in the top 5 for over half a decade (only interrupted by his doping ban) one of the greatest of this era, you're delusional.
Cyclingnews reports that Horner missed a USADA post race out of comp test. They went to the team hotel but he wasn't there. He claims he updated his whereabouts.
We will find out in the coming weeks if this is true or he indeed dodged the stricter USADA test (the Spanish in-comp tests didn't find anything).
It appears that Horner really did update USADA:
It should be interesting to hear the SADA(?)/USASDA response.
knox harrington wrote:
It should be interesting to hear the SADA(?)/USASDA response.
Interesting to see they need to give a one hour window for each day. Horner choses 6am to 7am.
Generally speaking, would a drug being micro dosed be out of the system 23h later when taken 7:05am every day?
Vuelta a Espana
SADA(?) = Aepsad
Nutella1 wrote:
Interesting to see they need to give a one hour window for each day. Horner choses 6am to 7am.
Generally speaking, would a drug being micro dosed be out of the system 23h later when taken 7:05am every day?
That's the idea behind micro-dosing, the dosages are selected such that they won't trigger a positive test during the testing window. If a grand tour rider were doping they'd be on something more like a 12 hour schedule since they race almost every day for three weeks. What is a little strange, is that Horner, as the race winner, almost certainly would have been tested after the last stage of the race, presumably late afternoon the day before as well as after the penultimate stage as the race leader. I don't know how common this sort of "just barely out of competition" testing might be.
I would love for this win to stand the test of time. Has any other american won the vuelta?
Horner certainly didn't dominate this race. He was consistent day after day whereas Nibali had some tough days. If you didn't know who Horner rode for in the past, you'd be believe that he was more clean than Froome, who rode away from everyone in the TDF.
Horner wasn't trashed from racing the giro or any other major race since last year. this is a legit reason he could have been stronger than the rest of the field.
I'd think the 6-7 timeslot for testing would be to get it out of the way before moving on.
But, given horner's associations in the past, it's so hard to believe that this guy is clean. he doesn't have a contract next year and that is probably not just due to his age. he's tainted.
cyclists go for the 6-7 timeslot to allow safe microdosing etc.
i think it was tyler hamilton that talked about it in his book
That doesn't make any sense. Horner spent 7 or 8 days in red and won 2 stages - all of which guarantee that he'll be tested at ~5 p.m.
I'm not saying Horner's clean, just that your story isn't believable.
GenericID wrote:
I thought Horner rode a great race - even while it was very apparent that he was not the best rider there. He certainly forced some big errors out of Nibali, whose ride up the Angliru was just awful.
I simply couldn't understand what Nibali thought he was doing. He had a three second deficit, over the last three weeks Horner has always been vulnerable to sudden accelerations, so why attack with 5k to go? All he had to do was sit in Horner's wheel until 150 - 100 metres to the summit and take a sprint from there.
Hopefully Horner will find a team for next year (if they make this missed test stick it will be difficult for him) if he wants it - although based on his post-race interviews over the last few weeks he'd make a good commentator too.
(BTW, "legend" isn't really appropriate, you need more than one Grand Tour win to achieve that status.)
Agreed. There were time bonuses too!
I think he decided that since Horner had taken time out of him on literally every mountain stage that he just needed Horner to have a bad day. If Horner rides his own pace, Nibali will get dropped. So Nibali just threw everything he had at Horner and hoped he'd crack. Didn't happen. Exciting stage.