Category: Cycling – Pro

Another one bites the dust

10 AM Eastern Today. The article’s from l’Equipe, and in French (English translation here), but from what I can gather, it means that there’s another 9 riders going home after Astana’s departure yesterday.

Read it in English here. The CyclingNews bit is nice, as it’s got plausible deniability from Vino – maybe someone else’s blood got into his legs in his earlier crash. Not beyond the realm of possibility, but ….

F$ck.

Update: We can name names now. It’s Cristian Moreni from the French Cofidis team.

Update 2: Another 8 innocent riders have left the tour, as Moreni’s team, Cofidis, withdraws. Neca, over at Weighty Words commented yesterday about how no-one was mentioning that Andreas Kloden, who had been sitting at 5th place in the General Classification got screwed when Astana pulled out after Vinokourov popped positive.

Say it ain’t so, Vino…

F$ck Vino busted for blood doping.

I was all set to, tonight, write about how I was hooked on the Tour again; how the race seemed human again, and about how it was amazing to have seen Vinokourov go down in a huge crash, fight back to form, win Saturday’s time trial, take a rest day on Sunday and concede over 30 minutes to the folks fighting for the yellow jersey, and then come back on Monday’s mountainous stage 14 to take a flier off the front and win the stage in great style.

I was ready to believe again, ready to love professional cycling again.

Now, I think I’m back to just loving my bike, and my bike only.

Dopers suck.

Doping Update

I’ve been chewing on this Velonews Article about the toll of doping, and thinking about it in terms of economics (darned education – I cannot help but avoid looking at everything as either an engineering problem or via business terms). The problem, as The Doctor lead to, is one of incentives – the biggest incentives come with winning races. Doping comes with both health and potential loss of income incentives (or disincentives), but not doping also comes with the disincentive of not winning races.

And now, after coming clean about attempted doping, the UCI is recommending a 2 year suspension for Ivan Basso.

Let’s see, now – if Basso actually had popped positive, what would he have gotten? 2 years suspension, just like Tyler Hamilton, probably. And then, if the Hamilton model holds true, it’s going to be nearly impossible for Basso to come back.

(as background, Hamilton’s just completed his 2 year suspension. However, as he’s implicated in the Spanish doping investigation, Operacion Puerto, for evidience that he was doping at about the same time he got busted at the Vuelta Espana, he can’t get work with a top-level team. Meaning, even if you serve your time, you’re screwed)

So, let’s examine a couple of scenarios:

1. If Basso hadn’t confessed, he’d still be riding right now – the lack of positive tests in or out of competition, and the glacial process of the Spanish investigation haven’t provided any evidence on which to hang him.
2. The current one, in which Basso confessed, and is looking to get screwed.
3. The scenario in which he stops doping activities quietly. The risk of positive tests in competition is mitigated, but he’s still got his past hanging over his head, and hasn’t done anything to change the climate.

Is it time for a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission in cycling? An opportunity for dopers to confess, get clean, and resume competing with little or no sanction? As it stands, any confession or attempt to get help gets the rider nailed, so, from a rider’s point of view, why quit?

Update

Basso got whacked for two years, retroactive to late last year when the charges against him were identified.

Basso’s 29. He’ll be 30 when he’s allowed to come back, unless he gets whacked again like Hamilton. Neca’s right – there needs to be a better solution

More thoughts on Doping and Jan

So, Neca got me thinking with this comment:

I don’t think the Tour will ever be quite the same for me. Not just because of his retirement (which saddens me), but all these rumors and accusations have gone a long way to ruining the sport for me.

Yep – the first week of August 2006 kind of soured me, too.

In a way, it would have been much easier to take if Landis were definitively positive, and if Puerto had conclusively taken down Basso, Ullrich, etc. The sport would have shown effective policing, and we could have moved on from the “Era of Doping”.

Instead, there’s serious questions about Landis’ test (which, coincidentally is the same lab that hung Hamilton out to dry, leading folks to wonder if maybe the Man from Marblehead was screwed, too), nothing substantial from the Spaniards, and a sense that the UCI and WADA are out of control, trying to get the peleton to look like they want it to. Woe be unto Levi Leipheimer if things continue as they are.

The amount of good will towards pro cycling that’s been burned with the fiascos of the last two years is incalculable. If the regulators had been able to control leaks, provide airtight cases against dopers (or at least plausible), and acted swiftly rather than dragging procedures on and on and on, there wouldn’t be much sympathy for the accused.

Instead, it’s March, and Landis won’t have a hearing in front of the USADA until mid-May, more than 9 months after his alleged positive test. For a career that might last all of 10 years, that’s an eternity.

Is doping an offense against sport? Most assuredly.

But a larger offense is when the folks who are supposed to be leveling the playing field use the rules to arbitrarily knock out competitors they don’t like.

Monday Weigh-In / Tour de Rant

175 on the old scale. Which is good.

What was even better was Saturday up at Military Medical (MilMed) – 171 fully dressed without shoes. Looks like the old scale WAS about 5 lbs heavy. Missy picked up a new one later on Monday, and Tuesday morning weigh-in was 170. I kid you not. The upside is that I’m down like 10 lbs since the beginning of the year, which is all good. I’ll probably continue to use the old scale for consistiency, but will revise target weights upwards.

Monday was a rest day. And I rested. But I think I may be better – I felt like a racehorse in the paddock all day – kind of twichy and really wanting to run. I felt GOOD. We’ll see if I still feel good when I strap on the old shoes later today.

On to the real topic of discussion: Cycling and the new season. Jeff over at Boingo Blog dropped me the following:

So, what’s your take on Lance this year? Think he’ll be able to pull off another win in France? Jan is looking really strong this season, and there’s some other climbers that will really give him a run for his money…

And Tyler will most likely be gone. Dang. Man, I had so much respect for him when he took fourth the year he spilled on the second stage and broke his clavicle. It’s almost like baseball now, you have to assume that everyone is using something, somehow.

Tyler broke my heart last year. Removing all the gay overtones, I really had a man-crush on him since the broken collarbone tour. He just seemed like one of the guys, y’know? One of the ones who you ride with from time to time when they want a really easy day.

As far as 7 goes – I don’t know if Lance has the fire in his belly any more. At least not for le Tour. He’s done the impossible and won 6, any more is gloating; although he did learn a valuable lesson in 2000 with Pantani that unless you completely and truly crush the opposition, Euros don’t give Yanks credit.

What I’d like to see (not necessarily what I think we will see) is Lance taking the classics seriously. One of the most valid criticisms of him has been that, unlike Merckx, Hinault, etc, LA is quite literally a one trick pony. In July, he’s the best cyclist in the world. For the rest of the year, he’s quite literally a non-starter. The one exception has been Amstel Gold for the last few years, but even then he’s been able to blow off not winning by saying his training for le Tour is on track.

Armstrong started off as a strong one-day race rider, and especially over some of the hillier classics could be a factor. At the very least, he could give Hincapie a run for his money (Yes, I know they’re teammates) – I think Georgie’s scant palmares reflect his dedication to making sure Lance wins the Tour; Lance going out and busting heads in northern Europe for April and May could break down the field enough for George to take Roubaix or L-B-L, races that Hincapie has talked about wanting to win.

Ullrich? Armstrong should be waking up in his oxygen tent every night with the cold sweats if Ullrich has been training as much as has been reported, provided he bounces back from his current illness. Ullrich has been a factor ever since he won in 1997, despite his appreciation of booze and recreational pharmacuticals in the off-season. I’d love to see the diesel actually perform – I think that 2004’s tour was a wake-up for him, watching Basso drop him.

My “guys to watch” for this year, though, are Cunego (the guy who won the Giro last year, I know I killed his name) and Thomas Voeckler(10 days in Yellow in July). Cunego just kicked ass in Italy, and Voeckler has the build (dude’s tiny) and the tenacity (I forget which stage it was last year, but he fought tooth and nail on a final climb, got dropped and regained the leaders – less Armstrong and Basso – six times that day, and robbed Armstrong of a day in yellow by less than a minute) to have an impact. Could he burn out? Maybe. But he’s a guy to watch.

(See how I avoided all discussion of doping? If I don’t think about it, it’s not happening… Seriously, though, I wish to high heaven that the culture of cycling, and sport in general) would change to make doping completely unacceptable at the athelete level. How to do that? Dunno….)

In any case, I strongly recommend the following cycling sites:

The Tour de France blog – not affiliated with le Tour in any way that I can tell, just a really dedicated and enthusiastic fan. Don’t know if he rides. He’s got an rss feed.

Cycling News – Absolutely terrible web layout – tiny print, confusing columns, no RSS. But a great source for race info, tech, and training.

VeloNews – The USA’s cycling rag. They’ve picked up more Euro coverage later, but are still pretty US centered. Which is cool. Good classifieds, and a regional racing calendar. A couple of great columnists. They had Hamilton last year, but seem to have had a pretty public falling out with him over doping. And Friday’s Foaming Rants are hilarious. VeloNews has no RSS feed. Bums.

BBC Sport – (link is to their RSS feed) If you’re into world sports, you probably already know about the Beeb. Good stuff.

Le Tour’s homepage is a pretty useful site. Not only is it the place to be in July, but the Tour’s organizers put on a pretty comprehensive calendar of other races.

Graham Watson – The king of cycling photographers. Watson has an eye for composition that cannot be matched.

Back on track

No bonus mileage this week, but I’m back on track running wise. No really noteworthy runs, but somehow I’m pleased with muddling through.

The sun may be a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is made into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees, but it didn’t make much of a difference today. Plus, it was thinking about snowing all day, so the air was heavy with humidity. Yep, cold and humid, so I banged out my three miles for the end of the week on the treadmill. 9 minute pace. Dunno why, but lately I’ve felt a lot slower on the ‘mill than on the roads. But it’s all good. Hopefully, I can get the runner’s high kicking again, soon.

First day of Paris-Nice was just a 4 Km time-trial prologue. Frankly, (and I say this as a cycling fan) individual time trials bore the snot out of me. Yes, there’s the race against the clock, and the thrill of watching finely tuned athletes on the verge of greatness, but time trial stages always leave me cold. There was Bobbke’s kid though. And it was actual cycling on US TV, so I’m there.

Next weekend? Selection Sunday…