Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Greg Lemond has been a thorn in the side of Lance Armstrong and is trying to be a anti-doping champion. It would be good if Lemond had good facts and attacked the doping issue in a sensible way with facts and would actually help young cyclist follow the better path. Instead lemond is a blather former pro who seems more bitter about the success of the current generation. Look at this video where Lemond has a ripe chance to make his case about doping at the Play the Game conference. He gets 50 minutes to make a speech and completely unprepared. He blathers on in a nonsensical way and sounds more like Grandpa Simpson.

Sorry Lemond, please get your shit together if you are going to tear down the sport that gave you your success and fame.

Update, Lemond will sounds very coherent in the above video if you watch this video first.

Stefan Schumacher’s blistering Time Trial performances at the Tour were certainly a surprise to many. Apparently when someone like Schumacher or Riccardo Ricco performs above and beyond expectations they are most likely doping. Meanwhile Leonardo Piepoli was positive for CERA (Continuous Erythropoiesis Receptor Activator) which is not a shock since he was implicated as an accessory to Riccardo Ricco. Just when you think cycling is moving on, there are more revelations. We have not heard the finale of Frank Schleck’s involvement with Dr. Fuentes of Operation Puerto fame either.

(AP Photo/Bas Czerwinski)

Ugh, hope this turns out to be nothing. The car of Johnny Schleck the father of Andy and former Yellow Jersey Frank Schleck was searched by customs agents.

So far news reports are simply that the car was searched for 30 minutes. Schleck’s car was then seen following the French customs police vehicle during the Tour stage. Nothing is concrete, but there is a sick feeling in the gut of all cycling fans at the moment.

Yahoo Sports News: Customs search car driven by Schlecks’ father

Update – from velonews.com

Sources say that officials found “no doping products or banned substances” in the car belonging to Andy and Frank Schleck’s father, according to Agence France Presse.

Cyclingnews had a quick interview with a doping expert Michel Audran who dropped some interesting tidbits. I was stunned at almost every response. Just when you think that maybe doping is being driven out of cycling, the riders are simply staying one step ahead with drugs that aren’t yet detected.

Ricco used CERA/Micera which is not detected by any doping tests. It is thought that riders in the Giro were using CERA/Micera because it is not detectable by the tests.

Doping expert stunned by Riccò news

Professor Michel Audran is one of the world’s leading experts on blood doping. He is also one of nine independent experts chosen to act as consultants in the formulation of the UCI’s biological passport. Daniel Friebe, Procycling features editor spoke to Audran this morning within minutes of L’Equipe’s website announcing that Riccardo Riccò has tested positive for an EPO derivative after stage four of the Tour de France, the individual time trial around Cholet.

Riccò’s case stuns doping expert Michel Audran

Daniel Friebe: In the last twenty minutes we’ve heard that Riccardo Riccò has tested positive for an EPO-like product. The early reports suggest that Riccò used CERA or Micera. a so-called third generation EPO. What’s your reaction?

Michel Audran: Wow. I’m stunned. I’m amazed they’re saying it’s Micera, simply because there’s no validated test for that yet. The World Anti-Doping Agency is working on a test, but it certainly doesn’t exist yet.

DF: What exactly is CERA, or Micera to give it its commercial name?

MA:It’s a delayed-action EPO, which has a different molecular mass from EPO. It’s only been commercially available since the start of the year. We can tell when someone’s used it but we can’t declare them positive. In that respect it’s like Dynepo, another EPO-like product. We know that Micera was being used on the Giro, so I’m not surprised that it’s also turned up at the Tour. But I would be very surprised if they AFLD had declared Riccò positive for Micera, for the reasons I’ve just mentioned. Maybe they searched Riccò’s room and found the product itself…

DF: What’s the difference between Micera and traditional EPO?

MA: It’s more convenient for clinical patients. They might only have to take Micera once a fortnight or once a month. EPO has to be administered much more often. The effect for an athlete is the same: raised haematocrit, raised haemoglobin, more oxygen to the muscles. It’s funny, because Riccò has UCI certification for his high haematocrit already.

DF: You talked about the differences between EPO and Micera, and also the fact that the latter is visible in tests, even if it, until now, it couldn’t lead to a positive test. Could you talk a little more about that?

MA: Well, you see synthetic EPO in urine the form of bars on an electrophoregram. If a rider’s taken Micera, the bars are located in a different place to those you see in a simple containing synthetic EPO.

DF: This is the third positive since the start of the Tour. Does that suggest to us that the testing being carried out by the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) is more rigorous that the UCI’s?

MA: What the AFLD have done very well is target particular riders. I don’t think their tests themselves are any more rigorous, though. They’ll be adopting the same criteria for positive tests as WADA. I would say, though, that if the UCI’s biological passports had been ready, which they should be soon, Riccò would never have started this Tour.

Cyclingnews: Doping expert stunned by Riccò news

(AP Photo/Michel Spingler, File)

This year was going relatively well in terms of cycling related drug scandals. Sure there is the Alessandro Petacchi overreaction due to one too many puffs of the inhaler, but most of the big names were relatively free from drug related scandals. Now that most cyclists stay away from the performance enhancing drugs they have to let loose when not riding. So Tom Boonen gets caught with cocaine in his system. Sad that Belgium’s golden boy fresh off another Paris-Roubaix victory is facing criminal possession charges.While WADA says it is OK to have some cocaine when you are out of competition thereby not penalizing Boonen for his out-of-competition cocaine use.

Did Boonen get some South American candies from Gilberto Simoni’s Grandmother recently? Or maybe he has a really old school dentist that uses cocaine to numb the pain when doing dental work. These are ust a couple of excuses used by Gilberto Simoni years ago when he was caught with cocaine. Otherwise he will be meeting with Belgian police who want to know where he got the coke. Boonen’s alibi’s may not work so well since his house was already searched for suspected cocaine possession earlier this year.

The banning of the Astana Cycling Team became official today as the A.S.O (Amaury Sports Organization) officially rebuked the team from participating in all A.S.O sponsored events. This comes after the Giro D’Italia snubbed the Kazak-sponsored team from participating in Italy in May. The snub comes despite a complete overhaul of the team structure from the scandal-ridden squad of 2007. The 2007 Astana team had a similar promise last year as Alexandre Vinokourov took over the team and overhauled the management structure from the previous incarnation as Liberty Seguros. The shakeup only brought more scandals as Mattais Kessler, Eddie Mazzoleni, Vinokourov and Kashekin tested positive or were involved in some scandal last year.

The same promise of a shakeup was not enough for the A.S.0. as they are very weary of more scandals in cycling biggest event. The Giro and Tour organizers taking a harder line and choosing which teams they wish to invite. This rift with the U.C.I. and the ProTour allows the Grand Tour organizers a chance to wrestle back control of who is invited.

The Giro suffered from too many Pro Tour teams using the event as a training race for their young racers or Tour de France hopefuls. Therefore they invited more Continental based Italian teams while snubbing Astana, High Road and a few French teams. Now the A.S.O. which is scandal weary has taken a similar hard line and barred Astana.

This may seem like a drastic move, but I would have to applaud the move as a serious hard line against doping. Contador was already coming under suspicion for his involvement in Operation Puerto. The investigation seems to be getting legs again just as the cycling season starts up. Andreas Kloden is still in the Astana team from 2007 and was in the T-Mobile teams that were suspected of doping. His involvement with the current Astana team does not show a serious break enough break from the past. Astana has not had any time to really prove itself on the road and in the headlines.

Part of the restructuring of the Astana team involved using a rigorous anti-doping testing program. The new structure with medical tests employed by Astana are similar to teams such as CSC and A.S.O. favorite Slipstream. These tests would check racers in a regular basis to help check against doping. Despite this positive aspect the A.S.O. still looked unfavorably on the team being present in France in July.

With this drastic move the fate of Astana may rely on the sponsor’s willingness to stick out a year without the main publicity generated by racing in France. Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer will have to think of a Plan B now that their season has a large chunk of free time in July.

T-Mobile has dropped their main sponsorship from their Bob Stapleton run cycling team. The news comes after Adidas dropped sponsorship of the team in light of the ongoing-neverending doping stories surrounding the team. The team will not disband as T-Mobile’s contract was set to go until December 2010 and there must be a decent enough exit payment that will allow Stapleton and Co to continue for at least 2008. The team will now be called appropriately enough Team High Road. The good news for George Hincapie is he won’t have to wear Magenta in South Carolina. Riding with feminine like colors in the South is not good. Then he would get into more trouble when the UCI would say he was a “man in black” for training without his team colors. Perhaps that is why George was pissed at Levi for winning the US Pro Championship. Levi and others probably knew that George was going to go to T-Mob next year and the specter of wearing pink in the South must have been a real FU to George when Levi took the win.

With Team High Road and Team Slipstream in the Pro Peloton could this be the dawn of sponsorless team names? I hope so. It would actually be better for a team’s long term survival since they would not necessarily be attached to a specific sponsor. Team could weather the storm of a major sponsor loss since they would not necessarily be associated with a specific product. Products would then be associated with the team making it easier to switch around.

Anyway, thanks for the years of cycling T-Mobile. It is unfortunate that just as the team was clean T-Mobile decided to leave the sport. It is perhaps premature and hasty. T-Mobile could have stayed on with a cleaner image instead of leaving under a cloud of doping related stories.

Doug Pensinger, Getty Images

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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STR/AFP/Getty Images

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.