First Astana, then Cofidis. Now this.
Rasmussen removed from Tour.
Rasmussen fired by Rabobank; team may not continue Tour.
25 July 2007
la dopage
Clark said...
Somehow, even though this post is 8 days old, my RSS aggregator just barely got to it. But, now I'm relying on you for some good detail and analysis. Team Astana is gone? Why? I understand that Vinokurov failed a test, but why would the rest of his team drop? Didn't Kloden still have a chance?Another topic: I've heard this argument made in Floyd's defense: "Why would he dope and win if he knew he was going to be tested? It makes no sense!" I agree. It makes no sense. So then, can we make the same argument for Vinokurov, or is he really that dumb?It seems like the argument makes logical sense, but then tons of people are out there proving that they are just dumb enough to dope and win.
Okay. Now that a day has gone past, maybe I can get some coherent thoughts together on this one. I was devastated, devastated, when I got this news yesterday. My favorite Tour racers from 2005 (Armstrong, Basso, Ullrich, Hamilton, etc etc etc etc) were all out this year - retired or doping - and Alexandre Vinokourov seemed like the last great hope. Yes, Leipheimer is a good guy, but Vino seemed to be the one with the nerve and the skill to win this thing. He's had a podium finish before. He got locked out of last year's race. Last time he was here, he won on the Champs Elysees - a sprint stage! He just went out there and won. Because he can. Because he wants it more.
Saturday's time trial seemed to prove my point. Here's a guy who has stitches in his knees, losing to his teammate, and he went for it. No holds barred, a one-man race to the line and he wins the day. Moxie. Followed, the next day, by a catastrophic failing on Plateau de Baille and losing half an hour. Is the man out? Why no, Monday he goes for individual glory, having already literally waved goodbye to his chances for the overall win. So he goes out and clobbers everyone. Beats them into dust. He's a new man.
Fatefully, I turned to my friend and remarked: "This is so reminiscent of Floyd last year. Don't count the man out. He will come back to make you pay."
24 hours later, he's persona non grata at the Tour - both him, and his team. Gone. Stripped of wins (pending B sample results), out of the Tour, probably finished. He's 33. You don't come back from a 2-year ban that starts when you're 33.
So reminiscent of Floyd.
Actually, this mess wouldn't be possible without Floyd. Yes, Floyd had a sample come up positive after a win. But his whole team didn't get instantly removed from contention. Without last year's doping mess, this year's [over?]reaction wouldn't have happened. Kloden would still be in there, in the top 5, racing for glory with his broken coccyx.
Almost as devastating as the doping, almost as damaging, is that he went about it in the most stupid way. For a year now I've railed against Floyd's positive result. Why would you dope and then set out deliberately to win the stage? You are guaranteed to be drug tested only on three days of the Tour: the first day, the day you win a stage, and the day you wear yellow. The whole point of Floyd's resurgence last year was to win the stage and get back yellow. The whole point of Vino's Saturday was to win the time trial. Both of these guys knew that if they did what they had set out to do, there was a 100% chance of getting tested that day. 100%.
That has led me to protest for 12 months that Floyd must be innocent, but now . . . Vino not only kicked the sport while it's down, not only made Rasmussen's job that much harder [more on that another time], but dragged whatever chances Floyd had down with him. Floyd's done now, thanks to Vino. There's no way arbitration is coming back in his favor now.
Edited to add: Another one bites the dust.
For further viewing, go to http://www.velonews.com/ and watch their video interview with British cyclist David Millar (convicted former doper) from yesterday afternoon, right after Millar heard the news.
16 July 2007
le Tour
...because la Tour is the Tower.
But I digress. Clark's been blogging a lot about the Tour in the last week, and it's been a while since I've posted here, so I thought I'd put down a few thoughts.
The Tour this year has been really interesting, partly because no rider in this year's Tour has ever won before. It's wide open. No defending champion is riding - in fact, there currently isn't a defending champion at all, since Floyd Landis still has not been declared the official winner from 2006. But that's a story for another day.
Without Floyd ('06), Lance ('99-'05), or Jan ('97), the peloton is a bit empty. We're even missing CSC sport director Bjarne Riis ('98) because he decided not to come to the race this year since he admitted to doping during his winning year.
As a result, the peloton seems a little lost. No one rated a real GC (general classification) contender has been putting in attacks. No gusto. No guts. Again and again during yesterday's stage, the announcers questioned why no one was dropping the injured Vinokourov and Kloden (both major talents on the Astana team). Why the GC contenders all huddled together on the mountain.
So here we are on the first rest day, only one day left of the Alps, and it's all a muddle. The Flying Chicken is in yellow, of all things!
[Side note: two years ago when Danish rider Mikael Rasmussen first took the lead in the King of the Mountains competition, he got the polka-dot jersey. In following days, he later added polka-dot shorts, helmet, sunglasses and bike to the ensemble. Goodness knows what the man will do with yellow.]
So who do I think will win? I have no idea. No one seems to. It would be nice for Levi Leipheimer (Discovery Channel) to win, adding to the American winning streak, but I don't think he has it in him. The most dangerous man still riding is Alexandre Vinokourov, but he's riding with 15 stitches and his man backup man has a broken coccyx. It remains to be seen whether he can really come back from his stage 5 crash to win the whole thing, but if gambling were legal, that's where I'd put my money.
The thing about Vino' is this: he's nuts. He came in third a few years ago. He's won pretty much everything else. In 2005, he won the (usually ceremonial) final stage on the Champs Elysees, just because he can. I mean seriously. That stage is 60 km of chitchat followed by a sprint. And he's not even a sprinter. Then in 2006, he wasn't allowed to ride because too many of his teammates were DQ'd for doping. That's got to make him mad. He's out to prove something now. Keep an eye on him.
One last word: poor T-Mobile. Yesterday they lost three guys - and yellow! One withdrew as planned (this was his first Tour, and you don't always plan on finishing your first) but two others crashed out. Team leader Michael Rodgers rode bravely after a bad crash on a mountain descent, but ultimately had to face up to the fact that you can't ride up mountains with a dislocated shoulder. Then, after the stage ended and everyone was heading to their hotel rooms, his teammate Patrick Sinkewitz* crashed into a fan on the road, fracturing his cheekbone and putting the fan in a coma. All of this just 24 hours after Linus Gerdemann, a 24-year-old T-Mobile rider no one had ever heard of before, went out on a breakaway and won the stage along with the yellow jersey. C'est le Tour!
Another famed rider, Stuart O'Grady, also crashed on the way to the hotel, breaking his ribs and puncturing a lung. Maybe next time these guys should wait for the team car, no?
*last name unspellable; all names in this post are approximate.
But I digress. Clark's been blogging a lot about the Tour in the last week, and it's been a while since I've posted here, so I thought I'd put down a few thoughts.
The Tour this year has been really interesting, partly because no rider in this year's Tour has ever won before. It's wide open. No defending champion is riding - in fact, there currently isn't a defending champion at all, since Floyd Landis still has not been declared the official winner from 2006. But that's a story for another day.
Without Floyd ('06), Lance ('99-'05), or Jan ('97), the peloton is a bit empty. We're even missing CSC sport director Bjarne Riis ('98) because he decided not to come to the race this year since he admitted to doping during his winning year.
As a result, the peloton seems a little lost. No one rated a real GC (general classification) contender has been putting in attacks. No gusto. No guts. Again and again during yesterday's stage, the announcers questioned why no one was dropping the injured Vinokourov and Kloden (both major talents on the Astana team). Why the GC contenders all huddled together on the mountain.
So here we are on the first rest day, only one day left of the Alps, and it's all a muddle. The Flying Chicken is in yellow, of all things!
[Side note: two years ago when Danish rider Mikael Rasmussen first took the lead in the King of the Mountains competition, he got the polka-dot jersey. In following days, he later added polka-dot shorts, helmet, sunglasses and bike to the ensemble. Goodness knows what the man will do with yellow.]
So who do I think will win? I have no idea. No one seems to. It would be nice for Levi Leipheimer (Discovery Channel) to win, adding to the American winning streak, but I don't think he has it in him. The most dangerous man still riding is Alexandre Vinokourov, but he's riding with 15 stitches and his man backup man has a broken coccyx. It remains to be seen whether he can really come back from his stage 5 crash to win the whole thing, but if gambling were legal, that's where I'd put my money.
The thing about Vino' is this: he's nuts. He came in third a few years ago. He's won pretty much everything else. In 2005, he won the (usually ceremonial) final stage on the Champs Elysees, just because he can. I mean seriously. That stage is 60 km of chitchat followed by a sprint. And he's not even a sprinter. Then in 2006, he wasn't allowed to ride because too many of his teammates were DQ'd for doping. That's got to make him mad. He's out to prove something now. Keep an eye on him.
One last word: poor T-Mobile. Yesterday they lost three guys - and yellow! One withdrew as planned (this was his first Tour, and you don't always plan on finishing your first) but two others crashed out. Team leader Michael Rodgers rode bravely after a bad crash on a mountain descent, but ultimately had to face up to the fact that you can't ride up mountains with a dislocated shoulder. Then, after the stage ended and everyone was heading to their hotel rooms, his teammate Patrick Sinkewitz* crashed into a fan on the road, fracturing his cheekbone and putting the fan in a coma. All of this just 24 hours after Linus Gerdemann, a 24-year-old T-Mobile rider no one had ever heard of before, went out on a breakaway and won the stage along with the yellow jersey. C'est le Tour!
Another famed rider, Stuart O'Grady, also crashed on the way to the hotel, breaking his ribs and puncturing a lung. Maybe next time these guys should wait for the team car, no?
*last name unspellable; all names in this post are approximate.
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