Tour the doping
 

Seriously, somebody should simply just stop this charade of a sports event. Its getting pathetic now.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Really.

Since when has it been a surprise that the guys hanging out in full-body tights with their nuts crushed against an uncomfortable seat are also pumped with elephant growth hormones?

Re: Tour the doping
 

I mean seriously, Im starting to wonder if Tour De France is just a sportsevent where people do doping so that the newspapers will have something to write about.

Re: Tour the doping
 

You do realize, that the bikeboys have been doping since the shit was invented? I mean, who wants to watch them cycle around anyways, except maybe faggots. You?



ps.
It's also a good market section for the hormone industry.

Re: Tour the doping
 

As it happens, its quite the sportsevent in norway, more than 800000 watch it every year. Dont ask me why though, my biggest annoyance is that the newspapers clog up with this stuff.

Maybe its not as popular in Finland, you guys prefer doping in the sport of cross country skiing aye?

Re: Tour the doping
 

Dude, you really can't be that shit, isn't that like, ancient (it's not a yearly drugfest like tdf, but that's probably only because of lack of supervision)? Nobody cares about skiing anyways. It's awfully similar to cycling. Guys in plastic tights with their balls itching going in circles.

Mostly people here care about ice-hockey, formulas, and football. They don't even show shit like tfd live on TV because they know people'd just change channels.

edit. Yeah, April 2001. C'mon Kartool, get a grip. You weren't growing pubic hair yet when that story was published.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Erm, thats _your_ opinion, besides, maybe you should try and atleast pretend to be slightly civilized, I just pointed out that I thought it was time to stop tour de france because its become a doping arena deluxe and you go on a personal attack against me.. If this thread doesn't interest you, why post?

Re: Tour the doping
 

You do realize, that I only agreed with you until you started crying about some shabby 2001 incident (which hasn't yet been made a yearly tradition of). I never said it didn't intrest, it's occasionally funny to follow how much juice a biker can pump into himself.

Re: Tour the doping
 

I would also do drugs if i was forced to visit france :(

Re: Tour the doping
 

Lol, yeah, that is true.

Re: Tour the doping
 

you didnt know that?

this time the tour will be extended by 2 days,
next round the mountains will be removed.
from 2009 on they will drive with motorcycles...

does anybody belive there is one winner the last few years who wasnt doped?

Re: Tour the doping
 

It's cynics-central here, I see. Hopefully when Kargool and Keizari re-read their posts they'll be rightly ashamed, but hey ho.



I'm crushed by Rasmussen being chucked off the Tour. Vinokourov being chucked out I can cope with (**** Astana), and I even gritted my teeth when Corfidis (including Bradley Wiggins) left the Tour for a peon testing positive.

But Rasmussen, despite the controversy over him missing drugs tests, never tested positive. As an outsider I looked at what riders were subject to - expected to provide details of their whereabouts 365 days a year, 3 months in advance - and accepted that some people will **** up.

I watched the last 50km of Stage 16 with my heart in my mouth - one of the best stages of the entire Tour. Rasmussen's kick to win, pulling away from Leipheimer and Contador, was superb but not beyond the realms of belief like Vinokourov's victories were.


And now that's gone. It doesn't really matter who wins the Tour this year - I think Cadel Evans will have a good enough timetrial to overtake Contador, but who cares. Rasmussen had been holding the yellow jersey since Stage 8 - more than half the Tour - and without much competitive racing to come (aside from the timetrial) I just can't get that worked up about it.


I've really got into the Tour this year after having spent a long time dismissing it as being doping central. It's a great sport, but it's being ruined. Hopefully in a decade's time we'll look back on these Tours as dark days for the sport, but I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel just yet.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Its barely a sporting event; the scandal is the most interesting part of it, and 'Tour de Farce' is a much better thread title even though its used every single year.

Re: Tour the doping
 

No. I prefer the dope the farce to tour the France, here I have to agree with deffeh, it's far more entertaining this way. If it wasn't like this, I wouldn't bother reading about it!


I don't know how much you're exaggerating, or if they're asking which girl Rasmussen had sex with and whether the oral sex could have transfered illegal parts to Rasmussen's body 24th april 2002, and what's the home address of this girl, but things like drug tests you just don't miss. I mean, if you **** up something (like the detail of your whereabout in the evening of 24th April), it's probably cool, but it's not like nobody knows what happens when you throw a Rio Ferdinand.

So are you saying that there is a lot of dope or that there isn't a lot of dope?

Re: Tour the doping
 

Quoting BBC:

"he lied to them about his whereabouts in June"

"The Danish Cycling Union said last week Rasmussen had been warned for missing two random controls earlier this year"

"It later emerged he had already been warned twice by the International Cycling Union (UCI) for missing two separate random tests in the past 18 months."




Really, furball. Some people ****ing up is normal, but getting skipping four drug tests and getting warned off a few times and after that ****ing up more and lying - even if he didn't dope, that's just intentionally shooting one's own foot.

Re: Tour the doping
 

It's not the same as what Rio Ferdinand did. Ferdinand missed a drugs test at the end of a match. Rasmussen has been tested something like 14 times on this Tour alone, in particular whenever he's held the yellow jersey or won a stage. He hasn't tested positive once. Footballers aren't expected to provide details of their whereabouts three months in advance so that they can be tested randomly, cyclists are.


Three cyclists have been thrown out, leading to two teams withdrawing from the Tour. There's still dope, whichever way you look at it.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Don't kid yourself that doping isn't prevalent in a majority of sports.

The testing is just better on the TdeF.

Re: Tour the doping
 

We've all known people from school or work who were the most disorganised people around, always missing appointments or meetings. I didn't consider it completely impossible that Rasmussen was just one of these people.

All I'll say is this: when did he tell his team that he was training in Mexico? Because if it was the usual three months in advance, then I can easily envisage changing my plans.

Re: Tour the doping
 

The most irritating thing at the moment is British sportswriters pretending they have a clue about cycling - check out Richard Williams' article in the Guardian today. To quote a commenter on the article:

And as for Cadel Evans not being able to keep up with Rasmussen/Contador/Leipheimer, Evans isn't a great climber (he's more of a jack of all trades) whereas Rasmussen and Contador in particular are specialist climbers. Rasmussen pulled away when it was clear that Contador had blown and Leipheimer had nothing left either.


A good quote from another commentor, although I'm not sure about his parting shot:

Re: Tour the doping
 

It wasnt about being cynical, but being fed up with a sport so riddled with scandals that people have started watching it just to follow the scandals, the sport itself has no credibility what so ever anymore.

Look, when people gang up on their hotel room to inject blood just to win a bloody (pardon the pun) sport, then there is something severly wrong with the sport, and with the people who are incharge of the sport.

I would say, drop the entire cycling off the olympics and focus on rebuilding the organisation because the current organisation isnt worth crap.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Taking into account that he probably was well aware that missing drug tests on constant basis will lead to trouble (I can imagine missing a lot of meetings and appointments in the business world won't exactly make you popular in your boss' eyes either), he might have wanted to do something about it. At work, those people who keep on missing appointments and meetings despite being warned for it, get sacked.



I can easily envisage letting people know, if I'm expected to do so, the changes in my plans.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Why not legalise drugs in it? It's not exactly a skill, I hesitate to use the word, sport.


Edit: Obviously my first preference is for everyone to realise cycling is no more a sport than working out in the gym. At least a ****ing marathon is over in the space of a day.

Re: Tour the doping
 

I think you just pulled furball's aggro off me.

Re: Tour the doping
 

The Tour de France and cycling in general are going through difficult times now. Doping has almost been as old as sport itself. Heroes of all times have been caught or admitted later that they did use (Merckx, Zoetemelk, Thevenet, Museeuw, Pantani, Ullrich and a whole bunch more). Last night in a daily Dutch Tour-talkshow, an old Dutch rider declared he had been using too. He stated that he had the choice of "staying clean and never being able to win anything", or "join the rest and be professional; just make sure you don't get caught".

However times are changing now. The crowd, but also the riders themselves don't accept cheating any longer. The 'Omerta' is getting broken, more and more people start speaking, while dopingchecks now find place 365 a year. Where using doping used to be Russian roulette with 1 bullet, they're playing it with 6 bullets now. Lance Armstrong (the most checked athlete in the history of sport) heard his doorbell ring on christmas-eve. And then again the next morning, 1st christmasday. They found nothing, by the way.

Rasmussen, the guy who was winning this year's Tour, has been checked 14 times so far this edition. Every single time he tested negative. The reason he's getting kicked out and fired, is that he lied to his team about where he was training in june. He said he'd be in Mexico (where his wife comes from), while he was in Italy.

If this would have happened 10 years ago, he would have received a warning and a fine. I'd like to emphasise the team he's riding for didn't posess a yellow jersey since 1997, never mind being able to keep it to the end. But with the current pressure the sport has to deal with now, vague rumours are enough to get yourself being looked at as cheaters. They didn't have a choice.

The media, the UCI (international cycling organisation), the ASO (tour organisation) and teams are all falling over each other now, claiming to fight for an honest sport. In reality they're protecting their organisation, more than anything else. It's for a reason the UCI threw the Rasmussen-story in the media only after he got the yellow jersey. The Danish cycling organisation and the UCI were already aware of this a month earlier, but then they didn't consider it a problem to let him ride the Danish championships. By announcing it now, at this moment, harm can be done to the ASO. This is why Tourdirector Prudhomme stood up for Rasmussen and asked in public why the UCI didn't take action earlier.

I believe that with all this in mind, you should consider what is happening now. It's easy being cynical and ridiculing great achievements. It's also easy to walk away, like German TV (ARD/ZDF) did after the Sinkewitz-case. They now just report about the doping-phenomenon. It seems very noble, but I wonder if they'll be just as consequent if we'll get more dopingaffairs at the Olympics next year.

In this anti-doping witchhunt, everything is allowed. Last night there was a razzia by French police on the hotel of Dutch team (where Rasmussen was part of). They also did a big buscheck some days earlier. French teams weren't checked by the way, just foreign ones...

Fact is that in cycling, doping is slowly getting conquered over now. The tests do work, people do get caught and measures do get taken. Unlike in pretty much every other sport on this planet.
The last 5 years, the average speed in the Tour has been over 41km/h. So far this year we're on 39km/h. This is partly due to a slow first week, but it's likely we can draw more conclusions...

This is another painful year, but atleast things are changing now. The sad bit is that clean drivers are the victim of all this. In the western world, you're innocent untill proven guilty. In cycling it's the other way round. A rumour, or superb achievement can be enough to tear down someone's carreer.
The French sportspaper L'Equipe for instance, hunted down Cedric Vasseur for years, because they believed he had used doping. He was out of competition for 2 years, then proved his innocence and even won a stage last week. L'Equipe apoligised publically, but those 2 years are gone now.

Everything is allowed, the pile of scandals is getting bigger and bigger, cycling-haters are chuckling, but we're getting there.
I hope that in a few years we can focus fully on the sport itself again, without putting questionmarks to everything we can't explain. Because in the end, isn't that what makes sport exiting?

Re: Tour the doping
 

That and it actually being a sport.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Yeah.

I'm not particularily fond of cycling as "sport", and the fact that you're bringing in the view that in fact in order to succeed in cycling you have to dope to the max, literally, doesn't really put any more respect to it. But I guess the anti-doping witchhunt you're on about is just a "reaction" to the cyclers mentality of "cheat as much as you can without getting caught". JBG will inflate when I compare it to football, but that's why you give cards in football for acting fouls. After all, if cycling ever wants a "name" (if that's possible anymore) of a fair and square sport (instead of the dopehouse circus where you really need the dope to succeed) they'll definately have to get rid of the doping. And not just by sweeping it under the carpet with reduced testing so that every once in a while a former cycling legend can appear on the frontpage with the confession "Oh, by the way lads, I doped the shit out of it, had half my chromosomes replaced by elephant chromosomes to grant me stamina growth, and obviously that made me better than you were, haha, I don't care even if I've successively grown tusks." What little sport there is (the endurance it takes to cycle fastest) is really nullified by the fact that in order to gain the edge over others you need to pump shit to yourself.

All in all, it's still probably "more sport" than motor"sport", if you can call either like that.

Re: Tour the doping
 

NEVER FORGET!*












*it's cycling innit**














** he didn't cheat

Re: Tour the doping
 

i watched the tour this year largely because koens review thread brought me up to speed before it started. I have to say its all very exciting and i don't see how the drugs detract from the event, its just another political angle. The last stage that rasmussen won, the mountain one where he was being pushed by the american discovery rider and someone else was very interesting. The idea of banning performance enhancing drugs is silly.

Re: Tour the doping
 

What's annoying me today is that Michael Rasmussen were thrown out of the Tour by his own team for no real reason at all. An Italian claims that he saw Rasmussen in Italy, but Rasmussen claims he weren't in Italy at that time. That's word against word - but even if he was lying, there's no reason to throw him out. He's been tested 14 (FOURTEEN!) times during this Tour and every single test came back as negative. It's the media (especially the French ones) who has been after Rasmussen for no particular reason and now these witch-hunters got what they wanted.

I feel really sorry for Rasmussen today and the Tour - throwing out one of the few who probably weren't using drugs.

Re: Tour the doping
 

At the end of training, actually. A significant difference.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Tbh the french media goes after every1 who does good in the tour that isn't french...
I think they're angry & depressed that it's been so long since a frenchie actually won the tour de france:)

The whole Rasmussen affair is total crap, I admit it's strange that he missed those drug tests, but he's been tested so many times this tour and they all came back negative so in my book he's done nothing wrong...
But with cyclists today you're guilty till proven innocent.

BTW, Cadel Evans is going to win the tour on saturday by being a better at time trails than contador

Re: Tour the doping
 

That's exactly what they do.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Everyone is aware that cycling is shit, right?

Re: Tour the doping
 

http://www.bicycling.com/tourdefranc...6288-1,00.html

and according to him it isn't that easy to update your plans either.

I barely know what I'm doing 3 weeks in advance, let alone three months heh.

Re: Tour the doping
 

The problem with cycling is that it's competitors used to cheat so much, they have to be extra tough to root it out. It is very painful for the sport right now, but it will be worth it.

As for getting rid of the Tour De France, don't be ridiculous. The mountain stages (Alpe d'Huez in particular) are some of the greatest spectacles/achievements in world sport.

What people forget about is that Contador is clean, #1 youth rider and wearing the yellow jersey. This is a fantastic achievement should he come home first in Paris.

Re: Tour the doping
 

To everyone saying he's been tested so many times this tour, there are performance enhancing drugs that will not leave significant traces in the body. In fact, so few traces that small doses will not be detected after 3-4 days. Amongs these drugs you have EPO, hence why it is considered a big deal to miss tests during the warm-up for the tour. Had he been given another warning by either of the organisations that had already given him two, he would have been suspended.

And yeah, all this shit about drug (ab)use in the tour is getting a bit tedious.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Serveral riders in the tour has warnings - its not uncommon to get warnings, it happens that people sometimes make mistakes in reporting where they going to be 3 months advance 24/7.

Rasmussen today still claims to have been in mexico for the entire time saying that the italien commentator didnt see him cause he wasnt in italy.

Rasmussen kicked arse in this years tour - I hope he can clear his name and show the hippocracy.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Like Red- mentioned, MANY riders are given warnings for the same reason. It's not uncommon at all. Why did people react to Rasmussen's case? Easy answer: spindoctors.

I just watched an interview with the Italian who claims to have seen Rasmussen in Italy. It was very obvious the guy were lying. Like they say, your body language can't hide a lie and this guy was seriously shit at it :p

Wonder how much he were paid to tell the media that he had seen Rasmussen in Italy.

Re: Tour the doping
 

It's not proven that he's clean. He just hasn't been caught.


One example of the pointless suspicion surrounding the Tour is when people refer to Contador's past membership of the Liberty Seguros-Würth team, who were ****ed over by Operation Puerto (the blood doping investigation).

Re: Tour the doping
 

Contador was along with valverde on the list of suspects of Operation Puerto last year (along with Ulrich, Basso etc.)

Suddenly after 34 days both Contador and Valverde was removed from the list.

Contator drove on the same time as Jorg Jacse whos initials in operation puerto was JJ - Under the initials AC (contador) was a note saying "give same as JJ" and both of them drove for the same team.

Very very suspect if you ask me - And contator was following and attacking rasmussen on every single mountain, except for the last one where he continued to atk till he had no more power left and then rasmussen who had saved energy could drive from him on the last 800 meters.

So if Rasmussen is dopen you bet 100% that so is Contador, but dont forget Contador is now driving for the same team that had Armstrong win for 7 years, maybe he was doped too and its the same superdoctors who fixing Contador now?

Re: Tour the doping
 

You were doing really well until this:

Re: Tour the doping
 

Well, if rasmussen cant prove he was in mexico, then he got a big arse problem (note i am Danish i been watching the tour for close to 25 years now and i was absolutely cheering on michael from day 1 as i have been for years) and if rasmussen was doped some insane tricky way they cant test yet, you can bet so has contador.

On a sidenote one should notice though that rasmussen spends his entire year planning and training for 1 single race, he doesnt drive, practise or train for any other races during the year a 100% - unlike the most other riders in the tour that drives alot of races each year.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Dude. You can do acids and you're clean in a few days. Do cannabis, and you're hot for weeks.

Was the Rasmussen dude in Mexico now or not, and if he was shouldn't it be rather easy to prove?

Re: Tour the doping
 

Serious question - how would he be able to cross the border into Italy/mexico (and probably a third country) without it leaving any trace in their documents or gov. registration considering there are two different continents involved?

Re: Tour the doping
 

That's easy. Spanish Ninja Looters get off with it all. You won't even notice when they've already stolen all the loot and emptied the chest you've been grinding for.

Re: Tour the doping
 

´

If Pete has pumped more and better elephant growth hormones into his system than James, is that a sign of his superior physical skill? Then why not make it a contest of who dopes the most without being knocked off during the race for the stuff in their veins.

Re: Tour the doping
 

Ok. I think I grasped your point now.

Re: Tour the doping
 

WoW REFERENCES ARE SHIT AND SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER BE SEEN AGAIN.

Re: Tour the doping
 

The lying bit was breaking the team "code of conduct". Which resulted in getting sacked. Thing is, in order to participate, you need a team... and Rasmussen no longer has one.

In my opinion it's way too harsh a punishment for him. They already know he wasn't at the location which he had said in the first place, otherwise he wouldn't have missed the tests. And he got fined for that by the team.
There's no reason to punish him again now that someone confirmed that he was somewhere else. Infact, there also people saying that he infact has been to Mexico. Combine that with the nervous speech De Rooy gave when he kicked Rasmussen out. It's not clear enough, what has really happened.

Re: Tour the doping
 

according to radio france one of the jerseys got tested positive after the 14th stage so either ramussen, contador, boonen or the columbian (solier or something) has been tested positive after stage 14.

They will prolly let the info come out after todays stage - Will we see Contador taken away by the police? He won the 14th stage outsprinting Rasmussen.