McQuaid on Armstrong's 'cleanliness'

Pat McQuaid may wish to revise his words, or not, if they are correctly reported: "He'll probably never shut up the no-gooders but it might give him the opportunity to prove he can do it clean."

To me that suggests that Lance hasn't yet proved "he can do it clean". I'll say no more!

One day I'll fold all of my bike sites into one location

Yes, one day. Maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, for those new to addicted2wheels.com here's a summary guide.....

Where you are now is my main focus - bikes, bike racing and physiological stuff. However you could click away madly and find....

• Bike racing for almost anyone, which is helpfully easy to understand and full of pics
• Dopage du Jour, my almost chronologically obsessive documentation of doping stuff
• Bike racing - the penultimate guide, for a homestyle pudding of info on my way of training and racing
• and my old, old stuff at gtveloce.com, including the gallery and my extensive collection of essays on racing and training.

Cheers for now, Rob.

The dopes who dope and why they do it

I do understand why they do it, I really do. It's simply human nature to cheat. We cheat ourselves, our families, our friends, usually to gain some advantage or to simply prove ourselves. Sometimes with real consequences, sometimes not. If you know as an athlete that you can achieve great things, know it in your heart, yet fail to deliver on the day(s) in question - be it because of poor judgement, tactics, illness or injury - you are left with a lot of 'what-ifs'. If you are open to temptation, if the EPO or other enhancing substance is available, you have a choice. And choice is what it is all about, and where we become much more black and white, good or evil about these things. Iban Mayo appears to have chosen EPO to gain, or perhaps regain, what he displayed in the Tour. He looked reborn as a rider, best he'd been in years. And now we may know why.

Vinokourov faced the same pressure, but worse; that of a favourite in possibly his last shot at the title. What if he couldn't deliver? What if he injured? What happens then?

And Rasmussen? Well he didn't test positive, he just don't look or sound honest. Or perhaps we don't know the full story? We do know he chose to train away from the spotlight and to appear to prevaricate over his location. This is not illegal, and is our perception only. He wasn't proven to have cheated, and he continues to deny it.

Oh no, not again - more rumours

I'm seeing spots. Rumours are flying about a Barloworld police raid and a rider testing positive after stage 14. Now usually this means the winner of a stage or a jersey holder, who all get tested. So is it Soler, Contador or Boonen? Or just a big beat up? If it's a jersey holder it'll come out real fast, you'd think, although hushing it up until due process is followed would not be impossible to imagine, too. Especially since we've been jumping to so many conclusions so fast lately. I can't imagine hushing up the potential winner, but another jersey could be hung out to dry later, I guess.

This story was discounted, denied, a day or so later : from CN - The speculation was further fuelled by reports of police cars at the Barloworld hotel on Friday night. "Some journalist saw an Ag2r Prévoyance team car and thought it was a police car," confirmed Prudhomme. "There was not any police at the hotel."

Le Tour de Disaster 2007

What can one say? Vinokourov has been painted black by an A-test and he and his team are sent home. So, like Landis et al it's not "proven" that he homologously transfused (is that real or did I make it up?) but it looks so much like he did that "we" really can't risk it. (One thought - did he have a transfusion in hospital after that fall? Surely if he did that'd be too obvious to overlook.) Plenty of people have expressed surprise that a rider of such class should bother to cheat but...

1. We are dealing with an entrenched culture of drug-enhanced racing going back at least 30 years, probably 50 - I think we all understand that, don't we? I'm sure it's the same in other sports, if not in most people's everyday culture of alcohol and caffeine-driven lives!
   
2. Like Landis and his worn-out hip last year (not that I'm saying Landis is guilty as charged, as it's still not proven) this is probably his last shot at winning Le Tour - so there's a lot at stake personally
3. Vino was a contender apparently knocked out of contention by injury - and it's always tempting to use anything to overcome the unfairness of such luckless injury
4. He's human and can succumb to temptation just like anyone else.

Yesterday when writing about Vinokourov's amazing comeback I said "go figure". Well I guess we just figured it out. I also expressed puzzlement over Rasmussen's amazing TT performance as well as Valverde's inability to reproduce his past form. Now I fully understand that riders can train and enhance aspects of their riding by sheer effort and practice, and Rasmussen is no exception to that rule - so it's unfair to suggest that he has done anything untoward, despite the latest allegations. It's still a puzzle to me that he did so well - and can't wait to see what he does in the next TT. As for Valverde I know equally as well how hard it is to maintain form and peak at the right time whilst avoiding illness and injury, but it is always notable when highly talented riders appear to lose form at the wrong time. I just hope my puzzlement over such reverses in fortune are based on natural causes alone.

It's a wrap, or a rap?

OK, a wrap-up then. A pre-Tour wrap. Or a drug-bust-rap?

Anyway, Jorg Jaksche appears to have given in and put his hand up as an offender, too. It's becoming a long list, although there are plenty of big names missing, surely? Jorg goes on in detail with allegations about - well, everyone, really. And he promises more. It must be the week before Le Tour, mustn't it?

In the god news department CyclingResults reports that Rogers is in good form for Le Tour and shows photos of him climbing mountains and having a massage. Is that what it takes to reach good form? I must try that myself.

Drop by and take some 'training'

Everyone needs to drop by a doctor like this one. You just drop in (presumably no waiting, which in itself is remarkable) and receive some 'training'. Excellent. Must go 'training' more often.

Meanwhile Petacchi sits and waits, hoping that CONI can deal with his asthma medication issue before the start of Le Tour. It would be a shame to lose a key sprinter from Le Tour just because of poor timing, presuming he has the required doctor's certificates in place for an ongoing asthma issue, of course.

The men in black

It's almost tour time so we can expect a few things to happen. These may include...

• Confident assertions of innocence: "This result is for me inexplicable and I will immediately require a second assessment," said Kessler according to his team (from Cyclingnews)
• Bizarre accusations: "Gripper said that "We have information that they train in strange places." The controllers refer to the riders as the "Men in Black", because they wear neutral clothing on their training rides, rather than their team kit, which helps them avoid attention by the UCI controllers", again from a CN report
• More confident assertions: "More importantly, Team CSC is making genuine efforts to change its team culture so that riders no longer feel the need or pressure to dope. The combination of CSC's strong antidoping programme with their equally strong culture of hard, clean riding is certainly an example for other pro teams to follow," said McQuaid. And "The Astana Cycling Team does not wish to enter this game and wants to clarify the following: If during the present season, it was tolerated very occasionally that certain riders train in an anonymous way, this is so that the professionals of Astana are not continuously disturbed by the many cyclotourists - in particular on the Côte d'Azur – and not in wishing to hide something." Both here.

Hopefully that's the end of it, that Kessler's B-sample is negative, that Astana are not the MIB and that we can all enjoy the racing. Alternatively a few riders, maybe even a complete team, could be excluded from the start of Le Tour and we can play the 2006 sudden exclusion game again. Let's hope not, and better still let's hope we don't see major players (or anyone, really) cop mid-race positives, either. Unless they deserve it, of course.

Ullrich, EPO, allegations and speculation

Interesting quote here at VeloNews. "Frankly, if the rest of the peloton was clean, Ullrich would have won the Tour de France at least 10 times," D'Hont said.

Now he also said that Ullrich had taken EPO, so I guess this is very hypothetical. But is he saying that if Ullrich had been clean, and everyone else, that Ullrich would have won 10 times?

Frankly it rings true for me. Does anyone remember how good Jan was at the start of his pro career? I do - he was unbelievably good before he rode Le Tour - and clearly a Tour-rider, not a classics-rider in the making (although he was talented enough to do well there if he wanted). So what he achieved in his career was pretty well consistent- no sudden rise to the top - well OK, he did fabulously well at his first TdF - but generally it was obvious that he was someone who could climb, TT and race day after day. He was 'in the mould', as it were, of the past greats. Now is that always true? I guess not, and it proves nothing about those who suddenly converted from OK to above-average classics-rider to stunning Tour rider - but it does make one wonder.

Well Riis is no surprise

OK, no-one is seriously surprised that Riis doped in '96 to win the Tour, are they? He didn't have to come clean, but he - like Zabel and Aldag - at least have the decency to admit their mistakes. The problem now is who should be declared winner of '96? Ullrich was 2nd, and although he hasn't admitted anything it would be a brave TdF organisation that would declare Ullrich the winner, surely.

DiLuca tops Giro, Zabel confesses.. and more

Danilo DiLuca has taken the lead (again) in what is turning out to be a good, combative Giro. With the Zoncolan still to come, it may still become great. Simoni proved his worth again and Cunego is not far off the pace. The hillclimb TT comes next, which should give Cunego a boost. We shall see!

Meanwhile a tearful Erik Zabel has confessed to EPO doping in the '96 TdF. He dropped it quickly, he says, due to side effects and was obviously regretful - as you would be. His teammate at the time, Rolf Aldag, admitted at the same T-Mobile press conference (hmmm, funny that Zabel gate-crashed this party, eh?) to more extensive doping and stopped when his haematocrit was consistently over 50. I guess he got a bit worried about (a) getting caught and (b) adverse health effects. I don't balme him, or Erik for that matter. We are all fallible and build our lives incrementally on our decisions, both good and bad. Sometimes we make mistakes - but seeing that it's a mistake and righting it matters. Admitting to doping when you're unlikely to be caught - although there's more than just a slight chance of being given up by the suspect T-Mobile doctor or even one of your ex-teammates - takes a lot of strength. Zabel could have just sat on it and waited but chose to come clean before his name was brought up. Is there a lesson here for other ex-T-Mobile /Telekom riders?

And some good news - Alby Davis takes a win after some close results. He bested both Baden Cooke and Bennati in the Catalunya stage 3 sprint. Tell us again you really weren't involved in Operacion Puerto and Dr Fuentes, Allan. Thinking of which, another rider cleared of Puerto-affiliation - Oscar Sevilla - took a tough stage 4, Michael Rogers taking 2nd. Both riders moved up the classification and will fight it out in the TT. For which I can hardly wait!