posted Jul 27, 2007

comment by rambon
posted 3 Hours Ago

Fairplay John that's ridiculous.

Who is to say that the winners of the individual jerseys are cleaner than the overall winner
........................

Individual jerseys are going for their one speciality and therefore less likely not to need that illegal medication.

The sprints, mountains and time trials are spaced out. You didn't see Booner trying to finish in the top 10 in the mountains or Soler trying to win the mass sprints

The yellow jersey is trying to cover all the race disciplines throughout the tour and ending every etappe in the top.

By the way are you any medication? You seem agressive!

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posted Jul 27, 2007

This has got to happen to make our sport cleaner, the old guard are the biggest offenders, but they were in the sport when what little testing was done was way behind the cheats. To compete on a level playing field you had to dope at the top level.

The over reaction of the BBC and other major media to our sport with garish headlines is disgraceful though, anyone noticed that 800 metres Olympic star Jolanda Ceplak has just tested positive for the old EPO?? It's harder to find that story buried away in the athletics section.

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posted Jul 27, 2007

Cycling’s doping problem is like English football’s hooligan problem, no matter what happens they are always going to be linked.

Put it this way cycling is in a no win situation, if no one was caught during the tour everyone would be saying the testing doesn’t go far enough and now when they are caught, it’s look told you they were all still doping. My view is if they are being caught this can only be a good thing and proof that not everyone is not doping.

Cyclists are some of the highest tested athletes in the world. How many times a year are other athletes tested?

I reckon if other athletes reached the sort of test levels as cyclists have, these positive tests wouldn’t have even been noticed because the bigger, wealthier sports would be taking all the headlines.

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posted Jul 27, 2007

Rasmussen should not have been thrown out of the tour. He has never tested positive and is a great rider. I can't believe what David Millar has said, I seem to remember him "winning" the world championship time trial whilst doped to the eyeballs on epo, then lying until the police got involved. Rasmussen has ridden a clean tour and the French press have tried to bring him down like they did with Armstrong. They can't stand any more foreigners winning the tour even if they're clean. If Contador wins they'll probably start making up stories about him as well. I hope that Rasmussen carries on cycling he's got nothing to be ashamed of, Millar has.

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posted Jul 28, 2007

Rasmussen wasn't thrown out of the Tour. Rasmussen was sacked for lying to his employer. Which automatically excluded him from further participation.
Wiggins is a great track rider and time triallist. He is not a great roadman and, never will be. What he thinks about the validity of this year's Tour result is about as relavant as the opinion of one third division footballer on the merits of the winner of the Premiership. And Chris Boardman is old enough to know better than to agree with him.
As for corruption in sport in general. Well we can see that quite clearly in the result of Mclaren's F1 hearing in Paris!
Monsieur Prudhomme should be very pleased with this year's Tour.

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posted Jul 28, 2007

I find it amazing that some people are saying that cycling should be pulled from the Olympics because of all the positive doping tests. Should not the same thing be said about Athletics then? Every Olimpics that I can remember has had scandles with Athletes testing positive for doping offences, be it athletics, weight lifters, gymnasts, swimmers, cyclists...............
The Tour DF is the most demanding sporting event in the world, the riders are not super human, they need more support and less pressure upon them to always perform at their best level.
More testing = more positive results. Maybe ALL sports should test ALL athletes every month.
Look at football as another example, Juventus players were using drugs for heart surgery and brain surgery, but they were allowed to walk away scot free, the doctor who administered these drugs was banned but has since had that quashed. Why would a footballer need drugs designed for brain or heart surgery.
The issue on drugs/doping is a far bigger issue than TDF has to deal with. Cycling is doing something about it, as disappointing as it is when rider after rider is pulled out or tests positive. Maybe other sports should take a leaf out of cycling and start to police harder themselves, before making threats which would effect more than just the guilty parties!

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posted Jul 28, 2007

Will the Press please stop asking David Millar for his opinion. He's a convicted cheat, and by expressing views is just a hypocrite.
He was an arrogant xxxx before he was caught, but now he's worse.

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posted Jul 30, 2007

NEWSFLASH!!!
Outside of the anglophone World and Northern Europe, is there one single country that has even noticed the so-called furore over the Tour this year?
Answer: No!
The roadside audiences couldn't have cared less either. Their numbers were testamant to that. The same will be true for the Vuelta in a month's time.
Shame on the anglophone media for their persistant marginalisation and discrimination against road cycling. Whether it be concerning cycle sport, or the snivelling and whining from the petrolhead community!

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posted Jul 31, 2007

"Why all the emotion and reaction to the latest drug related tour incidents? When you implement a rigorous, zero tolerance, guilty until proven innocent practice, you should expect to catch people out."

For me the emotion of this is if you adopt a guilty until proven innocent practice is that ultimately how many cyclists will not only have their careers but their character permantently ruined when they've done nothing wrong.

If the law was changed so that every suspect was automatically looked up and assumed guilty they'd be outrage and rightly so. I think it's ironic giving that harsh stance most cyclists seem to have taken that they don't think they may end up a victim of it all.

Teams and inidividuals obviously paid doctors to cheat the system, maybe in the future you'll have the same doctors bribed by the same teams to implicate the innocent. Rasmussen still claims he wasn't in Italy, no-one seems that bothered anymore whether he was or not, he's guilty and his guilt helps cleanse the sport!

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posted Aug 1, 2007

So pull cycling from the Olympics? that would be along with sprinting, weightlifting, swimming, fields sports etc etc........ how about Golf, no one fails drug tests in golf do they - of course they don't have any tests.
Or Baseball theres a good clean sport.......... Cycling is the only honest sport actively confronting the cheats and trying to rid the sport of them.

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