posted Jul 19, 2008

Well done to the 'Tour' for sticking their fingers up to the UCI. The UCI seem to accept the doping as the norm and hand out laughably inadequate fines.

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posted Jul 19, 2008

For those who are interested, latest edition (Sunday July 20) of Cyclingnews reports that both Duenas and Piepoli have now confessed to the use of EPO.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2008/jul08/jul20news

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posted Jul 19, 2008

Riders and teams come and go - as usual, the star of the show is the tour itself. An incredible discipline in a beautiful country.

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posted Jul 20, 2008

I couldn't agree more. Why do journalists continue to praise athletes whom they know to be dirty.
Not just in cycling, but elsewhere. Go to You Tube and watch the extended clip of Flo-Jo breaking the 100m record. The whole thing, including the commentary and the interview with a gravel voiced Joyner afterwards, is like something from Monty Python.
Like the other commentator, I understand the necessity of libel laws and of obeying them, but those who report on sport have a greater inside knowledge of what's going on in it, they should stop playing silly games when it comes to the cheats.

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posted Jul 20, 2008

fredoski you talk nonsense, if cavendish was a drugs cheat he would have been caught by now, unlike a lot of the riders in tdf he competes on the world stage so will get tested at every event. if you think every rider is on drugs whats the point in watching?

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posted Jul 21, 2008

i would say the higl light of the tdf has to be cav to win 4 is grate. people in britain love to build someone up to just to put them down.

if cav was a drugs cheat he wouldn't be droped evey time they get to a hill and he wouldn't be droping out now knowing that he could win more stages after the Alpine stages.

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posted Jul 21, 2008

that kind of comment is unconstructive fredoski. yes, cycling is a dirty sport. yes, I too have felt demoralised by all the positive tests but to say that they're all on drugs is a ridiculous generalisation. I believe Cav is clean. As I believe (maybe naively) that Lance Armstrong was clean, too. Look at David Millar, he's clean and he can still put in some good rides. Cycling's the toughest sport in the world: it's always going to be a temptation to dope but that doens't mean that EVERYONE does it!

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posted Jul 21, 2008

Mark Cavendish's performances have been a real breath of fresh air on this year's Tour. Not only is it great to see cycling consistently making the front pages of UK broadsheets, but it's also fantastic to see a home-grown talent really blossom on one of the sporting world's biggest stages. It's also good to see a cyclist who, based on his track profile and team's tough stance, is very likely to be clean.

A wider point regarding the whole drug situation, though. I'd never defend cheats but remember that some of these guys don't take drugs in order to win, but simply to survive (and thus save their careers) one of the world's toughest challenges. I therefore find their situations subtly different to, say, a 100m sprinter who only really has commercial success in their sights when they decide to cheat.

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posted Jul 21, 2008

Nice comment aboput the scenery etc...i have to say that has been the star of the tour so far, beautiful, amazing countryside and building...worth watching for that alone i think.

on road, best moment for me was piepoli and cobo ransacking the field.....and then the subsequent chucking out of ricco and piepoli. Go home you stupid losers. Then that god the best moment came yesterday, brilliant final 10k of the climb.

And btw, whatever you say about zidaneds butt or del piero and davids on epo...i know you want to defend your sport to the hilt, but cycling will not escape its problems unless it starts behaving with the vigilance and attitude of the most corrupt sport in the world. All this 'they started it' an 'oh look at football they are worse' name calling hlps absolutely no one. cycling needs to be the most militant testing sport, and it also need, yes NEEDS to have a constant stream of high profile cheats outed.

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