Ullrich and Basso banned from Tour de France

ruben said:
Do you remember that Italian guy wining there the tour, under heavy rain and darkness, out of the blue ?
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Pantani?
Probably had more drugs that blood in his veins.
 
I don't believe Gontchar will win the Tour. I would be surprised if T-Mobile will fight to keep him in yellow. Kloden yes, but not Gontchar. There is something about the heirarchy on their team. If you remember when Vinokourov was on T-Mobile, his own team chased him down whenever he attacked. It is too bad for Ullrich. This was his last chance. I would really be surprised if Basso was blood boosting, but then there is poor Tyler..... I miss Vino at this Tour. He is always aggressive. My hope is on Landis, but lets see how the first couple of mountain stages play out.
 
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rxmd said:
This will never work. Doping at present means taking substances or undergoing treatment, and then illegally working around tests for certain thresholds. Why do you think this would change if the threshold were higher? People would just cheat on a higher level.

At present sport is supposed to fulfil a certain role in society by providing examples of achievement (say, Lance Armstrong for cancer patients) and encouraging people to exercise and to participate in clean competitions. With the no-doping policy at least in theory present in most sports, a cancer patient can see Lance Armstrong and say to himself, I can get out of this by sheer determination (instead of illegally applied chemicals of dubious effects), and if a young person wants to be like Ivan Basso or Jan Ulrich he has to cycle and exercise a lot - (well, in the case of Jan Ullrich he also has to whine a lot and be overweight, which I'm saying as a disappointed German). I don't see how we perform a service to society if instead we encourage them to dope instead.

Philipp
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Sorry, I disagree. If a person has cancer, he takes medicine to get better; sheer determination is not enough. If a cyclist takes EPO, he still needs plenty of determination to compete; the drug is not enough. Since I believe all of the top cyclists cheat, I want to level the playing field by making it legal and regulating it. Once legal, 'crit levels can be controlled absolutely.
 
This whole drug thing is a media farce. It mostly makes a story to keep dragging in front of the public. It seems there isn't a sport around that doesn't come under the microscope. And disqualifiying somebody just keeps the interest up -- at least for the news-noses. They have to have something to spike interest.

Same thing happens every time a politician - especially a certain one - goes anywhere. You see as much about the protesters outside as what goes on inside. That's known as 'covering' the story.
 
Nick R. said:
If a cyclist takes EPO, he still needs plenty of determination to compete; the drug is not enough.
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That is true.

You could pump me full of EPO and I still would not be wearing yellow anytime soon :D
 
I find it quite humorous that the French now think that why no Frenchman has not won the Tour since Fignon, is because of drugs. How quickly they forget the Festina affair.
 
Rather amazing story about Landis today -- he needs hip replacement surgery after the Tour. I can only imagine how painful that must be, even though the hip isn't bearing weight while he's riding.

The sport has a serious black eye right now, which is not helped by the last-minute way the bannings were handled. It's almost as if they want to create the most unseemly scene possible. Not much better than the Festina affair of 1998.

Meanwhile (and not to hijack this thread), what do people think about the allegations by the Andreus regarding Armstrong?
 
Wow where did this thread come from - I didn't know there was a Tour thread! Pity Alexander Vinokourov can't race, but I too wonder who will win - maybe Landis, maybe Kloden. Mountains tomorrow right? Lets see what happens!
 
If you are keeping track, Gontchar is struggling. His own team mates are pushing the pace, spitting him out the back. T-Mobile wants to put Kloden in yellow and keep him there. I can't wait to get home this evening and watch the coverage. Watch for Rasmussen in the the next couple of days.
 
I watch the race daily, but will confess that I've become a little tired of Robbie McEwen. His whole tactic is to do nothing except stay in contact with the front, until the last possible moment, and then shoot out ahead. Granted, this isn't easy, but it's become more like a trick than anything else -- they've found one guy who can accelerate for fifty meters at the end of a day, and that's his trick, and he does it to great glory. I'm more interested in the king of the mountain, and generally, in the mountain stages, than these long flat runs that keep the pack together and allow people like McEwen to prosper.

JC
 
I'm hoping for interesting goings-on in the mountains. The sprints are fun, but I like the strategy and drama involved with the contest for the GC.

I've been kind of out of the loop -- what are the allegations involving Lance?
 
Melanie - check out www.velonews.com, www.cyclingnews.com, and www.pezcyclingnews.com. I am sorry to say, but I don't really care any more about any allegations involving Lance. He's out of it and now anything that comes up, is from people digging a bit too deep in the garbage heap. He's been tested in and out of competition for years and they have found nothing. Lets move on.....

The mountains are here. Let the race begin!
 
I don't know if Lance has ever used illegal performance enhancing drugs, the point is that he is the most tested athlete in the world and nothing has ever come up positive. An independent Dutch commission also found that Dick Pound and his organization has been acting, shall we say, irresponsibly and quite possibly unethically with regard to Lance's samples.

It is fine to make allegations backed up with proof. It is irresponsible to simply make allegations.

I miss those Lance last second charges in the mountain stages :( Hopefully someone exciting will take up the banner.
 
Floyd got the job done, but I have to say I miss the flash of Lance going away from everybody; he would have eaten them alive today, instead of just grinding away to the end. George is dead. Sigh. If the #2 guy weakens in the hills, as he did today, then Floyd's got a good chance to make it to Paris, since he's more than a minute up on #3.

(But I suspect Lance would have been about four minutes up after today.)

JC
 
John Camp said:
Floyd got the job done, but I have to say I miss the flash of Lance going away from everybody; he would have eaten them alive today, instead of just grinding away to the end. George is dead. Sigh. If the #2 guy weakens in the hills, as he did today, then Floyd's got a good chance to make it to Paris, since he's more than a minute up on #3.

(But I suspect Lance would have been about four minutes up after today.)

JC
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I agree. Finally some exitement, but at the end I was waiting for Floyd to put the hammer down a la Armstrong but he's not that kind of rider (who is?).

BTW, can OLN fit any more ads into their coverage? They certainly know how to break up the emotion of the moment with their endless commercial breaks.
 
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