2016 'PRO' cycling discussion.

[dereksmalls]

>does it have any sense to go on testing old samples?
For sure, yes! Everybody must see that if they cheat, they will be caught. Just the how soon is the question.

But they wont be caught. If you or any one else thinks the Russian ban is genuinely about doping you are mistaken. This is Geo politics at work.

Look at Mo Farah for instance. An athletics coach who worked as an "unofficial facilitator" for the British Olympic champion Mo Farah at his training base in Ethiopia has been arrested in a doping raid in Spain. Mo's Kenyan training partners have been busted.
The you have Salazar as well and the fact Oregon [ nike oregon] was awarded the indoor WC and the junior WC without a blink of an eye. Who was on the Nike payroll ,,,,,Seb Coe. Mo could inject himself in the eyeballs right in front of Coe and he will not get busted. Cover ups and pay offs are ripe everywhere not just the Russians as they would like you to believe.
Look at Radcliffe's Marathon WR , 3 min's faster than anyone else including a whole bunch busted athletes who could not get near her time . That is not possible. The only ones who will get caught are token gestures or political motives.
To be honest the majority of the public don't care. Its the media who make a big thing out of it when convenient. No one in the media talks about the fact that Zidane who won the world cup, champions league just about every top honour in football/soccer and now the
manager of Real Madrid is treated like a hero and his doping busts never get a mention but Armstrong his the devil?
Lets see those Fuentes Blood bags. Anyone for Tennis.

Man I so hope those blood bags get sorted soon. But in all honesty, I doubt any justice will be handed out for their owners

[tymon_tm]

as for the theory Livestrong's a PR stunt and a massive cover up, one argument comes to mind:

if I were a popular, wealthy guy with lots of connections who just beat cancer, I probably would've started some sort of foundation myself.

did he need to cover doping through Livestrong? how and why. how does Livestrong actually cover anything? it might shift media attention a bit, but won't make for instance drug tests easier to pass. why would he need to go to such great lenghts back in the day where a) doping was rampant b) all signs in the sky point towards UCI being implicated anyway

I get it, he's still a controversial figure, and it's easy to draw lines between this and that. easy but often absurd - he's a guy who did wrong things, many wrong things, but not a leper who infected everything he touched. I suppose we're all grown ups here so we can expect some level of discretion from each other, no?

[wingguy]

And again the assumptions, I don't hate Lance. Why would I hate him? He might be a lying cheating douche but that's no reason to hate him, plenty of other riders have ripped off cycling over the years to make a buck and they continue to do it.

I don't know of any other rider who has taken honest, hard-working, professional journalists to court over stories that they knew were true and perjured themselves, winning multi-million dollar lawsuits and ruining careers in the process.

For me, that's reason enough to realise that Armstrong is basically pondscum.

[xena]

>does it have any sense to go on testing old samples?
For sure, yes! Everybody must see that if they cheat, they will be caught. Just the how soon is the question.

But they wont be caught. If you or any one else thinks the Russian ban is genuinely about doping you are mistaken. This is Geo politics at work.

Look at Mo Farah for instance. An athletics coach who worked as an "unofficial facilitator" for the British Olympic champion Mo Farah at his training base in Ethiopia has been arrested in a doping raid in Spain. Mo's Kenyan training partners have been busted.
The you have Salazar as well and the fact Oregon [ nike oregon] was awarded the indoor WC and the junior WC without a blink of an eye. Who was on the Nike payroll ,,,,,Seb Coe. Mo could inject himself in the eyeballs right in front of Coe and he will not get busted. Cover ups and pay offs are ripe everywhere not just the Russians as they would like you to believe.
Look at Radcliffe's Marathon WR , 3 min's faster than anyone else including a whole bunch busted athletes who could not get near her time . That is not possible. The only ones who will get caught are token gestures or political motives.
To be honest the majority of the public don't care. Its the media who make a big thing out of it when convenient. No one in the media talks about the fact that Zidane who won the world cup, champions league just about every top honour in football/soccer and now the
manager of Real Madrid is treated like a hero and his doping busts never get a mention but Armstrong his the devil?
Lets see those Fuentes Blood bags. Anyone for Tennis.

Man I so hope those blood bags get sorted soon. But in all honesty, I doubt any justice will be handed out for their owners

If its some of the top teams in Spain which has been strongly hinted at. Plus the threats that Fuentes already has had [ serious death threats] from the soccer fans and the huge amounts of money involved then it well undoubtedly go away , I very much doubt it will come to light. Strong
rumours that one of the bags belongs to Nadal ,again I would be shocked if that came to light if its true.
But have no doubts whatsoever that all the cycling ones will be splashed everywhere as usual. Don't forget the only busts so far are cyclists, Ulrich, Basso etc and possibly more to come just to put up a good media front.

[Dez33]

Dez, read your post once again, then rethink who's attacking who and who's the ignorant one..

No, I posted about a jersey change then it disintegrated into a debate about cancer and Livestrong. I responded to one attack and then dismissed yours as irrelevant and making incorrect assumptions.

Again, if you want to talk jersey changes and the legality of them then be my guest. I'm not really interested in dragging on an endless debate about Livestrong or cancer though.

[xena]

And again the assumptions, I don't hate Lance. Why would I hate him? He might be a lying cheating douche but that's no reason to hate him, plenty of other riders have ripped off cycling over the years to make a buck and they continue to do it.

I don't know of any other rider who has taken honest, hard-working, professional journalists to court over stories that they knew were true and perjured themselves, winning multi-million dollar lawsuits and ruining careers in the process.

For me, that's reason enough to realise that Armstrong is basically pondscum.

That's because its not happened to any other cyclists in the way it happened to Armstrong. All athletes deny deny deny. Even busted ones till this day still say they never doped " it was a funny cup of tea I drank etc etc "

Armstrong was in a unique position and got carried away and who's to say they would not go to such lengths to defend themselves in his position with that much control "so he thought" It must be hard to keep your feet on the ground and he was pretty dam good you can't take that away. He had the Numbers .
He admits now about the mistakes he made and how he should have handled things better but [ don't hate me ] I don't have any problem with him doping everyone was doping. He should have never have made a comeback but doping was going on before Armstrong and we are still getting busts. He just highlighted the whole situation and IMO his treatment has been way OTT. His ego went out of control because he was winning and becoming powerful not because he was doping that was just part of what cyclists do in-fact what all top level athletes do.
The fact that Landis could benefit his unbelievable . I do like Floyd [dope dealer ] though.

[Dez33]

Also strange that NO one used the new DURA-ACE at the TDF, not even the winner, that could have been a good startup for marketing?

I thought we would have seen it on FDJ at least. Even FSA had their new groupset on one or two bikes for a stage.

[scssfg45]

*Retreats posthaste because apparently this is the 2006 ‘PRO’ cycling discussion*

[hasbeen]

agree 100% with xena, "If you or any one else thinks the Russian ban is genuinely about doping you are mistaken. This is Geo politics at work."

[JAQ1]

I wonder how many of the teams would be switching over to the DA powermeter, especially the ones using SRM and taking the amount of money that Shimano can push into this.

And no team fully on the Rotor groupset yet, DimensionData had it on some of their bike at the start of the year, but not really in any of the man races. I wonder if this is more riders not wanting to ride it yet or other sponsorship contracts stopping them.

[nathanong87]

To be honest the majority of the public don't care. Its the media who make a big thing out of it when convenient. No one in the media talks about the fact that Zidane who won the world cup, champions league just about every top honour in football/soccer and now the manager of Real Madrid is treated like a hero and his doping busts never get a mention but Armstrong his the devil?

correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't the zidane juventus thing legal as the substance he took wasn't banned. performance enhancing yes, but not banned at that time (?). I might be wrong though, as i vaguely remember this story.

[Rondje]

It's not only the media who make it a big thing. As cycling was the first sport to really get an issue with doping it sticks to it. Took a long while before other sports got busted (Atlethics most recently), but cycling been branded for ever as "the" doping sport. I highly doubt they ever lose that image.
Most other sports just hide behind "we don't need it we are a tactical/technical sport blabla" and that sort of BS. And get less then half or a quarter of the doping tests that cyclists get.

Football had it's fair share of busted players, but always individuals on a small scale. And the sport is too big and corrupt to even get a scandal. Clubs or federations will simply sweep it under the carpet as it's bad for it's image. The whole Juventus squad used doping in the Champions League final against Ajax in 1996, how many people care, or even know about it? Nothing been done about it afterwards, and they are still the winners of that year. As long as the general public doesn't believe it will help football players they won't see it as cheating. I think they mostly see doping as performance enhancers, and if you only have to play 90 minutes (probably around 60 minutes real play time) it won't help them. They forget the fact that football players got a very long and busy season and probably use doping as recuperation/recovery in between matches.

[bikewithnoname]

There is also no level playing field in sport, for example in cricket you can pull a muscle get 2 jabs of cortisone at the interval and come straight back out onto the field (Micheal Clarke famously did this in the 2014 Ashes and scored a century if I recall), you'd fail a drugs test in cycling for that.

Of course people will say that cricket is a skill game and that his performance wasn't enhanced, my answer is if you've pulled your back it hurts like HELL, and if the injections remove that pain then clearly they have enhanced your performance.

[xena]

To be honest the majority of the public don't care. Its the media who make a big thing out of it when convenient. No one in the media talks about the fact that Zidane who won the world cup, champions league just about every top honour in football/soccer and now the manager of Real Madrid is treated like a hero and his doping busts never get a mention but Armstrong his the devil?

correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't the zidane juventus thing legal as the substance he took wasn't banned. performance enhancing yes, but not banned at that time (?). I might be wrong though, as i vaguely remember this story.

He got a 3 month ban [ I didn't do a google so I could be wrong] for Creatine use which was illegal in Italy , which is crazy because you can buy it anywhere and its already in your body ,if you get me, Its not a "propppperrrrr drug"

It really was a way to cover up the fact that Agricola the team Dr was supplying the players with all kinds of anabolic chicken i.e. pharmaceutical goodies to the team in the 90's. Quite a few players have admitted they were given "stuff" at the time. To say that a pro sports Dr was only giving the creatine is just unbelievable . Footballers from ealier times where doping


This was an apparent reference to a methamphetamine called Pervitin. The study said Pervitin was given to players as Germany won the 1954 World Cup. And it included a letter from a FIFA medical official saying that traces of the stimulant ephedrine had been found in three unnamed West German players as the team finished second at the 1966 World Cup.


Werner Franke, a molecular biologist from western Germany who with his wife uncovered documents exposing the state-sponsored East German system, said that West Germany escalated its own doping program out of competitive ego, including sibling rivalry.

West Germany hosted the 1972 Munich Olympics, but won 40 medals compared to 66 for East Germany. At the 1976 Montreal Games, the gap widened to 90 for East Germany and 39 for West Germany.


“They wanted medals, very simply,” Franke said in a telephone interview. “The government likes it when Germans are successful.”

[wingguy]

He got a 3 month ban [ I didn't do a google so I could be wrong] for Creatine use which was illegal in Italy , which is crazy because you can buy it anywhere and its already in your body ,if you get me, Its not a "propppperrrrr drug"

What, like testosterone, or (clue's in the name) human growth hormone? Quick, someone call Landis and tell him he can have his yellow shirt back!

It really was a way to cover up the fact that Agricola the team Dr was supplying the players with all kinds of anabolic chicken i.e. pharmaceutical goodies to the team in the 90's. Quite a few players have admitted they were given "stuff" at the time. To say that a pro sports Dr was only giving the creatine is just unbelievable . Footballers from ealier times where doping

The genius way that football (the versions from both sides of the atlantic) dealt with doping was never pretending to really give a *f##k* in the first place.