Pro cycling: General Chat

[Dr_Pangloss]

Very interesting info El-Reacho, cheers mate.

[PauloBarnesi]

Athletes, weightlifters and cyclists are predominently on the juice.

I hope Lance Armstrong is clean, but I doubt it.

The fact is that where professional sport exists, drug taking is likely. The Fuentes case supposedly had a series of names, not just from cycling, but from tennis and football. Think of the Baseball & American football drug taking scandals. People have to wake up and see that its in virtually all sport...

[El-Reacho]

http://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/rteradiowebpage.html#!rii=9%3A3375251%3A0%3A%3A

Jeremy Whittle and Paul Kimmage interviewed this morning. Worth a listen.

[Dr_Pangloss]

Athletes, weightlifters and cyclists are predominently on the juice.

I hope Lance Armstrong is clean, but I doubt it.

The fact is that where professional sport exists, drug taking is likely. The Fuentes case supposedly had a series of names, not just from cycling, but from tennis and football. Think of the Baseball & American football drug taking scandals. People have to wake up and see that its in virtually all sport...

Yep, boxing is terrible for it as well.

[RunRickyRun]

Athletes, weightlifters and cyclists are predominently on the juice.

I hope Lance Armstrong is clean, but I doubt it.

The fact is that where professional sport exists, drug taking is likely. The Fuentes case supposedly had a series of names, not just from cycling, but from tennis and football. Think of the Baseball & American football drug taking scandals. People have to wake up and see that its in virtually all sport...

I agree. Cycling has finally woken up (coincidentally around the time of Armstrong's first retirement) and implemented a series of anti-doping measures (some of which are talked about here).

It's likely the sport isn't clean but the cases of widespread systematic doping by entire teams are rarer.

Compare these measures to say Tennis, where the top players are only tested around once a year for EPO and not at all for other drugs such as HGH.

With the rewards for top sportsmen so great and the anti-doping measures in many sports so poor, I think doping is far more widespread than most people imagine. Sporting authorities prefer to feign ignorance than seriously investigate, much like Cycling and Baseball did before their scandals became public knowledge

[LondonLax]

How long before a football scandal? Does football even take it seriously?

[CVByrne]

A football scandal? Aside from match fixing, there can't really be any. As I said before taking drugs can't make you Maradona. So the profit /loss isn't worth it. Especially how clubs treat drug users. It's not like other individual sports where it's a physical thing only.

[maqroll]

Sorry but don't most of these guys use PEDs anyway? I don't really get the hate for Lance.

This is quite true. However, Armstrong was regarded by many (including USADA obviously) as being a figure head and authority figure of drug taking in the entire peloton, and enforcing an omerta that meant if you were a professional cyclist you either took drugs and were therefore part of his gang, or you were clean and were therefore not part of his gang.

If you were not part of his gang (see Christophe Bassons and Filippo Simeoni, Cunego etc.) and you spoke in any way out of turn to the media etc. with regard to 'a two speed peloton' or PED's you would be run out of town by Lance, not be able to win or even compete in races and struggle to find an employer for the next season because no one wanted to cross Lance, such was his influence in cycling. You were regarded to have broken the code of silence (spat in the soup) - Lance is widely regarded as being the enforcer of this rule.

When Simeoni (who testified that Lance's doctor gave him PED's) got in a break in the Tour Lance himself chased him down an told him to go back to the bunch. Because Lance was there the break would have been chased down, so Simeoni had to drop back into the bunch where he was gobbed on by pretty much everyone in the bunch. Lance gave him the zipped lips sign - as in 'keep your mouth shut'. It's all on youtube.

For the Armstrong years of the TdF journalists who knew rightly what was going on in professional cycling would not report it because Lance and Johann would blackball them from the Tour. Bruyneel had a notebook of name that weren't allowed into USPS press conferences because they were trouble makers.

If you were one of his team mates you simply wouldn't be chosen to ride the Tour without being doped.

The reason they've gone for Lance is because they see him as being the ring leader and there was absolutely no chance of clean cycling while he was around.

What I can't get my head around is that 90% of the peloton is widely regarded to have been doped when Armstrong was around, and yet now we're supposed to believe that it's largely clean, despite many of the same riders and more importantly all of the same team managers, coaches and doctors - and governing body still being in place.

Wow, I'd never heard about any of that. "Cycling Omerta"

Greg LeMonde has been hounding Armstrong for years, convinced of his guilt. Once upon a time, LeMonde was considered the greatest American cyclist, so he's clearly got an axe to grind.

I think that so many of these athletes from across the sporting world who dope, manage to stay one step ahead of the testers, it's just one big cat and mouse game. That's probably how Armstrong was able to pass so many tests.

I wonder if it was the drugs that gave him nut cancer.

[RunRickyRun]

A football scandal? Aside from match fixing, there can't really be any. As I said before taking drugs can't make you Maradona. So the profit /loss isn't worth it. Especially how clubs treat drug users. It's not like other individual sports where it's a physical thing only.

That's the attitude which sadly prevails in football. People don't see the use of drugs as performance enhancing because of the skill levels involved.

When it comes to the World Cup, however, endurance is a major factor (after a long season) and a doping system would be very beneficial.

There's plenty of smoke around football (top Italian sides, a certain World Cup side, French football sides, footballing clients of Fuentes etc). It's just that the authorities don't have the desire (or the financial clout) to fully investigate these allegations.

In the words of 2006 Tour de France Winner Oscar Pereiro:

"Zidane has admitted that he underwent blood transfusions in Switzerland to regenerate his body. That’s a positive in cycling,” he said. “The problem is the difference between the journalist and the public who interpret the cyclist is doped, and if the other does the same thing, it’s taking care of themselves or fighting for the colors of your club.

No hay cojones (no one has the balls) to tell the truth story about Operación Puerto in this country,” Pereiro said. “Don’t even bring up Fuentes. Hopefully some day Fuentes will stand up and say everything he knows. A lot of those bags found in the raids had ‘European championship’ written on them. There isn’t a European championships in cycling. It’s all been an embarrassment."

[RunRickyRun]

There is some pretty damning evidence here that he was doping on the Tour in 99 which was before they properly tested for EPO (the testing was improved for the Sydney Olympics in 2000).

When his samples are analysed again with modern systems it shows up a pattern of injecting EPO every 3 days or so during the tour. His team mates have also come out and said they were helping with a programme of doping during that race.

Not seen that interview before - very good read

[Voinjama]

So Armstrong is stripped of his 7 titles. Will it matter? Will he care? He won them quite a while ago. I am not sure this will make a difference. If he had been stripped of them just after then maybe it would have.

[trekka]

Hope that they don't take the moon landing off of him :shock: :bonk:

[snowychap]

Hope that they don't take the moon landing off of him :shock: :bonk:

Vodka kicking in, trekka?

[trekka]

Hope that they don't take the moon landing off of him :shock: :bonk:

Vodka kicking in, trekka?

Hell yeah!

[LondonLax]

A football scandal? Aside from match fixing, there can't really be any. As I said before taking drugs can't make you Maradona. So the profit /loss isn't worth it. Especially how clubs treat drug users. It's not like other individual sports where it's a physical thing only.

Na that's rubbish.

If a player can boost their endurance to be able to maintain their skill level in the 90th minute at the same level as kick off and know there is little chance of getting caught then they will most definitely go for it.

With the money involved in the game and the pressure to perform or lose your place I would be very surprised if there are not players out there doping right now.

[PauloBarnesi]

A football scandal? Aside from match fixing, there can't really be any. As I said before taking drugs can't make you Maradona. So the profit /loss isn't worth it. Especially how clubs treat drug users. It's not like other individual sports where it's a physical thing only.

Na that's rubbish.

If a player can boost their endurance to be able to maintain their skill level in the 90th minute at the same level as kick off and know there is little chance of getting caught then they will most definitely go for it.

With the money involved in the game and the pressure to perform or lose your place I would be very surprised if there are not players out there doping right now.

There are. Don’t kid yourself, with money the temptation to dope is even greater...

[PauloBarnesi]

Greg LeMonde has been hounding Armstrong for years, convinced of his guilt. Once upon a time, LeMonde was considered the greatest American cyclist, so he's clearly got an axe to grind.

LeMond was threatened by Armstrong. Armstrong caused the collapse of Lemond bikes. LeMond also knew people at Oakley who told him that was doping (look up the interview on the internet...)

Did he have an axe grind? Or did Armstrong hold a grudge against LeMond?

Bit of both.

[El-Reacho]

Read this today:

http://tiny.cc/y31njw

Paragragh at the bottom is very interesting - I think it's the first time I've seen anyone openly suggest the Sky guys are doping. I had no idea that the UCI had banned publication of power data (if it is indeed true).

The reaction of Froome and Geraint Thomas to LanceGate has been less than encouraging I have to say. Seem to be ignoring the issue of their governing body being completely corrupt to the core.

[PauloBarnesi]

I am pretty sure its been shown that the wattage that Froome and Wiggins is miles less than the wattage Armstrong produced, under the guidance of Dr Ferrari. And if you want to read that Froome is on drugs, I believe Cycling News has forums with hundreds of pages on it. I still think that Wiggins and Froome have been nowhere near as dark or obvious as Armstrong. Armstrong failed a drugs test in 1999. Neither Wiggins nor Froome have, and nor have they bullied anyone in the way. Are they innocent of taking drugs? Probably. But I couldn’t say definitely. With Armstrong it was almost immediate that the stories came out, and yet for seven years he got away with murder.

I don’t think the reaction of anyone in cycling has been that great; when you have people like Merckx still believing that Armstrong is innocent, you have a problem. I personally think that the UCI have been so involved with Armstrong, they will do anything and I mean anything to avoid the truth. That corruption at the top of the UCI was on a grand scale, that we are going to see perhaps one of the biggest scandals in sport, since the IOC scandals of the 90s....

[veloman]

Well Armstrong continues to divide opinion and I still think it will be damned hard to prove conclusively either way. At the back of my mind though, I would suggest that he was fairly unpopular in France and they seem to have been driving all this. (I am certainly not anti-French btw).

He made comments to the effect that the French should remember how the U.S. helped them during WW2- this before a stage to Avranche(IIRC).

When he made his speech in Paris after winning 7th tTdF, I think he should have spoken in French (Boardman used to) and this didn't help either.

LeMond - he also accused Eddie Merckx of attempting to ruin his bike business.

I didn't know about that 'wattage' business- that is odd. I thought wattage was very much tied-in with physical size and Wiggins is much taller than Lance.

re. football and drugs; would suspect that if players provide a positive test it is more likely to be for recreational than PED's (except Jaap Staam !)