Recent content by mercuryrising

As most elite cyclists dope/doped, it's probably less than you think. The old "I'm just restoring the body to its natural balance" argument, is one that has been pedalled by team soigneurs and "doctors" for years. It is an argument so full of holes and leaves the door open to abuse that it can't...

History tells us that we can expect them to come back as shadows of their former selves. There won't be repeated explosive 'suicide' attacks from Vino 80 km into a 200 km alpine stage, nor track sprinting style racing at 2000 m in the high cols from Rasmussen. They'll look very ordinary, until...

How do you propose going about measuring that!

That's pretty much what he said after the first week of the Tour: “I think a lot of people think I'm on drugs to be honest. I'm sure of it. I know how the sport is,” he said. “A lot of guys are going to be thinking. 'What's Wiggins been doing?' That's unfortunate but I'm not Schumacher...

We also saw this type of riding at the '07 Tour (stage 16 I think). Rasmussen and Contador, riding like it was a track sprint, stop-start sprinting, in the final few km of a mountain stage.

Although it made for exciting viewing, the way Di Luca bounced on the pedals up those Giro climbs, never seemingly tired, never out of breath, relentlessly attacking, it was an unbelievable performance. And so it has been shown to be. I hope he never races again.

'00 Tour was 3 662.5 km. ref: Here

With the hardest stages of the tour still to come, and the traditional go slow on Sunday, it's a bit early to make average speed predictions for this year. You're not mincing stats here, just making them up. The '00 Tour averaged 39.56 kph. ref cyclingnews Only suggests, that on average...

Reading LA twitter it would be fair to say Astana have had their fair share of doping tests this year... so maybe that have seen something after all.

Wiggins is a clean rider. Have no doubt at all. This is not a flash in the pan rider. This is a 29 year old athlete whose won multiple Olympic medals over many years and is currently the best cyclist in the UK. He is a product of the British Cycling track team success, headed by Dave Brailsford...

I didn't see Columbia HTC letting up on stage 3 when Garmin's Bradley Wiggins, at that time only 19 s from yellow and third on GC, was the wrong side of the split. Result was he lost 41 s and the chance at a potential yellow jersey after the TTT. That's bike racing, no gifts. Hincapie lost...

Wiggin's high GC place is due to a mixture of factors, obviously he has improved as a road rider due to hard work and training as already discussed. But also, the environment in which he is now racing is much cleaner, so his athletic ability is allowed to shine on a more level playing field...

That's a NO, absolutely not, not under any circumstances.