You’re not gonna like this...
“The Tour de France was rocked by news that Astana’s battered team leader, Alexandre Vinokourov, tested positive for a homologous blood transfusion after Saturday’s time trial in Albi. L’Equipe reported on Tuesday afternoon that the Kazakh’s blood had shown evidence of a transfusion from another person with a compatible blood type in an analysis done in the Châtenay-Malabry laboratory...
Upon receiving the news, the Astana team suspended Vinokourov and quit the Tour de France...”
Link here:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2007/tour07/news/?id=/news/2007/jul07/jul25news
It is dated for tomorrow, but I’ve seen that before in Cylcingnews.com.
This just bites.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/6914301.stm
and others news stories via Google
http://news.google.com/news?q=Vinokourov
That’s awful; just like Landis last year, same thing with the bad day then the recoupment the following day finishing far ahead of the field with amazing energy. I hopeits not true.
o.m.g.
Vino failing a drug test on top of Yellow Jersey Rasmussen being banned from the OLympics next year are just piling on the problems.
I think it may be coming to a point where the ICU pulls the plug completely for a year or two, and tells all the teams to clean up and come back clean when we start competitions back up.
Forget all the drug testing. I’ve changed my opinion. I’m all for an “all drug” sport, where we don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore. If you can get it in your blood, more power to you.
To the bone.
Speechless.
NOBODY is that dumb.
Are they?
One could hardly blame Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme if he were rooting for race leader Michael Rasmussen of Denmark to have a very bad day in Wednesday's stage in the Pyrenees Mountains.
In his race leader's yellow jersey, the 33-year-old Dane is far too visible to be ignored, and his visibility inevitably inspires thoughts of cheating and doping, the devils that have plagued the world's most prestigious cycling event for several years.
Not that Rasmussen has ever been found to have used a banned substance. It is simply that he was kicked off the Danish national cycling team for having missed two doping tests before the Tour started.
Tour organizers suggested that the Dane would not have been allowed to start the Tour if the Danish Cycling Federation had notified them before the Tour started.
"If we had been informed before the start, there wouldn't be this situation," said Patrice Clerc, the head of the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), which runs the race.
"This situation" is simply that a man strongly suspected of cheating is now the favourite to win the Tour title. If that happens, it would make this year's edition the 12th consecutive Tour de France with a tainted champion.
The 1996 winner, fellow Dane Bjarne Riis, has admitted doping to win the race. The following year's winner, Jan Ullrich of Germany, has been linked to a Spanish blood doping scandal and was kicked off last year's race. Italian Marco Pantani, who won the 1998 Tour, was eventually caught doping and died of a cocaine overdose.
Lance Armstrong, who won seven consecutive Tour titles between 1999 and 2005, has been accused of doping by several people and a number of books - although he has never been found to have doped. And last year's winner, Floyd Landis, tested positive for synthetic testosterone during a Tour stage and is currently fighting to keep the title.
If Rasmussen raises his arms in triumph on July 29 on the Champs Elysees in Paris, at the Tour's end, it could turn be a very costly victory for the Tour.
In addition to his missing two doping tests (because of an "administrative error," he said), Rasmussen has been accused, by an American mountain bike rider named Whitney Richards, of trying to dupe him into transporting a human blood substitute to Europe in 2002. Rasmussen said he could not "confirm" the statement, which was made on the Internet site Velo-News.
The controversy followed the revelation that German rider Patrik Sinkewitz had tested positive for an illegally high level of testosterone before the Tour started.
However, note the difference between this case and Landis - this time it is blood doping, something that certainly can enhance endurance. Note also that it occurred on the time trial stage. Then he had a very bad day, followed by an excellent day. Now as a stage winner I would assume he would automatically be tested. It will therefore be very interesting to see if he showed up positive also on yesterday’s stage. If not, well.....I am worried about the standard of both the testing institutes and some of the tests.
The amount of background work to find out if certain substances have a large diurnal rhythm, show up more or less after extreme exercise and fatigue, the effect of altitude exposure, etc, etc is tremendous. I know that in a lot of blood screening tests carried out in a clinical setting this work has never really been carried out to the full extent needed. That said, I do not know anything about this particular blood test.
Anyway, my idea to save the Tour is to ban all injections, venous infusions etc. Any rider who needs venous infusion during the race is sick and should be taken out of the race for health reasons. This will cause the race time to go up because the riders would really need to husband their reserves, but the race would not lose its excitement. To make sure - or at least reduce the chances of tampering with the riders - during the race they should all eat in and sleep in big halls - with the teams mixed.
I’m sure this would appear very primitive to most of the riders, but it could actually enhance the status of the race.
Of course it would not reduce the risk of doping during the preparation for the Tour nor would it be impossible to hinder someone taking drugs orally.
Sad day, really sad day.