Tour de France 2009

and a copy of this:

then look at the history of every other team mate of LA. also read about the aussie scientist who retested samples obtained from the UCI which proved a positive result.

I just read this. Awesome it is.

You sure about that?

what's it to you sunshine.

remote linking forbidden

@ That image.

I just read this. Awesome it is.

True, I read it recently as well. I had no clue Armstrong had been such a wee rascal to Fillipo Simeoni, who has been basically ostracized by the pro peleton since spitting in the soup with Dr Mengele.

I see Asterloza has tested positive. I doubt he will be the last from this year.:(

So how long does it usually take to get the results through? I thought they caught people whilst they were still riding in previous years? Is it just that the drugs they are now using are a lot more dificult to test?

Asterloza was tested about a month ago, out of competition.

So how long does it usually take to get the results through? I thought they caught people whilst they were still riding in previous years? Is it just that the drugs they are now using are a lot more dificult to test?

Probably a myriad of factors. If Astralosa had tested positive for a test from May then he may well have been caught during the tour. There are lots of riders to test and lots of tests to do. It also all costs lots of money so its no surprise its not lighting quick.

peronally, having been involved in relatively high level sport, ie to a level where, although personally i was never tested it was entirely because my name didn't happen to come out of the hat, i think its wrong to lable some1 a drugs cheat if they have never been "convicted".

There are procedures inplace, granted somewhaat unsuccessfully in cycling, if we don't trust them then any disscussion about drugs is pointless because you'll never be convinced. If you don't trust the system you might as well lable eveyone a cheat as none of there tests are valid.

I dont think he cheated, no, and regardless he's an exceptional athlete and one of the most proffessional sports people in the world

I'm sorry but your viewpoint is incredibly naive.

Take EPO as an example. It first started being used by cyclists in the late 1980s without medical supervision. Fifteen Dutch and Belgian amateur cyclists died due to taking it in large doses but the performance gains were such, around 15-30%, that usage became widespread, albeit with stricter medical supervision. I'm certain that every single rider who won the Tour from 1991 onwards was using it. There was no test to detect it until the Sydney Olympics in 2000 so a whole generation of professional cyclists got into the habit of using a banned substance, mainly because it couldn't be detected. Many of those same riders, i.e. Bruyneel, Riis, Aldag, Gianetti, are now running teams.

The doping method of choice now is to draw out some of your own blood and re-infuse it during a stage race to give a performance boost, i.e. more red blood cells mean more efficient oxygen uptake. There is no test for this but it remains banned by the UCI.

Professional road cycling is an incredibly seedy, sordid sport where cheating is seen as being part of the game by many. Some teams, mainly the French ones and Garmin, have moved to stand against this and are vocal in their anti-doping stance and are transparent and open to journalists and fans alike. They are the ones who should get support, not the likes of Riis, Bruyneel and Armstrong whose cheating, bullying and lying make them beyond contempt in my view.

Professional road cycling is an incredibly seedy, sordid sport

Talk dirty to me, andyp, and I'll ride you like a mid-90s stage race.

The doping method of choice now is to draw out some of your own blood and re-infuse it during a stage race to give a performance boost, i.e. more red blood cells mean more efficient oxygen uptake. There is no test for this but it remains banned by the UCI.

Can you explain how this is done, please?

the days of the 3am hotel rumble. the sound of pro's leaping onto their turbo trainers as their heart rate monitors have warned them to get the thickened (due to epo abuse) blood moving again.

Can you explain how this is done, please?

Not having done it myself it'll have to be anecdotal, but my understanding is that around 4-6 weeks before a major race like the Tour, a rider will have a pint or two of blood taken from them which is then stored (it'll only keep for 6 weeks or so in refrigeration). The body will compensate by producing additional blood cells to replace that taken out.

During the major event, some or all of the blood is reinfused to give the rider additional blood volume, which'll include red blood cells which boost the ability for the rider to process oxygen. It is also possible to 'spin' the blood to separate the red blood cells and to reinfuse these alone. Chelsea FC have admitted to this practice in the past, although it wasn't banned in football at the time.

This method is rumoured to be what Armstrong used, read the instant messaging between Jonathan Vaughters and Frankie Andreu for a discussion of this, during the latter period of his TdeF dominance. Vinokourov did the same thing in 2007, and was busted for it, and Patrick Sinkewitz claims he, Andreas Kloden and Matthias Kessler did this during the 2006 Tour.

I think he means how do they inject it 'during the stage' although I suspect thats not what you meant.

Also its worth noting that you could buy EPO legally without pescription (in Switzerland at least) so it wasn't exactly hard to get hold of.

Evidence of autologous blood doping can be found and i suggest the passports would show clear indications of it.

From wiki;

Yet another detection strategy has been to regard any apparently unnatural population of RBCs as evidence of blood doping. RBC population in the blood is usually reported as hematocrit (HCT) or as the concentration of hemoglobin (Hb). HCT is the fraction of blood cells by volume that are RBCs. A normal HCT is 41-50% in adult men and 36-44% in adult women[2]. Hemoglobin (Hb) is the iron-containing protein that binds oxygen in RBCs. Normal Hb levels are 14-17 g/dL of blood in men and 12-15 g/dL in women. For most healthy persons the two measurements are in close agreement.
There are two ways in which HCT and Hb measurements can suggest that the blood sample has been taken from a doping athlete. The first is simply an unusually high value for both. The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), for example, imposes a 15-day suspension from racing on any male athlete found to have an HCT above 50% and hemoglobin concentration above 17 grams per deciliter (g/dL). A few athletes naturally have high RBC concentrations (polycythemia), which they must demonstrate through a series of consistently high hematocrit and hemoglobin results over an extended period of time.
A recent, more sophisticated method of analysis, which has not yet reached the level of an official standard, is to compare the numbers of mature and immature RBCs in an athlete's circulation. If a high number of mature RBCs is not accompanied by a high number of immature RBCs—called reticulocytes--it suggests that the mature RBCs were artificially introduced by transfusion. EPO use can also lead to a similar RBC profile because a preponderance of mature RBCs tends to suppress the formation of reticulocytes. A measure known as the "stimulation index" or "off-score" has been proposed based on an equation involving hemoglobin and reticulocyte concentrations. A normal score is 85-95 and scores over 133 are considered evidence of doping. (The stimulation index is defined as Hb (g/L) minus sixty times the square root of the percentage of RBCs identified as reticulocytes.)
These threshold levels, and their specific numeric values are sources of controversy. Establishment of incorrect threshold values is one way that false positive test results can be produced by a doping control program.

I think he means how do they inject it 'during the stage' although I suspect thats not what you meant.
Also its worth noting that you could buy EPO legally without pescription (in Switzerland at least) so it wasn't exactly hard to get hold of.

It's not injected while on the bike, it's injected 2 days before a key stage since the day after injection is supposed to be poor with the riders feeling flat after the infusion.

It's not injected while on the bike, it's injected 2 days before a key stage since the day after injection is supposed to be poor with the riders feeling flat after the infusion.

I think that was BRM's point.. He highlighted Andy's wording

During a "stage" race.. since it's in stages you have all that time called "night" to work on your cheating. :)

Not having done it myself it'll have to be anecdotal, but my understanding is that around 4-6 weeks before a major race like the Tour, a rider will have a pint or two of blood taken from them which is then stored (it'll only keep for 6 weeks or so in refrigeration). The body will compensate by producing additional blood cells to replace that taken out.

During the major event, some or all of the blood is reinfused to give the rider additional blood volume, which'll include red blood cells which boost the ability for the rider to process oxygen. It is also possible to 'spin' the blood to separate the red blood cells and to reinfuse these alone. Chelsea FC have admitted to this practice in the past, although it wasn't banned in football at the time.

This method is rumoured to be what Armstrong used, read the instant messaging between Jonathan Vaughters and Frankie Andreu for a discussion of this, during the latter period of his TdeF dominance. Vinokourov did the same thing in 2007, and was busted for it, and Patrick Sinkewitz claims he, Andreas Kloden and Matthias Kessler did this during the 2006 Tour.

I'd have said that this is arguably not cheating. it's 'organic', doesn't involve dangerous synthetic substances, and relies on the riders own physiology. if they want to do this, what's really wrong with it?

i think the problem is that it's quite dangerous. the body will contain more blood that usual and so will also be thicker, which can be quite difficult for the blood to circulate through the body. there are stories where cyclists would wander the halls of their hotel at night to keep the blood pumping as their resting heart rate while asleep (which is quite low anyway) would be insufficient to circulate the blood.

I'd have said that this is arguably not cheating. it's 'organic', doesn't involve dangerous synthetic substances, and relies on the riders own physiology. if they want to do this, what's really wrong with it?

The same reason as always; if you 'allow' it it will no longer be a choice; everyone will believe their rivals are doing it so they will have to do it in order to be able to compete. And some riders will do it more than others, or take greater risks with their haematocrit levels and then it becomes potentially lethal. The Puerto case showed how dangerous blood doping can be; bags of blood stored badly, or injected in to the wrong person because of lousy record keeping (which is what nearly killed Jesus Manzano when he was a Kelme rider and teammate of Valverde).

furry muff.

That's the saddest thing about it - we suddenly all cheer when Wiggo has a bad day in the mountains because otherwise his performance would be too suspect. If all riders were clean, the contest would be more human and the racing more exciting. You can't have a 2 speed tour.

Now...about the banning of radios on two stages: what did we think of that?

they only ended up banning them on one stage I thought?

Headline of L'Equipe: 'Chapeau Le Texan". Weird that the grumpy French seem to have changed their minds..

i was watching the the tour alright, shame you all missed that.. Lance proving he is still a threat.. the tour is not just about winning GC it is about winning hearts and minds too..

they only ended up banning them on one stage I thought?

yes, they didn't do it on the second day after the riders had a massive huff.

i'm not sure what i think about it, really - i'd have to see racing over a period of several days without radios to be able to see all the differences it might make. certainly i don't have a problem with them using them