Musette du Jour/Open Musette
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 24, 2007 5:25 PM EDT
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PrintWicked brief today; I just saw a few pieces worth passing on. If anyone else sees stuff worth reading, please pass on links. Thanks!
- ASO reaction to Vino: we're winning! I wish I could be so certain. Also, it's the UCI's fault, and if they knew about the Chicken's missed tests before the Tour, he would have been excluded. Actually, VN has a longer piece up now with the ASO leaders. CN too. The Tour won't be stopping over this.
- As for the Chicken, by the Danish Cycling Union's count he's had four warnings, which means he should have been suspended by now. Can the Tour let him off on a technicality like this? Not sure, but don't miss the associated photo altered to make it look like Rasmussen is at an outdoor acid test.
- Want to learn all about homologous blood transfusions and how to detect them? I don't, but you can, straight from a real doctor.
- What's a Gendarme to do in a doping crisis? Two words: dumpster diving!
- David Millar is outspoken and unsparing. Bonnie DeSimone has a good writeup of Millar and the day's events.
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Normally I would never
Millar really did look stunned
The french teams are spitting too. The 6 of them plus Gerolsteiner (though not T-Mobile, interestingly) have finally split from the AIGCP and are starting a "Movement for Credible Cycling", disavowing even TUEs. If the doctor needs to administer corticoids then the rider will be withdrawn from racing for a fortnight.
http://tour-de-france.france2.fr/le-tour-une.php?id_article=578
This made me laugh, from CN:
"I feel sick. I hope that Vinokourov won't be a coward and deny everything. He said that he worked with Ferrari just for training plans. He always told us what a brave guy he is, that he is stronger than the pain, that the French ride behind everyone else because they are lazier. Now we see that he is a big bastard."
Vino, the "big bastard." Probably a translation thing, but made me chuckle nonetheless.
How about this one?
"It is amazing, how the results of doping controls are unpacked for the press. That was the case at the Giro and now it goes on that way. It is especially the French press, which has a very aggressive attitude."
Uhh... Yeah, the press is the problem. What a dweeb.
maybe it cuts a bit closer
"salopard"
English: "We realize that he's a big (fat) 'salopard'"
'salopard' -- "Personne sans scrupule, dont la conduite est particulièrement vile."
Which is roughly something like....
"Person without scruples, whose conduct is particularly low"
"Vino's a big fat bastard" seems to work well enough... :-o
-Greg
Priceless!!
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 24, 2007 7:40 PM EDT up reply actions
Didi is a juicer
Just so as not to leave out ANY of the leaders...
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/weitere/artikel/939/124756/
http://www.as.com/articulo/deporte/Ha/llamado/Gordo/dasmasA00/20060714dasdaimas_7/Tes/
Basically Document 31 of the Puerto files lists the systematic program for Manolo Saiz's team in 2005. Alberto Contador is listed on the document which apparently was not released to the UCI with the others.
Conspiracy theorists are salavating over the apparent cover-up and speculating that AC and Valv.-Piti were protected by the Spanish. I don't know what to make of it, other than to verify that Contador's name does indeed appear in document 31:
http://www.cycling4all.com/operacionpuerto06-2.pdf
There is a decent translation at the DailyPeloton forums: http://www.dailypelotonforums.com/main/index.php?s=2299d7b5881fa742377db8d5a2153c0d&showtopic=53 82
Not good news, but before we start to think that we'll get a clean leader, lets be sure to put AC in the same camp and give him treatment as fair as that we give to ~]:->.
no smoking gun in here...
It is mentioned in the pdf document that it was found in a notebook of the team, of which he was a member, the teams race schedule and the riders for each race, starters and alternatates.
It is noted that his initials appear among others in a list on the back a certain 'Document 31' with the list title being 'individualization'.
The referenced article basically is a transcript of the .pdf.
The notes were for the riding season of 2005, he would have been 22 going on 23. Hard to imagine this young man as a hard core doper at that age - but anything is possible.
by humble on Jul 24, 2007 8:42 PM EDT up reply actions
oh come on, he rode for Saiz
It doesn't mean he's on the hot sauce now, but he was. Period.
And VS wimps out by
See versus.com for Phil's very short comment about the situation that ends with "Paul, Bob and I are, for once, speechless. We are all very upset with such a stupid action at a time the sport looked to be putting its own house in order. It is incomprehensible that Vinokourov could do such a thing when he must have known he was under suspicion because of his dealing with disgraced doctor Michele Ferrari in Italy. He must have known he would be tested at every opportunity and the time trial was the perfect occasion. Tomorrow we will know more."
VS just blew a major opportunity to provide the US with some great journalistic coverage. Surely their "ace team" of commentators could have given us something better than this. Bad.
Couldn't agree more
VS is reminiscent of the print cycling magazines -- 3 weeks or so behind the news curve.
As I posted in another thread, I then turned to ABC nightly news, whose lead story was "Scandal in Sports." It was the NBA ref, Michael Vick and the dogs and no mention at all of the TdF.
Oh well, Barry Bonds didn't make it on ABC either.
It's reactions like that
Shocked? Yeah, right. How long have they been around cycling? They have a freakin' confessed doper on their program staff, for Pete's sake, and they claim to be shocked? Why not stop treating their audience like idiots and bring the knowledge that they have to have picked up over the years (unless of course they have purged Gewiss and Festina, and [long list redacted] from their memory banks) to actually build some credibility for themselves.
It's gotten to the point where I smirk every time that Sherwen mentions the "suitcase of courage" because I'm thinking about the briefcase full of syringes that Chris Carmichael carried around with the Junior team. Of course it was only full of vitamins, courage, and "extract of cortisone". (See Walsh, From Lance to Landis for the details on that one).
And ironically enough, the only two guys who seem even prepared to deal with the properly critical stance on the doping issue are Trautwig and Andreu
A lot of people have been claiming in the past few days that you "can't prove a negative"--i.e. you can't prove that you didn't dope.
And in absolute terms, that's probably correct. However, we have the physiological data available to know what hematocrits SHOULD look like in week two of a stage race, same for most hormone levels. (Check out the COmpetitors Radio podcast with Dr. Michael Ashenden--it's illuminating). And what's more, with a comprehensive longitudinal system of profiles, we could see--just like we can see power data--what rider values are. Values that behave abnormally are probably indicative of doping; of course there will be variation (like Vaughters' and Cunego's and Cioni's +50 hematocrits), but such things can be verified. This may seem invasive, but if riders are willing to let data like watts/threshold and vo2/max be publicized, they shouldn't be too upset--especially if it provides a means to save their livelihood.
With a system like that, riders, race organizers, and sponsors could have some level of certainty.
Beyond that, the out-of-competition testing system HAS to be fixed.
Look a little more closely
<Paul, Bob and I are, for once, speechless. We are all very upset with such a stupid action at a time the sport looked to be putting its own house in order. It is incomprehensible that Vinokourov could do such a thing when he must have known he was under suspicion because of his dealing with disgraced doctor Michele Ferrari in Italy. He must have known he would be tested at every opportunity and the time trial was the perfect occasion.>
by NE Observer on Jul 24, 2007 10:06 PM EDT up reply actions
Unlike the cyclists, I'm willing to give VS
And besides, I'm not really sure what kind of insightful coverage you expected anyway. Hard-hitting journalists they ain't, nor do they pretend to be. To me, these guys are just amiable, excitable, semi-entertaining cheerleaders, and they're probably as gutted as the rest of us.
Agreed
I actually thought last year they did a really solid job -- Trautwig too -- of scrapping the preview show and covering OP.
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 24, 2007 10:27 PM EDT up reply actions
Why no positive blood tests in three years?
Vinokourov had been booted from the TdF and Astana has been disinvited and Astana accepted.
So he has tested positive for blood doping. From a test on Stage 13. I wonder if the test from Stage 15 will also come back positive?
I am really torn by this crap. But I am torn because I can't seem to trust the riders and I don't completely trust the authorities. Especially the science. I wish I could say that the science is good and solid.
But if you read through the lines, only three riders have tested positive for blood doping. Hamilton, Perez and Vino. The first two in 2004 and Vino now in 2007. The Operacion Puerto broke open in May 2006.
Basso won every stage, no just kidding, he won most of the mountain stages and wore the Pink Jersey forever in the Giro in April 2006. Jan Ulrich took the time trial in commanding fashion. Jorg Jachske won races. So did Scarponi. They were all tested and no one came up positive for over three years.
Now this. Hard to believe that he blood doped, when there is a likely chance that you might get popped.
Different kind of blood doping
that's one thing that bother me too
If he was a client of Fuentes and he was blood doping ,in theory, using his own blood (and seemingly Fuentes' preferred method), why did he test positive for someone else's blood.
I believe I read a statement that said he had old and new blood in his system (supposedly before the time trial), it didn't state whether it was his or someone else's.
clarification
L'Equipe said it was someone else's blood
by socal @ Podium Cafe on Jul 25, 2007 12:33 AM EDT up reply actions
As it turns out
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 25, 2007 12:38 AM EDT up reply actions
Vino responded to the rumor
A late edit...
Should read: "there is no sanctionable test for using one's own blood"
Big, big difference. Idiot, Gav, idiot ;-)
Vino and Hamilton both got nailed for transfusing someone else's. Fuentes occasionally used this trick also, ie a wife, girlfriend, brother, etc., because it's easier on the riders' body, because there is no need to recover from taking blood out to store. But, of course, it's testable, as Vino's case makes clear.
heh
We knew what you meant. The brain to keyboard connection trips all of us up. ;-)
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