Doping

And Laurens Ten Dam for rabies.

Hah!

And Laurens Ten Dam for rabies.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/tour-de-france-enters-stage-where-officials-begin,33150/

One question. Is is really credible that Sky have not done a VO2 max test on Froome?

Yes. It's an interesting, but apparently not important, metric. Not important as in, it's not important to know what value an individual has, obviously it's handy to have a large one.

I would have thought it might be something they'd do at their medical prior to signing their initial contract in order to gauge potential.

According to JV on twitter yesterday VO2 max is an outdated measurement. He said the tests he would conduct on contracting are power in conjunction with stable blood values.

Fair enough.

I thought that with marginal gains etc then every single aspect would have been looked at. After it's been measured, if there's no requirement for it, than I can understand discarding it. Oh well.

le sigh

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jul/19/damiano-cunego-doping-charges-cycling

They didn't really need to announce this during the Tour though.

le sigh

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jul/19/damiano-cunego-doping-charges-cycling

They didn't really need to announce this during the Tour though.

Doping is professionalized like the sport,
you pay people to keep you away from tracing.

You win and reap the rewards immediately.

Justice is on a longer timescale, it takes time but it's fair.

Looking back doping is ingrained in the sport,
why should we shy away from talking about it?

Rasmussen shitting in the soup:

http://velorooms.com/index.php?topic=3007

Unfortunately the journalist is inept: he misquotes Armstrong as saying you cannot win the tour clean, when he actually said you could not have won it clean during his era, and bases pretty much the whole interview on that error.
He also fails to challenge Rasmussen when he says that "Armstrong never failed a drugs test". If there is a new era of cycling it would be nice it it was accompanied by a new era of journalism too.

Here's your bingo card for tomorrows French senate report

Pop quiz - which yellow jersey holder from that race announced their retirement yesterday?

Stu?

That was the speculation on Cycling news yesterday. It will be sad if not surprising.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/cas-rules-uv-light-blood-treatments-in-germany-were-not-doping

So let me get this straight: Kittel (allegedly) is accused of having blood removed, the blood is treated with 'black light' then is re-infused.

Surely this is no better than any other form of blood doping, such as infusions of fresh blood to pep up the rider mid race?

How has he got away with this?

Because the 'treatment' wasn't illegal at the time he undertook it.

It's odd, and arguably a waste of time, but you can't bring a doping charge for something that hasn't been banned.

He's still gone onto my 'cunts' list.

Really? Maybe you should do some research on the matter and find his response to the allegations at the time they first arose, rather than jumping on the moral bandwagon now he's a 4 time Tour stage winner and suddenly in the public consciousness more.

This is a good start;

http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/11017/WADA-states-German-UV-blood-treatment-was-not-banned-until-2011.aspx

Has anyone mentioned the new National 24h TT champ yet...who the hell is he and where did he come from? I wanna see power data.

He's still gone onto my 'cunts' list.

Really? It was 5/6 years ago, he was 18, it was not banned, and it was part of the German olympic training programme (it seems). Your threshold for cunt is pretty low.

Hippy is about as British as Chris Froome.