Thursday Late Roundup
For more news on what happened earlier today see the Thursday Early Roundup.
News
ESPN's Bonnie DeSimone writes poignantly about how openness is the greatest weakness and the greatest strength of the Tour de France:
If doping scandals make you doubt that the physical feats you see in a bike race are real, look again. Look at the whole sport. It's convulsing in a very real, human, imperfect way. Things may get worse before they get better, though it's hard to imagine how much worse they could be than they were this week at the Tour de France.
ESPN Page 2 has Jim Caple telling us that at least the scenery in France is still beautiful, and then lists why this may be the only thing that is still the same in the TdF.
Yahoo Sports writes that Christian Prudhomme is blaming the UCI for allowing Michael Rasmussen to enter the TdF, and Pat McQuaid fires back.
The Washington Post thinks that the Tour faces an uphill battle, and that Christian Moreni learned nothing from the Floyd Landis case, except not to spend copious amounts of money on lawyers.
The Independent writes the future of the Tour is bleak. Interestingly Oscar Pereiro takes a surprising position on the things that have occurred THIS year:
Most riders are simply fed up and divided. "I've had it up to here with all this," said Oscar Pereiro, the runner-up in last year's Tour, who is still waiting to hear whether he will inherit the title of 2006 Tour winner after Floyd Landis's positive test for synthetic testosterone. "It seems like anybody the Tour points a finger at has to be kicked out of the race."
Sydney Morning Herald, rooting for Evans, offers this snark:
It's funny how we viewers can now pick the drug cheats - just look at the ones that suddenly produce an unbelievable stage effort totally out of sync with their previous form: hello Floyd Landis.
Funny, we seem to recall Landis in Yellow not two days before, having dragged the first group up the Alpe d'Huez. I don't remember Evans being at the head of any final climb in a mountain stage this year. And like Landis, Evans was second in the first time trial. Out of sync with previous form? More misinformation. Over at the CycleOps site, Allen Lim put up a table of Landis' climb data in 2006, which shows what he did on S17 consistent with earlier climbs, particularly Alpe d'Huez.
Make no mistake, S17 was a big day, but not the biggest KJ of the tour -- Stages 11 and 16 were more work. What is tactically notable is how the big climb was the first one. I also find S15 and S17 have normalized w/kgs of 5.47 and 5.69, which are solid, but not out-of-this-world.Out of sync? The data says the columnist is making it up.
Blogs
In Spades thinks that with the 2006 TdF winner still in doubt, and the debacle that is the 2007 TdF there should be a complete reworking of the race with a "clean" group and an "enhanced" group competing.
The Brucie says you gotta love cycling.
Whalley's World thinks that things are confusing with last year's TdF winner not really last year's winner, and this year's winner may be crowned before we know for sure who won last year, or something.
Brave New Films has a YouTube video of Floyd Landis explaining team cycling strategies at the recent "Positively False" appearance at Book Passages in Corte Madera,CA.
Common Man Syndrome has opinions on subjects from Lindsey Lohan to Floyd Landis, who he feels by the way, may be facing more of an uphill battle convincing people that he is the only one who did NOT cheat.
Formerly Fat Running Guy finds it increasingly difficult to believe anyone in cycling.
Sports Shit has Michael Rasmussen testing positive for "roids" like Floyd Landis did. Misinformation abounds.
Pocket Pigs reaches the kind of conclusion about the Floyd Landis PED allegations that may discourage the Landis camp.
Scholars and Rogues thinks we are in the midst of the summer of scandal, and the death of sports.
Finger Food woke up and everything in sports is crazy. He wonders what happened to due process, and he fears that Floyd Landis will be lumped in with this year's Tour de France fiasco by the public. He also thinks that if major league baseball and football tested for PEDs the way cycling does there would be 1,000 new players tomorrow:
Along those lines everyone is quick to point out how “dirty” cycling is. But here is a fact: if MLB and the NFL acted like the UCI and the Tour de France, there would be more than 1,000 new players in those leagues tomorrow. The players in those sports should be thankful every day that they have a union that supports them.
Shamik Das says the Tour has learned something; in comparison to last year's events with Landis, they've gotten Ras kicked out before the last stage.
10 comments:
The first ESPN article by Bonnie De Simone is really good reading.
Riddle me this - wasn't Contador implicated in OP? Sooner or later that is going to come out again.
Contador WAS forced out of the 2006 Tour de France because his was among the names linked to OP. But he was cleared by the Spanish courts, and I don't think he's under suspicion at this moment. See http://www.velonews.com/race/int/articles/10588.0.html.
what I was getting at was that is all they are going to need and another rider, who hasn't failed a test is ruined
Are they going to test Vino's sample from the stage win Monday? Because they should - autologous blood cells remain in the body for many days per the M.D.'s article in Velo News. My understanding is the results from Saturday indicated the transfusion was recent. An anonymous test of Monday's A sample (at least one hopes it is anonymous)should match the finding of Saturday's A sample.
Cheryl, you're on to something important. If the Saturday B, or either on Monday's tests return negative, what then? We expect all to be positive, and if so, we've exposed a doper, and done the right thing.
But what if we didn't? What if we don't find mobile labs and WMDs?
Vino has denied the charge. What if he had a evidentiary sample done on his own on Tuesday, and that is negative?
Heck, Eight Zero, you are correct. Vino could have another test today, and it should show comparable results. The big question is, what independent lab could Vino find whose results would be acceptable/reliable to WADA and the rest of us?
Important watchwords are, after all, are, Trust but Verify. In this case, it should be straightforward to verify!
But again - he could shove his exposed arm out all he wanted, and they'd never test it. They don't need to - they've GOT THEIR MAN!
Round up the usual suspects!
The stage 17 thing seems to be one of those TBV arguments that White is Black.
Amusingly the normalized W/kg was apparently computed but not given.
Maybe because it does make appear that stage 17 was out of the ordinary after all. Here is the actual data:
* S10: 5.15
* S11: 5.12
* S14: 4.90
* S15: 5.44
* S16: 4.75
* S17: 5.69
The two best stages are S15 and S17, by are margin. So it is a little more than the peloton was slow in S17, and Landis performed as usual. The averages obvious the dramatic let down in S16, maybe because S15 took a toll, or other reason.
But then, the next day, Landis was born again, since he had its best performance of the data set. Not only that but if you look at the full table, S17 is the only stage where he consistently performed above 5.5 (S15 comes close though).
And he did it with a 125km solo breakaway (not in the comfort of the peloton or small group), catching back the racers of the previous initial break, who then dropped like flies as time went.
So yes, his performance in stage 17 was extraordinary. The media emphazied it rightly so, if you are not convinced, you are deep in denial, please google the press articles of the time.
Tholmies,
When you gain anywhere near the same amount of experience and knowledge that Floyd Landis and Allen Lim have acquired with regard to what power output a particular elite athlete can maintain over a particular mountain stage in the TdF, then I’ll take your posts on the subject much more seriously.
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