Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

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Levi is rumored to be switching to Astana along with Johan Bruyneel and defending Tour champion Alberto Contador. Meanwhile he is living it up by eating “blue cheese crusted tenderloin of beef and chocolate mousse cake” in Utah.

Levi is asked about doping particularly the Landis case:

“Yep, that’s pretty much all we talk about,” he said, only half sarcastically over dinner. “I hope now that Floyd’s deal is kind of over, that we can move on. Everyone acts like we’re the dirtiest athletes in the world, when I think the reality is we are the cleanest. We get tested all the time. They show up at your door unannounced and test you. We’re tested before races and after races. We’re tested all the time.

“When someone gets caught it gets all the attention,” Leipheimer said. “But do you really think we’re dirtier than football players who hardly even get tested?”

Amen to that, it is a tough break that when doping in cycling is in the spotlight while many other sports either don’t testing or have very lax testing rules. Just because there is no testing does not mean that the sport is clean. Meanwhile NFL players get cortisone injections (which are banned in cycling and other Olympics sports) like they drink water.

Deseret Morning News via TDFblog

AP Photo/Daniel Maurer

Paolo Bettini was almost going to be sitting at home watching the Worlds instead of defending his World Championship of 2006. The reigning World Champ was defending himself on charges of not signing an anti-doping declaration and was almost banned from starting the race. Cooler heads prevailed and Bettini was on the start line. The events of the week motivated Bettini who had a relatively quiet year as World Champ.

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The Tour of America was rumored and announced within the last week. The Interbike Trade Show in Las Vegas was the coming out party for a new bike race that will crush all others. Maybe if there is one thing to learn from the Iraq War is that you don’t “fight with the Army you have”, plus you must make plans. With a super ambitious route with unholy distances and a cycling novice at the helm the cycling press was ready to pounce with questions that to any cycling afficiando would come naturally. Needless to say the skepticism on the minds of many was high and righfully so. Here is a race that is bigger and longer in everyway possible. Sure it is ambitious, but we can do it says the Race Director Dr. Frank Arokiasamy

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Paolo Bettini is cleared to defend his title at the World Championships in Stuttgart Germany. Following the denial of Danilo DiLuca who is about to receive a four month preliminary ban , Bettini was ready to also go home. This Worlds is best know for the polemics of who will or will not race. Erik Zabel, Bettini, DiLuca and Alejandro Valverde have all been in limbo about their Worlds involvment. DiLuca looks to have some charges in the mysterious “Oil for Drugs” case being looked at in Italy, Zabel admitted to doping in the 90s and Velverde *may* have some involvement in Operation Puerto although no solid evidence or case has emerged. Now, Bettini was not being admitted on the basis of not signing a decree to by the UCI that was deemed “optional” and to submit to a compulsory blood test ahead of the Worlds.

The burden of proof is now on the racers and not on the various doping agencies. After the somewhat questionable outcome of the Landis case is it any wonder why a racer would distrust giving a voluntary sample? The French labs were acknowledged to have been sloppy and made numerous mistakes, so why submit a sample if you do not have to? Why does their have to be a gestapo like prosecution of athletes merely on the basis of suspicion or not abiding to arbitrary rules? True doping continues to be an issue in cycling, but these overly aggressive methods put cycling in the doping spotlight unnecessarily. Bettini is breaking no rules.

Being a race promotor I now see things in a different light. Take this microdrone helicopter with a camera. Sure this screams “Big Brother” technology where police agencies from all over the world can use a small device to peer into your windows.

But, consider the plight of the small time bike race promoter, well anything smaller than a major race such as the Tour de France. With a mini helicopter such as this you can grab footage of road races easily. You can provide aerial shots of sprints, finishes or critical areas and use that footage to promote the race to other sponsors. You can also use the drone to see exact locations of accidents or other possible issues. Sure the battery only lasts a short time, but this kind of tool can make managing a bike race a hundred times easier.

via http://blog.wired.com/

Kevin Kelly has six rides where you will not have to share the trail with a car. Thanks to the “Rails to Trails” there are more bike trails opening up that will allow folks to ride gentle gravel paths for miles on end with no cars.

…A quickly emerging network of abandoned railway lines are being converted by regional governments into superb bike paths. In addition to offering very gentle grades that are ideal for bikes, many of these new trails are satisfying long. The longest rail trail is over 300 miles long, and the longest off-pavement bike trail in the country stretches 2,500 miles. On these bike roads you can cruise along for weeks without ever encountering a car, or worrying about being bumped off the white line by an oblivious motorist. These are not paved roads, but packed gravel or dirt. Many sport spectacular tunnels and bridges courtesy of the former railways. At the same time these trails pass through small towns affording local eateries and rural lodging, as well as the usual camping spots along the way. I tell you, there’s nothing like arriving at the soft pillows of a B&B after a long day of pedaling.

There are other rides too, in fact the NY Times has stories on the Lachine Canal path in Montreal which extends into Quebec. The trail makes it easy ride since many tourist amenities are near the trail such as Bed and Breakfasts and bike repair areas. Not necessarily for the racer type, but a good way to get the non biking wife and family into cycling.

NY Times: Montreal: Two Wheels, Few Hills

http://www.kk.org/cooltools

Puma in conjunction with the Bicycle Film Festival is launching Re-bike. The program is for charity and has various bike magazines create bikes that are reflective of the magazine’s style. The only catch is that the bikes can only cost $200 and have to be made of recycled material. The bike will be auctioned off on eBay and money will go to charities such as The Working Bike Cooperative in Chicago (http://workbikes.org), Bicycle Kitchen (http://bicyclekitchen.com) and others.

The work done on the bikes is truly cool with an emphasis on urban fixed gear riding.
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Not a big surprise, but the ruling finally came down from USADA as Floyd Landis is guilty of doping. The court case wrapped up four months ago and is best remembered for the bizarre soap opera like revelations. Landis has one month to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The ruling came down to a 2 to 1 decision.

According to documents obtained by AP, the vote was 2-1 to uphold the results, with lead arbitrator Patrice Brunet and Richard McLaren in the majority and Christopher Campbell dissenting.

Not surprisingly Travis Tygart feels vindicated by the ruling:

“Today’s ruling is a victory for all clean athletes and everyone who values fair and honest competition,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said.

The ruling is interesting in that the lab was found to violate WADA rules when conducting the tests, but this finding did not help Landis overturn the overall conviction of being positive in his first test.

In its 84-page decision, the majority found the initial screening test to measure Landis’ testosterone levels — the testosterone-to-epitestosterone test — was not done according to World Anti-Doping Agency rules. But the more precise and expensive carbon-isotope ration analysis (IRMS), performed after a positive T-E test is recorded, was accurate, the arbitrators said, meaning “an anti-doping rule violation is established.”

“As has been held in several cases, even where the T-E ratio has been held to be unreliable … the IRMS analysis may still be applied,” the majority wrote. “It has also been held that the IRMS analysis may stand alone as the basis” of a positive test for steroids.

The decision comes more than a year after Landis’ stunning comeback in Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour, one that many people said couldn’t be done without some kind of outside help. Flying to the lead near the start of a grueling Alpine stage, Landis regained nearly eight minutes against the leader, and went on to win the three-week race.

“Well, all I can say is that justice has been done, and that this is what the UCI felt was correct all along,” Pat McQuaid, leader of cycling’s world governing body, told The Associated Press by telephone. “We now await and see if he does appeal to CAS.

“It’s not a great surprise considering how events have evolved. He got a highly qualified legal team who tried to baffle everybody with science and public relations. And in the end the facts stood up.”

So, the testing procedures were violated, but the ruling of doping still stands? Chris Campbell had many concerns about the procedures and his vote was to dissent as he did in the Tyler Hamilton case.

“In many instances, Mr. Landis sustained his burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Campbell wrote. “The documents supplied by LNDD are so filled with errors that they do not support an Adverse Analytical Finding. Mr. Landis should be found innocent.”

… In his dissent, Campbell latched onto the T-E ratio test, among other things, as proof that the French lab couldn’t be trusted.

“Also, the T-E ratio test is acknowledged as a simple test to run. The IRMS test is universally acknowledged as a very complicated test to run, requiring much skill. If the LNDD couldn’t get the T-E ratio test right, how can a person have any confidence that LNDD got the much more complicated IRMS test correct?”

It was confusion like this that led to the system receiving the harsh review Landis was hoping for during a nine-day hearing in Malibu, Calif., in May. But Landis also took his share of abuse, and ultimately, USADA still improved to 35-0 in cases it has brought before arbitration panels since it was founded in 2000.

Cyclingnews.com

Yahoo News

ABCNEWS Pic

A new epidemic is sweeping American Gyms. Gym rage is being blamed for a variety of “donnybrooks” lately. One in NYC was after a spinning class when the assailant accused the victim of grunting too loudly.

Stuart Sugarman, 48, says that he spent two weeks in the hospital with a damaged spinal cord after Christopher Carter, 44, became so enraged by Sugarman’s “whooping” that he threw him from his exercise bike.

“[Carter] didn’t like the volume at which my client was cheering and getting amped up,” Sugarman’s lawyer Samuel Davis told ABCNEWS.com. “After making some rude expletive-laced comments that my client desist from cheering … he got off his bike and into a linebacker’s position. Then he charged across the room, lifting my client off his bike and smashing his head and neck against a Sheetrock wall.”

Now, was that the assailants (Carter’s) first spin class? The whole point is that the instructor gets the spinners to yell and screen and clap and what not. This is not the best environment to be in if you are already on the verge of violence. A spinning class can easily set someone off if not in the right frame of mind.

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Levi from ToM Gallery

The Discovery Channel Team continues to dominate the Tour of Missouri with Levi Leipheimer winning the Stage 3 time trial while George Hincapie keeps the GC lead coming in fifth place. The two teammates have been on the opposite sides of luck since Leipheimer came on board. Levi is enjoying a career best year with a Tour podium and the win at The Tour of California and US National Championship. Levi is a happy man despite not having a contract for next year. Meanwhile Big George has a contract with T-Mobile for 2008, but not because of his stellar results. Despite being US National Champ for 2007 Big George has been having troubles. Curiously, George and Levi seem to not be so buddy-buddy as they seemed to be last year when Levi sacrificed himself to allow George to win the US National Champs in his hometown.

(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Today’s stage proved to be an almost all Discovery showcase. Leipheimer lit up the course which he described as:

A lot of big rollers, I would call them. Middle climbs that required a different kind of rhythm. I had to punch it on all the middle climbs and recover on the downhills.

Tour of Missouri website

Hincapie was feeling the effort from the previous day, but still faired well with a sixth place finish that allows him to extend his lead.

“The legs weren’t great, I definitely felt my effort yesterday. Coming into the circuits yesterday was basically me against 10 guys, I had to control every attack. So I think I paid a little bit for it. But it was good, I was better than everybody in the break, and that’s all I had to do today.”

Tour of Missouri website

Stage four will probably be the toughest stage of the Tour with lots of hills and the longest distance of the race so far. Disco does have the strength to defend George’s title, but don’t count out all of the 12 breakaway men. David Canada and Will Frischkorn are close enough to George where they could still be dangerous.