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MMFy

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Doping at the Tour de France

Very interesting read and some incredible stories. I haven't followed cycling much except for seeing Tour de France and Giro d'Italia a couple of times and recently becoming addicted to Pro Cycling Manager, so I admit I have no idea what I'm talking about, but it seems to me that almost every professional cyclist riding the tour has been using performance enhancing drugs since the start. Perhaps Armstrong and his team were more systematic in doing so, but it doesn't seem that way. Like he said in the inverview with Oprah he viewed it as having air in his tires. I assume every one else saw it that way too.

I know Armstrong has been a real dick about it, but it seems somewhat askew that he becomes the world most hated man and the rest of them gets short bans. I'm all for banning people from competing for life if they use PED as a rule, but I'm starting to believe Armstrong didn't have any advantage when he won and that he just did what everyone else was doing and had been doing for nearly a hundred years.

Edited by tarjei
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An excellent post by tarjei (IMO). He just did what many pro cyclists did but took it to extremes; particularly by involving others. He now seems to be reviled as if he had been a mass murderer ! 

Cyclists have gone to quite extreme lengths to avoid detection; perhaps the best was a Belgian ( I think) called Freddie Maertens who had a system of tubes under his clothes with clean urine in and squirted it out into the sample bottle when tested after winning a stage in Le Tour ! But amphets have been  around since the 60's at least, Pervitin and Tonodron being the most popular (TinTin and TonTon as the French called 'em. I think it was tonodron that did for Tommy Simpson.

I didn't particularly like Armstrong BUT he raised the profile of cycling quite a bit; I hope his admissions don't drag it down.

NB Even Merckx got caught!

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The was a little piece on it in the Wikipedia-article I linked to:

The Pollentier incident

Riders became adept at circumventing controls. Their advisers learned to calculate how long it would take a drug to move from blood into urine, and therefore how much time a rider could risk waiting before going to a drugs test. And sometimes riders simply cheated. In 1978 the world discovered how it could be done.The rider was Michel Pollentier,
who that year was Belgian national champion and therefore wearing his national colours of red, yellow and black. By the end of the stage which finished on Alpe d'Huez he had taken the race lead and could change his champion's jersey for the maillot jaune.

Pollentier was called to the drugs test with José Nazabal and Antoine Guttierez.Nazabal gave his sample but anticipated the positive result by leaving the race that night. When Guttierez went to provide his sample, the doctor - a man called Le Calvez spending his first day with the race - grew suspicious and tugged up his jersey, revealing a system of tubes and a bottle of urine. He then pulled down Pollentier's shorts and found him similarly equipped. Reports in the press called the supply of urine - somebody else's urine - as being in a bottle. Riders called it a "pear". In fact it was a condom. The tube ran from there to the riders' shorts so that pressure on the condom, held under the armpit, would give the impression of urinating.[34]


Pollentier's manager, Fred De Bruyne, who was in the test caravan, told a news conference:

    I congratulated Michel and then sat down. On my left was Guttierez,
    trying to provide a sample for the doctor, while Pollentier was in the
    other corner. They both had difficulty in urinating... Suddenly, the
    doctor cried out: 'What are you doing?' to Guttierez. I looked round and
    saw there was some urine in the Frenchman's test flask and a small
    plastic tube in his hand. He was confused and tried to say the tube had
    been in his pocket. I was overcome with surprise and thought 'I'm glad
    he isn't one of my team'. But then, about a minute later, panic returned
    when the doctor pulled down Pollentier's shorts and revealed this
    plastic tube which you all now know about.[34]

The doctor said that Pollentier had not actually used the tube and so the test would go ahead as normal. At 8pm, the organiser, Félix Lévitan, told the press that the UCI had ruled that Pollentier would be fined 5,000 Swiss francs and start an immediate suspension of two months. The question was obvious: if a rider was prepared to take drugs and win a stage, knowing he would be tested, how many times had the ruse been shown to work before?"



Also some other incredible stories about a GC contender that crashed on a descent and blamed the mechanic afterwards, but they found he had so much painkillers in his system that he was not able to use the brakes properly. I was also very shocked to read that they had hankercheifs soaked in ether to deal with the pain. That doesn't strike me as an advantage though, but certainly dangerous!
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  • 2 months later...

Any of you cycling fans watch Liege-Bastogne-Liege this afternoon ?  The winner, Daniel Martin, isn't actually Irish but comes from Tamworth. He gets to ride for Ireland 'cos his mom is Stephen Roche's sister. His dad is Neil Martin, a very good British ex-pro. Wonder if he is a Villa fan !!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just checked out the route to work. The train service is so piss poor I've lost patience.

 

Not riding, smoking and pigging out a bit for the last two months. 30 mile round trip.

 

Fitness hadn't fallen away too badly, flagged a little on the last 2 miles.

 

Bit saddle sore too, that'll be the extra weight :unsure:

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I've only just got into this season's riding over the last couple of weeks.  I'm in training now to ride London to Paris in August with a group of friends, which should be remarkably easy if I continue the way I'm going.  After not cycling for nearly six months I've put in close to 200km in the last fortnight, and I should be adding another 40-50 to that tomorrow.

 

I managed to break the saddle on my bike last weekend though, after bedding it in for two years and making it extremely comfortable.  Standard Cannondale seat that came with the bike - one of the metal bars for the clamp broke, forcing me to ride about 5km with a wonky seat.  Picked up a nice Fizik seat the same day for the rest of the ride and it's pretty good.  Cost nearly a third of what my entire car cost, but it's doing it's job...

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  • 4 weeks later...

Now it's the close season, I thought it best to dig this thread up again.

 

How many people on here are using Strava?  There's monthly ongoing challenges on there at present, where you can compare your distance over a month to that of your friends.

 

I managed to get in 556km for May, without actually riding that much.  I'm on 112km for June so far, but that would have been 125km by the end of play today if my phone hadn't died!

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Are your Strava times in need of a little oomph?

 

Are marginal gains just not doing it for you?

Fed up with having to wait about while tranfusing blood?

Do you feel the need to acquire as many virtual accolades as possible?

 

Then you need digital EPO! - the handy way to cheat your way to the top without those pesky urine tests, secluded training camps or recovery products!

 

---

Seriously though, what the hell?!  I think some people need to re-evaluate their priorities if they need to boost their times like this =P 

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  • 3 weeks later...

A friend posted this Fiat viral on Facebook.  The comments from Sharon Garbett (not someone I know) are bang out of order.  I've reported this post.  Will be interesting to see where it goes...

 

bike_zps7488e747.jpg

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Sharon Garbett I sound like one??? You are one you tosser.......Let me say something until you know the full facts regarding my accident keep your **** comments to yourself. It was a night time incident and to be a lone female surrounded by 4 or 5 blokes screaming and shouting at you when you are in a state of shock is not something I ever hope to encounter again.

 

Well, that escalated quickly!  Shouldn't have a driving licence, that one.

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Yes, hopefully I'll get to watch quite a few stages. The flat ones are a bit boring for me, so hopefully there will be a good fight for the green jersey. All the good sprinters are there. Kittel, Boasson Hagen, Sagan, Greipel, Bouhanni, Goss and obviously Cavandish. I hope the latter doesn't win it too easy.

Froome and Contador are surely favorites for the yellow, but maybe the likes of Talansky, Anton, Mollema, van Garderen, Pinot and Quintana can stay in it for a while.

Hagen might have the yellow after the Team TT :)

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Sharon Garbett I sound like one??? You are one you tosser.......Let me say something until you know the full facts regarding my accident keep your **** comments to yourself. It was a night time incident and to be a lone female surrounded by 4 or 5 blokes screaming and shouting at you when you are in a state of shock is not something I ever hope to encounter again.

 

Well, that escalated quickly!  Shouldn't have a driving licence, that one.

 

 

I met someone similar this week, I was on my bike and because I didnt want to put my expensive bike in the bike lane that had a pothole in it I was shouted at and when I responded was chased and pushed off my bike. They also stole my iphone out my back pocket and threw it in the main road. Supposidly I "legally" have to use the cycle lane, I think people who dont understand the rules of the road should automatically lose their license......and maybe have their fingers broken.... Anyway I didnt get the license plate properly so cops cant follow it up - very annoying - will get a go pro for my bike to stop that happening again.

 

Anyway TDF was a bit of a mess, shame as was looking forward to the Lotto and Pharm Quickstep trains up against each other.

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Watching it, will be interesing to see whether Contador has gotten over his allergies for le tour and whether Froome can live up to the billing and pressure.  Looks like Schlek has found some form just in time as well, so that could mix things up a little bit.

 

Feel a bit sorry for the OGE bus driver on his first day (apparently) - but not sorry enough as I laughed like a mad man at it for 20minutes - and a shame that it was partly to blame for the lack of a decent bunch finish, but que sera sera...

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Driven into a hedge by a car yesterday. Didn’t look, and didn’t notice. Oh well. No damage, but frankly the road is full of crap drivers and to be fair crap cyclists. The worse are the crap cyclists who then drive cars in a crap way and nearly kill you. Last week a guy drove into the bike lane; his excuse “I am late for work and I looked in the mirror”.

 

Anyway the Tour is here. Bloody brilliant. Lets hope its a great race and exciting. 

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