Tour De tight pants

[knvb]

Come on Dude I know you and Sandman are both sitting around in your spandex (yuk) watching men in tight pants. With Armstrong out I haven't heard anything on this. Who has the fastest bike with a Gretzky rookie in his spokes?

[Dude]

Of course I am: shaved legs, helmet, and all.

This year's tour started out very controversial w/ the 11th hour suspension of several big names connected to a blood doping investigation. Ivan Basso (2nd '05), Jan Ullrich (3rd '05), & Francisco Mancebo (4th '05) were all tossed the day before. Plus, one other contender (Alexandre Vinokourov) was unable to compete because the rest of his team was suspended. A rider requires 5 teammates to race.

http://www.velonews.com/tour2006/new...s/10176.0.html

Cyclists cheating? Shocker. Who would've thunk it.

For me, part of the interest this year was to see "The best of the rest" battle it out, but without them, I find myself very disinterested. Not too many compelling personalities.

Plus, to this point, the Tour had had a very traditional, boring routine about it. No team Time Trial, and with Armstrong out, Discovery isn't pushing an insane pace through the first week to tire out the legs of the rival teams. It has been a relatively easy first week, save Saturday's Time Trial.

But, that will change, w/ the first mountain stage tomorrow. The expulsion of the contenders means the race is wide open, and there are some very interesting prospects, including two Aussies.

Serhiy Honchar of the Ukraine had a fast Time Trial on Saturday to put in a healthy, early lead of 1 minute, but who knows how he'll climb. Typically, the strong distance time trialers are also strong in the hills, but he's an unknown factor as a contender.

American Floyd Landis, currently in 2nd, is an ass. He had his career handed to him on a silver platter by Armstrong when Armstrong took a chance on him as an American addition to Discovery a couple of years back, then he jumped, first opportunity. That's not so bad, but to be cocky about your chances, then get hammered in the process like last year showed his true colors and ability. I hope he loses time tomorrow.

Would love to see one of the Aussies make their mark, either Michael Rogers or Cadel Evans. With Vinokourov sidelined, there is very little personality offered up. Sentimentally, I'd like to see Yank George Hincapie win, but he's become a bore, too.

So, I know you were taking the piss, but your punishment now will be to read over dry, dull write ups of fast vs. slow climbing cadences, and out of category assents.

Now fcuk off, I'm busy.

[Dude]

Wow, finally a day in the tour to remember.

It has been predictably unpredictable. Floyd Landis, who has spoken openly over the last few years about how good he is but never showed it, has been riding like a conservative pussy till today. Two days ago he kept it cool on the final climb- legendary Alp D'Huez- only to bring back Oscar Pereiro and add a 10 second cushion. He had figured Pereiro was a non threat two days later when he let him go off in a pack of non-contenders and win the day by 20 some minutes. On Alp D'Huez, Landis was nothing spectacular- rode more like an accountant than a champion.

Well, yesterday, on this years toughest stage, Landis hit the wall. He suffered up the final 18 KM long Col de La Toussuire, and lost 10 minutes. Oscar Pereiro, however- the water boy with no hope- stayed at the front of the chase group w/ Andreas Kloden, and regained yellow. Landis, by the end, has gone from Yellow to 11th, and about 8:00 down. Quite the miscalculation.

Well, today, Landis has shown his cards and is riding balls out. Halfway through he's jumped to an early breakaway and is now leading that group to a solo effort a minute or so up the rode. He's roughly 4:30 ahead of the main contenders- including Pereiro- on the road. I hate to say it, but I'm pulling for the guy now. He'll either win the tour this year with this effort, or go down in a blaze of glory.

The final climb today is Col de Joux Plaine, which is a killer section of steep switchbacks to Morzine. I expect Landis will be inspired, as I was, when I saw this message on the road earlier this year: http://www.takethepiss.com/multimedi...p?i=3853&c=533 . Apparently he thinks KNVB is a cnut, too.

[Dude]

Wow!

Landis absolutely blew up the race today! Balsy all the way: he put everything into his climbs, and descended like his hair was on fire!

Carlos Sastre was able to pull back some time on the final climb of this year's tour, and at the summit of Col de Joux Plane he had about a 2 minute advantage on Landis in GC (overall). But, Landis took back a full minute on the 12 KM decent to the village of Morzine. That decent, BTW, is nasty, nasty, nasty. The road is the shites, and going off one of those hairpins is very easy to do if you're not sharp. That's what makes the inclusion of that decent controversial, as it is literally not safe to ask these guys to do it after mentally and physically expending themselves on the climb.

Oscar Pereiro continues to amaze. He was the strongest of the rest of the contenders chasing Sastre, and Landis, to the line. He showed true courage on the way up- out climbing riders with more pedigree and supposed ability- then showed them how to take risks going down.

In the end, amazingly, Pereiro stays in yellow! Sastre is only 12 seconds back, and Landis is only 30 seconds back.

This race now comes down to the 50 KM TT on Saturday, and assuming Landis takes tomorrow to recover, he will win that stage, and win the tour. Unbelievable, considering yesterday he was down and out by 8 minutes. I didn't like him going into this race, but today he said fcuk it, and took the risks necessary to win. Not only the risk of going away early, but also the hair raising descending. Not since Greg LeMond have we watched a rider win a stage with such style and daring.

He also learned from his mistakes from yesterday. As they say, experience is just a singular word to say "I fcuked up". Yesterday, he experienced what happens when you don't keep the fluids up. Today he continuously drained water, and kept his head cool by emptying a second on his head.

Great day of racing!

[Argyle]

WOW...what is going to happen now???

Landis fails drug test at Tour de France

Associated Press
7/27/2006 10:37:04 AM
LONDON (AP) - Tour de France champion Floyd Landis tested positive for high levels of testosterone during the race, his Phonak team said Thursday on its website.
The statement came a day after the UCI, cycling's world governing body, said an unidentified rider had failed a drug test during the Tour.
And the statement came just four days after Landis stood on the victory podium on the Champs-Elysees, succeeding seven-time winner Lance Armstrong as an American winner in Paris.
The Swiss-based Phonak team said it was notified by the UCI on Wednesday that Landis' sample showed "an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone" when he was tested after stage 17 of the race last Thursday.
Landis made a remarkable comeback in that Alpine stage, racing far ahead of the field for a solo win that moved him from 11th to third in the overall standings. He regained the leader's yellow jersey two days later.

Landis rode the Tour with a degenerative hip condition that he has said will require surgery in the coming weeks or months.
Arlene Landis, his mother, said Thursday that she wouldn't blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but "if it's something worse than that, then he doesn't deserve to win."
"I didn't talk to him since that hit the fan, but I'm keeping things even keel until I know what the facts are," she said from her home in Farmersville, Pa. "I know that this is a temptation to every rider but I'm not going to jump to conclusions ... It disappoints me."
Phonak said Landis would ask for an analysis of his backup "B" sample "to prove either that this result is coming from a natural process or that this is resulting from a mistake."
"The team management and the rider were both totally surprised of this physiological result," the Phonak statement said.
Landis has been suspended by his team pending the results. If the second sample confirms the initial finding, he will be fired from the team, Phonak said.
Landis wrapped up his Tour de France win on Sunday, keeping the title in U.S. hands for the eighth straight year. Armstrong, long dogged by doping whispers and allegations, won the previous seven. Armstrong never has tested positive for drugs and vehemently has denied doping.
Speculation that Landis had tested positive spread earlier Thursday after he failed to show up for a one-day race in Denmark on Thursday. A day earlier, he missed a scheduled event in the Netherlands.
On the eve of the Tour's start, nine riders - including pre-race favourites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso - were ousted, implicated in a Spanish doping investigation.
The names of Ullrich and Basso turned up on a list of 56 cyclists who allegedly had contact with Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, who's at the center of the Spanish doping probe.

[Captain Shamrock]

90% of these ****ers are cheaters. TEst everyone and get rid of the Tour.......No 'normal' human could complete this course without the aid of some kind of cheating......Sorry, Dude, but Armstrong was the same when he won.....They make Barry Bonds look honest.

[Dude]

No need to appologise Captain...I'm reporting from the Longhorn right now on my BB. Riding and checking out Crankworx...the hill is on fire today. Just pinging!

As for drugs...anyone who has been involved in the sport knows that drugs are and always have been a staple at the Tour. It is whispered that more are juiced or boosting than not. All? No. Level playing field? Damn straight. Cycling invented the use of drugs in sportw in the early 1900s.

Not shocked at all by this.

Wonder what will happen now...expect Pirera will be awarded the win. First for the tour...

[Dude]

This is a great read: http://outside.away.com/outside/body...ug_test_1.html . Written in 2003, but give a great insider's look.

Essentially, a reporter / competitive amateur cyclist put himself on a regulated, monitored program. If you have time, read the whole thing, if not, go to page 7 to see the effects as he saw it after using EPO.

Discussed this w/ a friend of mine who years back race Pro XC Mountain Bike, and retired after his 2nd season. Essentially, as he put it, he had trained like a madman all winter, only to race and find himself way back of guys he'd beaten before. Never confirmed, but strongly suspected they were on the program, and therefore chose to retire and start his own cycling related business instead of going down the other road.

[Dapotayto]

Good link, Dude. That is definitely an interesting article.

I really wonder if they will ever be able to truly eliminate drug cheating from sports. They sure have to try though, that is obvious. As the writer of the article puts it, if they don't the competitions will just become freak shows about the drugs and doctors and not the athletes themselves. Sadly, we're probably pretty damn close to that situation already.

[Dude]

I don't know if I'm a pessimist or realist, but I say no. I can't see any sport being able to eliminate the use of performance enhancers so long as there are thousands / millions of dollars pushing the demand of it. The chemists, due to financial incentive, will keep coming out w/ something better, and tougher to detect. The real question is this: how long will it be till they come out w/ a super drug? One that has ZERO short term or long term health dangers, but accomplishes the desired results of faster recovery, increased strength, speed, alertness, and endurance? Then what will we do? If it doesn't hurt you, is there really anything wrong? How different would it be then from taking regular vitamin supplements?

I've never fully believed Armstrong was clean. I did believe he was the focus of a witch hunt though, and I also believe that his competitors were all boosting as well. Ever notice that none of his competitors were very outspoken about him? It's a code amongst the peleton. If you blab, somebody has something on you. He likely used a performance enhancer, but he did so on a level playing field. And, this isn't something I'm guessing at, this is something we all know: most of Armstrong's biggest competitors over his 7 years winning went down for drug use...go through the list: Marco Pantani, Ivan Basso, Jan Ulrich, Tyler Hamilton...and now Floyd Landis. Seriously, it is quite the feat that LA was never caught, and therefore whenever his name is mentioned in connection w/ enhancing, it is done so w/ words like "allegedly", or "suspected", or like me, "I believe".

I truly believe that European cycling, as well as World Cup XC Mountain Bike is rampant w/ drug use. As Captain said...what they ask these guys to do is a feat that is incapable for a normal human. At least it is at the pace they do it.

Does it take away from my love for the sport, or admiration of the athletic accomplishment? Somewhat. I was sold, for a short spell, on Floyd Landis. The way he went about winning the tour was nothing short of spectacular. Now, he's just another pro cyclist that was caught for "cheating". So, it makes it that much more difficult to enjoy the sport when these guys are essentially all dirty. A part of me just wants the ICU to turn a bling eye to it all, to be honest. Let me live in denial.

Good thing we don't have drugs in DH. You need money to buy drugs...

[Dude]

For the 1.67 of you out there interested in following drugs in sports, specifically, drugs in cycling.

The TDF has always been sporting societies figurative test lab for the best performance enhancers. It is a race format in a sport that, as the Captain pointed out, demand the fast recovery, added strength, and increased endurance performance enhancers can provide. Whether that be muffins laced with cocaine, or a cycle of blood boosting / EPO / steroids and testosterone, road racing has always been on the cutting edge.

Personally, I've always admired Armstrong as an athlete, for his competitiveness, his willingness to push the envelope in training, and push his teammates. That said, I've ALWAYS felt that the TDF, and cycling in general, is an even playing field. Being a former competitive rider, I guess you can say that I'm a fan of the sport that has accepted it's ugly side (the worst I ever experimented with was ephedrine w/ caffeine, but the harder stuff was available in 1991, too). This article suggests that it wasn't until Motorola / US Postal got serious about artificial enhancing that they took a huge leap forward in competing against European squads. If you match up the timelines, seems to corroborate real results.

Looking at Armstrong's closest competitors over his 7 year reign, a staggering number of them have served a suspension for drugs. One served, and committed suicide (Marco Pantani). To put this in perspective, if you took, say, the top 20 riders over the past 10 years, at least 1/2 have been caught using. That's my own estimate, but I'd bet all my tokens.

It's never been clean, and I doubt it ever will be. Next to come is genetic enhancing through stem cell research. Laugh, but I say in 10 years, it will be as discussed as roids are today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/sp...ge&oref=slogin

By JULIET MACUR
Published: September 12, 2006

Two of Lance Armstrong’s eight teammates from the 1999 Tour de France have admitted for the first time that they used the banned endurance-boosting drug EPO in preparing for the race that year, when they helped Armstrong capture the first of his record seven titles.

Their disclosures, in interviews with The New York Times, are rare examples of candor in a sport protected by a powerful code of silence. The confessions come as cycling is reeling from doping scandals, including Floyd Landis’s fall in July from Tour champion to suspected cheat.

One of the two teammates who admitted using EPO while on Armstrong’s United States Postal Service team is Frankie Andreu, a 39-year-old retired team captain who had been part of Armstrong’s inner circle for more than a decade. In an interview at his home in Dearborn, Mich., Andreu said that he took EPO for only a few races and that he was acknowledging his use now because he thought doping was damaging his sport. Continued doping and denial by riders may scare away fans and sponsors for good, he said.

“There are two levels of guys,” Andreu said. “You got the guys that cheat and guys that are just trying to survive.”

The other rider who said he used EPO spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he did not want to jeopardize his job in cycling.

“The environment was certainly one of, to be accepted, you had to use doping products,” he said. “There was very high pressure to be one of the cool kids.”

Neither rider ever tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but both said they felt as if they had to take EPO to make the Tour team in 1999. Andreu would not say specifically when he took the drug, and the second rider said he did not use EPO during the Tour. Anti-doping experts say the benefits of taking EPO, the synthetic hormone erythropoietin, which boosts stamina by bolstering the body’s production of oxygen-rich red blood cells, can last several weeks or more.

Both of Armstrong’s former teammates also said they never saw Armstrong take any banned substances.

Armstrong, who turns 35 next week, has long been dogged by accusations that he doped before and after his remarkable recovery from cancer, a comeback that made him a transcendent cultural figure and a symbol to cancer patients and survivors worldwide. He has repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has aggressively defended himself in interviews and through lawsuits, even more than a year into his retirement.

Multiple attempts to interview Armstrong for this article — through his lawyers, his agent and a spokesman — were unsuccessful. His agent, Bill Stapleton, wrote in an e-mail message yesterday that Armstrong would not comment because he was attending a meeting of the President’s Cancer Panel in Minneapolis.

Armstrong once said that cycling had no secrets and that hard work was the key to winning. Recent events and disclosures, however, demonstrate that cycling does, indeed, have secrets.

Dozens of interviews with people in the sport as well as court documents in a contract dispute between Armstrong and a company called SCA Promotions reveal the protective silence shared by those in professional cycling. A new picture of the sport emerges: a murky world of clandestine meetings, mysterious pills and thermoses that clink with the sound of drug vials rattling inside them.

This year’s Tour began with a doping investigation that implicated nearly 60 riders and ended with Landis’s testing positive for synthetic testosterone. He became the third of Armstrong’s former lieutenants to fail a drug test after setting off on his own career as a lead rider.

“There’s no doubt that cyclists have bought into the institutional culture of cheating, and that’s a big, big problem for the sport,” said Steven Ungerleider, a research psychologist, antidoping expert and consultant for college, Olympic and professional sports organizations. He described that culture as “a mob psychology.”

A Widespread Problem

In his 12 years as a professional cyclist, Frankie Andreu was a domestique, a worker bee whose job was to help a top rider like Armstrong win.He said his introduction to performance-enhancing drugs came in 1995, when he and Armstrong were with the Motorola team. He said some of the team’s riders felt that they could no longer compete with some European teams that had rapidly improved and were rumored to be using EPO.

Motorola’s top riders asked their doctor, Massimo Testa, about the drug’s safety because more than a dozen young riders in Europe had died mysteriously of heart attacks. Some cyclists had linked those deaths to rumored EPO use.

Dr. Testa, now a sports medicine specialist at the University of California at Davis, said in a telephone interview that he had given each rider literature about EPO, in case any of them decided to use it on their own.

Dr. Testa said he urged the riders not to take the drug, but he wanted them to be educated.

“If you want to use a gun, you had better use a manual, rather than to ask the guy on the street how to use it,” he said. “I cannot rule out that someone did it.”

One of Armstrong’s teammates, Steve Swart, has admitted using EPO while riding for Motorola. He discussed his time with the team in the book “L.A. Confidential: The Secrets of Lance Armstrong,” which was published in 2004, only in French.

The book’s allegations that Armstrong doped prompted the lawsuit between Armstrong and SCA Promotions, which was settled out of court in February. Because of Armstrong’s suspected drug use, SCA withheld a $5 million bonus after he won the 2004 Tour de France. Armstrong and Tailwind Sports, the company that owned his cycling team, sued SCA for the money.

Testimony in the case was never supposed to become public. A confidential settlement awarded Armstrong and Tailwind Sports the bonus, and $2.5 million in interest and lawyers’ costs. The Times obtained the legal documents in July.

In testimony in the case, Swart, a retired rider from New Zealand, said top riders on Motorola discussed EPO in 1995. He testified that Armstrong told teammates that there was “only one road to take” to be competitive. In a sworn deposition, Swart said the meaning of Armstrong’s comment was clear: “We needed to start a medical program of EPO.”

EPO, cortisone and testosterone were common in European cycling, Swart said in a telephone interview. He said using cortisone, a steroid, was regarded as “sucking on a candy stick.” Cyclists acquired the drugs from European pharmacies and took them in private, Swart said. “You basically became your own doctor,” he said.

He said signs of drug use were widespread at the 1994 and 1995 Tours, when there was no testing for EPO.

“Everyone was walking around with their own thermos, and you could hear the sound — tinkle, tinkle, tinkle — coming from the thermoses because they were filled with ice and vials of EPO,” Swart said. “You needed to keep the EPO cold, and every night at the hotel, the guys would be running around trying to find some ice to fill up their thermos.”

‘It Was for Lance’

In the weeks before the 1999 Tour, Andreu’s wife, Betsy, found one of those thermoses in her refrigerator. She was furious.

“I remember Frankie saying: ‘You don’t understand. This is the only way I can even finish the Tour,’ ” she said. “ ‘After this, I promise you, I’ll never do it again.’ ”

Betsy Andreu said she grudgingly watched her husband help Armstrong traverse the mountains at the Tour that year. Later, she said, she was angry when her husband said he had once allowed a team doctor to inject him with an unidentified substance.

To this day, she blames Armstrong for what she said was pressure on teammates to use drugs. Her husband, she said, “didn’t use EPO for himself, because as a domestique, he was never going to win that race.”

“It was for Lance,” she said.

Three years earlier, she and Frankie, who were engaged at the time, visited Armstrong at an Indiana hospital after he received his cancer diagnosis. Last fall, under court order to testify in the SCA Promotions case, the Andreus said that they had overheard Armstrong tell doctors he had used steroids, testosterone, cortisone, growth hormone and EPO. Armstrong testified that no one at the hospital had asked him if he had used performance-enhancing drugs. He testified that Betsy Andreu had lied because “she hates me,” and that Frankie Andreu had lied because “he’s trying to back up his old lady.”

Frankie Andreu, once Armstrong’s close friend and roommate, testified that he never knew if Armstrong was doping. But once, he testified, he saw Armstrong sorting “little round pills” on his bed before a race. “He talked about that he would take these at different parts during the race,” Andreu said under oath, adding that he did not know what the pills were. Armstrong testified that they were caffeine.

Johan Bruyneel, the longtime director of Armstrong’s team, did not respond to an interview request through a team spokesman.

In a news conference he held at this year’s Tour, Armstrong said his opponents in the SCA case were “crushed — totally crushed” upon cross-examination.

Sean Breen, one of Armstrong’s lawyers, said the opposing witnesses were not credible. In the case of Betsy Andreu, Breen said, “Like her testimony, I think her motives are completely unexplainable.” He added that Frankie Andreu’s dismissal as a rider on the United States Postal Service team after the 2000 season might have been one reason for their testimony. (Andreu returned to the team the next year as the team’s American director.)

Armstrong has said he never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. He tested positive for cortisone at the 1999 Tour, but he was not penalized after producing a doctor’s prescription for a skin cream he said he used for saddle sores.

At this year’s Tour, Armstrong said he was tired of dealing with doping accusations.

“Why keep fighting lawsuits when my time needs to be spent being a dad, being a philanthropist, being a fan of cycling, being a guy that just wants to have fun?” he said.

Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body, said the union’s lawyers would review the SCA Promotions case after they prepared files on the riders implicated in the Spanish doping scandal that preceded this year’s Tour. In May, the Spanish police raided several apartments in Madrid and seized steroids, hormones, EPO, nearly 100 bags of frozen blood and equipment for treating blood. The Tour began in July with nine riders being barred from the event after they were implicated in the investigation.

Cleaning Up the Sport

Armstrong has kept his distance from cycling’s recent troubles.

He is training for the New York City Marathon in November. In a few weeks, Armstrong will celebrate the 10th anniversary of his cancer diagnosis, and he has a new line of apparel from Nike commemorating the date.

At the same time, some of his former teammates and rivals are struggling.

Ivan Basso of Italy, Jan Ullrich of Germany and Francisco Mancebo of Spain — who finished second, third and fourth when Armstrong won the 2005 Tour — were all implicated in the Spanish scandal. Government and sports authorities continue to investigate them.

One of Armstrong’s former lieutenants, the 2004 Olympic champion Tyler Hamilton, was also named in the Spanish investigation. His two-year suspension for blood doping in 2004 ends this month, but his future remains uncertain. The cycling union said it would seek a lifetime ban for Hamilton if he were found guilty of wrongdoing in the Spanish case.

Another former lieutenant of Armstrong’s, Roberto Heras of Spain, tested positive for EPO last year. He is serving a two-year suspension.

Landis, meanwhile, could be stripped of his Tour title. The United States Anti-Doping Agency is expected to decide whether to charge Landis with a doping violation sometime in the next week, according to Landis’s lawyer, Howard Jacobs.

All of those cyclists have denied using performance-enhancing drugs, but antidoping officials hope that will change, if those athletes have, indeed, doped.

Travis Tygart, general counsel for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, says he encourages athletes to be honest. “Those who stand up will hopefully influence other competitors in the sport to be clean,” he said.

Ultimately, Frankie Andreu said, only riders can clean up cycling.

“There’s always going to be the guy who denies and denies that he’s ever used something,” he said. “Nobody really knows what that guy is really doing when he goes home and closes the door.”

[Tim Berners-Lee]

drunk mexican messes up bad
Car Plows Into Mexican Bicycle Race - AOL News

[Tim Berners-Lee]

hammered and fell asleep at the wheel

1 dead...6 in critical, 14 injured

[Regs]

This was already posted in a new thread.