The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Ha, excellent.

[The Purple Cow]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Dark humor in this clever Dutch advert.

[ursus arctos]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

You need look no further than the gridiron NFL (arguably the most sponsor-driven league in the world) for evidence of that effect.

[The Purple Cow]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Which is as I say, what is driving other sports to downgrade their testing regimes. They know they'll get a lot of positives if they test like cycling does, and are scared that will similarly drive sponsors away.

[ursus arctos]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

I was in Belgium over the weekend and was very interested to see that the Giro de Lombardia got bigger coverage there than it normally does here in Italy. They really do take their cycling seriously (especially on the Flemish channels).

On the other hand, the German broadcasters announced that they will not be covering Le Tour at all next year; road cycling is really becoming a pariah sport in Germany, at least at the professional level.

[The Purple Cow]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Interesting end-of-season chat on Dutch Tv yesterday between various wheeler journalists, team-leaders and riders. The bits I can remember are.

1. Riders are tested between 30 and 50 times a season. They are tested more rigorously than any other sporters. Despite that only 4% of tour riders were found positive. If any other sport was tested as heavily the failures would be much higher. So sponsors by pulling out of cycling are encouraging other sports to down-grade their anti-doping efforts ever further. More than 100 nations have no out-of-competition testing, and that number is growing.

2. The Parisian lab that found a way to find CERA, had spent a lot of money on the new tests and were under a lot of pressure to find positive riders.

3. Riccardo Ricco is considered borderline insane by the other riders in the Peleton, whereas Bernard Kohl is just a bit dim.

4. There was a LOT said about Schuey, but I can't remember what - sorry.

5. Lance isn’t serious about winning the Tour, otherwise he would not have agreed to ride the Giro.

6. Despite Lance’s close relationship with the Bush family, he won’t back either candidate for the Presidency because he’s scared he will lose half his cancer-charity money.

7. However his long term goal is to become President of the USA, with the intermediate task of becoming the Governor of Texas. This return to racing is partly about raising his charity’s profile, but mostly about setting up a run for political office.

There was more, I’ll come back to it when I remember it.

[The Purple Cow]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

[Edit: Very odd double post]

[Felicity, I guess so]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

That's because, certainly speaking for myself, he

a) entered ALL of the grand tours, rather than gearing his season around "the big one"
b) won them all and
c) has done so without becoming a charmless fucker a la Armstrong, Evans.
He even rode as a domestique for the national team in Beijing.

[San Bernardhinault]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

It's the feeling I've been getting because he's the person who's getting the anti-Lance love.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Straw man though, surely? Who has held him up as that?

[San Bernardhinault]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Let's just say that I won't be surprised if he does get caught at some point, and I won't be pinning my hopes on him as the great counter-point to Lance. I can get excited about him as a rider, but not as the paragon-of-cleanness up against other riders about whom there is suspicion.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Well, Discovery became Astana, and not Vino's Astana. So only one of those counts - though you could throw in Liberty Seguros, I suppose. And as I say, the Purto connection looks unfair. There's much less than Lance, at any rate.

[San Bernardhinault]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Fingered in Puerto. Rode for Discovery. Rode for Astana. Superficially it looks pretty dodgy. Particularly given how succesful he's been.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Well, the circumstantial case against him is pretty minimal. Armstrong showed a marked improvement/change in riding profile, has been credibly linked by teammates to doping, had (legally inadmissible) samples from his first win come back positive, went out of his way to intimidate anti-coping campaigners, was trained by a notorious cheat doctor, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Contador looks like the rider he always looked in his teens like he'd become, before the aneurysm. He's blotted his copybook a bit by associating with Bruyneel/Astana. But the Puerto connection just doesn't seem to hold up - of all the riders, big big names, alleged to be involved in that, Fuentes singled Contador and Allan Davis, both of them mere kids without any particular power or pull, as wrongly accused.

There is a fair bit of innuendo about him. But (a) I reckon it's unjustified by the evidence, and (b) the fact that it's less than that surrounding Armstrong is certainly justified.

Did Kohl look like he was cheating, btw? Seemed to me he was hanging on in the hills every day, with no fireworks and just a little bit better than he'd been doing for the few years before...

[San Bernardhinault]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

It's funny how the riders who look like they're cheating (Kohl, Schumacher, Ricci) are discovered to be cheating. Rasmussen, too, of course.

And why all the love for Contador, by the way? Isn't he under probably as much doubt as Lance for chewing his way through several tons of EPO?

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

One shitty thing that's only just occurred to me about Lance and the Giro - it may now mean that Filippo Simeoni, despite being Italian National Champion*, doesn't get an invite from the organisers, so as to keep Lance sweet.

Indeed, even money says that's why Lance is doing it...

* fuckin' A, by the way!

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Aye. On the other hand, at least he'll have ridden it. And it suggests he knows he's behind Contador in the pecking order, which means the fawning will be less awful at Le Tour than it might have been.

Fuck Kohl, fucking cabbage-named Jay-Z-looking fuckwit.

I think I expressed suspicion when he left T-Mobile just after they announced their massive internal testing programme...

[ursus arctos]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

I'm likely to get a call from "Homeland Security" for posting this in this thread, but Armstrong is going to ride the Giro next year, and the go Lance/isn't he amazing?/what an honour fawning on the part of the organisers and Italian media that accompanied his announcement yesterday is enough to send one in search of anti-nausea drugs.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Er, you're familiar with the crystal meth epidemic in much of the US? The sort of people you know socially haven't taken it since they were sixteen, but that's different.

Warrant and truth are entirely fucking different. I can believe things which are correct for no good reason at all, just as I can have every reason to believe things which are false. Come on, this is elementary.

[garcia]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

The fact that your claim was true does not mean that it was warranted. This is a pretty basic distinction.

ahahaha.

incidentally, i doubt anyone has done speed recreationally since the early 90s. it's like the snuff or laudanum of uppers.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Charming.

Look, what you were criticised for was not the claim that Schumacher "might just possibly" be on drugs, but for the ridiculous inference of "some guy I've never heard of does brilliantly, therefore he *must* be cheating". I never once said that he was not; I said that the balance of evidence was against it, and that your position betrayed minimal familiarity with the subject.

The fact that your claim was true does not mean that it was warranted. This is a pretty basic distinction.

Now, since I am a "cunt", who displays such "belligerent and obnoxious cuntery", I can only apologise in advance for your inevitably construing this post as "aggressive and blustering", or laden with "contempt, disdain, ridicule, abuse".

That's not the apology you're looking for, I know. But then, the apology you're looking for is profoundly stupid.

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

(a) Well, yes it is exactly what happened as a cursory (and non-cursory) rereading does in fact show.

(b)I expected nothing less from you than an aggressive and blustering response to being shown to be (hopelessly) wrong, so I'm glad you didn't disappoint.

Still, here, below, is your space for the final word in which you make some ridiculous claim about how you were right all along (despite all the evidence), how I'm somehow a complete cretin for not bowing down before your complete and cast iron knowledge of all things, and to wrap it up with some obnoxious and belligerent cuntery. Knock yourself out, cunt.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

Ah, well, two things.

(a) that's not actually what happened in that exchange, as a cursory rereading would show.

(b) even if it were; A ha ha ha ha ha ha. You want an apology for that? Diddums feelings get hurt?

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

What I mentioned up thread. The contempt, the disdain, the ridicule, the abuse for daring to suggest that just maybe Schumacher was on drugs.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The "Drugs in Cycling" Thread Will Never End

What is it you think you deserve an apology for?