Ã￾lex Marque tests positive for Celestine

[DirtyWorks]

Now if OFM knew about this, they must get sanctioned. And also, how on earth was this revealed by a Spanish newspaper instead of the right authorieties? Wasn't the control made DURING the Volta? This whole thing smells. The FPC-UVP and whoever is responsible for the controls have to give an explanation.

The sanction process takes quite a bit of time. We've seen other WADA-compliant sanctions announced months after the sample date with everything in place so that the news is quick and resolved.

Another way to look at this is perhaps the Volta organizer is serious about doping? It would be as if ASO sanctioned riders for Horner-style "too normal" anomalies. In this way, announced positives from a race over many years is okay with me.

 

[sniper]

Well, probably. But still, would you just go out and say "okay guys, so my knee's bad today, ease up on the throttle today so that i can win it on the TT, okay?"

The only time you want your opponents to think you're weak is when you aren't.

that proves my point.
he won the race, he wasn't weak, he was superstrong, so he had no obvious reason to hide that injury.

you're right that he didn't have a reason to sing it from the rooftops, but i don't see any reason to hide it, as he says he did, either.

 

[Benotti69]

He was popped for corticosteroids and declared it in advance of the test. Trouble is injectable and oral treatments are not permitted even with a TUE. I assume his doctor was not too clear on the rules for these drugs. Seems like a lesser offence but pro riders should be a lot smarter about treatments with controlled substances

I assume that a doctor, if one was invloved, could find out quite quickly before making the injections or handing out such medicines.

After all it is their job.

As said before, rider failed the IQ test.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

that proves my point.
he won the race, he wasn't weak, he was superstrong, so he had no obvious reason to hide that injury.

you're right that he didn't have a reason to sing it from the rooftops, but i don't see any reason to hide it, as he says he did, either.

You finally watched a race?

 

[pastronef]

http://www.biscuittinmedia.com/alejandro-marque-cortisone-confusion-tour-of-portugal-2013/

.... But, so what, it was only cortisone! Really? While the fight against EPO, blood doping and Human Growth Hormone might hog headlines, but it appears glucocorticoids have been making a big comeback. Here’s a weird thing. In cycling, corticosteroids are banned on race days, but not at any other time. So, you have a series of performance enhancing products (the glucocorticoid family, widely called ‘cortico’), which you can take, in massive doses, during training, without fear. As long as you stop your ‘course’ ahead of your race day, you’re clean as a whistle, good to go.

Do you see how that works? You can take corticosteroids (Synacthen, Kenacort, Decadron and the rest) and charge up like a mule while you train between races. And if an anti-doping team rock up and demand an out of competition sample, well, no worries, you pee freely. Does that make sense to anyone outside of Wada?...

 

[sniper]

You finally watched a race?

the tour of portugal?
of course i didn't

 

[Zam_Olyas]

You should download all volta edition to watch "great riding".

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Pathetic to say the least. Who is it going to be next year? There is so much to pick from.

Now if OFM knew about this, they must get sanctioned. And also, how on earth was this revealed by a Spanish newspaper instead of the right authorieties? Wasn't the control made DURING the Volta? This whole thing smells. The FPC-UVP and whoever is responsible for the controls have to give an explanation.

Eladio Jiménez's positive in 2009 took about this time to come out too. The smaller the positive the longer it takes (and I mean the context of the positive, not the size of the issue or the race involved or what have you - I mean "huge f-off pile of EPO in the bloodstream" positives will hit the public much faster than "corticosteroid AAF that will require some wrangling over TUE statuses by the legal team to work out whether it's punishable or not" positives. FPC-UVP isn't known for being mega-quick either - didn't it take about five months for the Costa brothers' tainted supplements methylhexamine positive to come out too?

I wouldn't go as far as saying it's the worst race in the world but I certainly could have made a better sentence. I can't remember much clean riders there either Although as far as I know, 5 time winner David Blanco as never officially tested positive.

Neither has Vuelta winner Alejandro Valverde. Blanco was a Puerto exile, and there was a reason it took him four years in Portugal before a team that raced regularly outside the Iberian peninsula would touch him. Do we know if this is going to make Gustavo César the Volta winner? Then we just need rid of Rui Sousa, and Hernâni Brôco gets a Volta podium!

 

[DirtyWorks]

http://www.biscuittinmedia.com/alejandro-marque-cortisone-confusion-tour-of-portugal-2013/

Do you see how that works? You can take corticosteroids (Synacthen, Kenacort, Decadron and the rest) and charge up like a mule while you train between races. And if an anti-doping team rock up and demand an out of competition sample, well, no worries, you pee freely. Does that make sense to anyone outside of Wada?...

More than you would ever want to know, but here it is anyway.

Two things with this observation:

#1 WADA is implementing a steriod module to the APMU.
http://www.wada-ama.org/en/Science-.../Question--Answers-on-ABP---Steroidal-Module/

Now, just like the simple Testosterone test, are the underlying tests easily defeated? Will event organizers and sports federations pay for the hard-to-defeat tests? I don't know. As always, you've got the sports federation managing positives anyway, so...

#2 Not sure why it's taken this long for the blogger to come to this realization, but, that's the essence of the weakness of the bio-passport. It was built into the entire system from the start.

####################
There are major physiological changes/consequences/complications to using steroids. Which is why the body builders talk about post-cycle routines in the old days. They don't work *that* great for endurance athletes. Their anecdotal use in grand tours is a rider will have a good day, then the consequences of the steroids kicked in and they were only capable of barely making the time cutoff.

Now, most are off plain old steroids and onto peptides where they get much, not all, of the steroid effect without all the post-cycle complications/consequences. My understanding is peptides are relatively simple to manufacture as compared to steroids too. It's a real scientific breakthrough. The hard work is identifying the peptides.

 

[pastronef]

#2 Not sure why it's taken this long for the blogger to come to this* realization, but, that's the essence of the weakness of the bio-passport. It was built into the entire system from the start.

*You can take corticosteroids and charge up like a mule while you train between races.

I don't remember reading that in the many clinic related threads here or on other forums.
Not even on the Sky related threads about WHAT do they use

 

[skidmark]

that proves my point.
he won the race, he wasn't weak, he was superstrong, so he had no obvious reason to hide that injury.

you're right that he didn't have a reason to sing it from the rooftops, but i don't see any reason to hide it, as he says he did, either.

but that's just common race psychological tactics. Sure, you might feel super strong, but you have no idea how strong your opponents are. Or what kind of race situation you're going to be in. Fine, in hindsight he won, but it's not a race of automatons, you don't know anything in advance. Haven't you ever noticed that riders go to great lengths when they're suffering to keep a poker face? When you're riding, say, in a group of 8-10 riders on an MTF and it's all together, the difference between one of your opponents deciding it's worthwhile attacking or not could be if they think you're weak. If you are, in fact, hiding a weakness, you damn well don't want them to know about it.

At any rate, yes it could be deflection (and hey, it's pro cycling so it probably is and if he had a TUE why did it get to this point etc etc), but I would say calling it a 'straw man' is inaccurate.

 

[trevim]

Bruno Pires believes Movistar will take Marque back after everything is cleared.

http://www.record.xl.pt/Modalidades/Ciclismo/interior.aspx?content_id=858734

 

[oliveira]

Marque posted in his facebook some photos of the doping control forms, where is explicit the reference to the infiltrations.

https://www.facebook.com/alex.marque/posts/10201703936452627

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Marque posted in his facebook some photos of the doping control forms, where is explicit the reference to the infiltrations.

https://www.facebook.com/alex.marque/posts/10201703936452627

Sorry no access to FB. Anybody who can elaborate?

 

[jens_attacks]

ok so now we all got alex marque's phone number. who calls first?

he published way too much personal things lol


pretty clear movistar thought it's a good way of getting rid of him. only that he doesn't seem that dumb. in a logical world, he should get his job at movistar back

 

[oliveira]

Sorry no access to FB. Anybody who can elaborate?

Hard to see the form´s small letters, but there´s "2 infiltrations - knee" in a part that seems reserved to observations by the rider. There´s also some photos of the knee in a bad condition dated by the smartphone´s chat. 19 ago, the day after the win.

This just seems a ridicule and very low atitude by Movistar, trying to open a slot by "planting" this story on national news. Manipulation, using the (fair) prejudice "spanhish rider + portuguese team equals doping.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

pretty clear movistar thought it's a good way of getting rid of him. only that he doesn't seem that dumb. in a logical world, he should get his job at movistar back

If his TUE, etc, is as legit as it looks, I'd rather settle out of court for wrongful dismissal. Phuquem. I hope he smashes their bank account for 6.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Hard to see the form´s small letters, but there´s "2 infiltrations - knee" in a part that seems reserved to observations by the rider. There´s also some photos of the knee in a bad condition dated by the smartphone´s chat. 19 ago, the day after the win.

This just seems a ridicule and very low atitude by Movistar, trying to open a slot by "planting" this story on national news. Manipulation, using the (fair) prejudice "spanhish rider + portuguese team equals doping.

as Jens-A says, it looks like hes lining up a case.

Jump to straight to CAS.

 

[BigMac]

Marque has been telling the whole week he will ride for Movistar in 2014. He appears registred as a Movistar rider for 2014, in the UCI teams list.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

If he is right about the TUE then I hope he does get to keep his slot. It just makes me wonder that he's still there yet Movistar found the funds for Igor Antón out of nowhere last week. Even if he does stay on the Movistar roster, is he going to be in the position Ezequiel Mosquera was with Vacansoleil?

It's hard to tell because we don't know whether Movistar were trying to get rid of him because they don't want him, or trying to pre-empt bad news in order to control the story and jumped the gun before the full facts of the situation were known, which left both them and the rider looking bad. If Marque's legitimately got this all covered, then it would be highly damaging for Movistar's reputation to be hypocritical about it when you consider they gladly took Rui Costa back after his ban was overturned.

 

[BigMac]

If he is right about the TUE then I hope he does get to keep his slot. It just makes me wonder that he's still there yet Movistar found the funds for Igor Antón out of nowhere last week. Even if he does stay on the Movistar roster, is he going to be in the position Ezequiel Mosquera was with Vacansoleil?

It's hard to tell because we don't know whether Movistar were trying to get rid of him because they don't want him, or trying to pre-empt bad news in order to control the story and jumped the gun before the full facts of the situation were known, which left both them and the rider looking bad. If Marque's legitimately got this all covered, then it would be highly damaging for Movistar's reputation to be hypocritical about it when you consider they gladly took Rui Costa back after his ban was overturned.

Exactly. His file for the TUE is currently being analysed by UCI, and according to some pictures he posted on facebook, everything was documented and the UCI itself had knowledge of the meds he was taking.

So I think Movistar will evetually have to take Marque back.

And he seems quite confident he will have his 2014 debut for Movistar, so I wonder what Unzué will say if he does so. He will look quite dumb.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Marque has now been cleared and reinstated as Volta winner. He says he has not ruled out the possibility of suing El País for leaking the news of the positive since it led to Movistar firing him based on the false positive and he has basically lost a year from his career due to how long RFEC have taken to clarify the situation, which, considering the last posts in this thread were aware of his TUE defence back in December last year, is a pretty ridiculous length of time.

He also hints that he's awaiting some kind of contact from Abarcá, considering the hiring and firing.

 

[jens_attacks]

probably unzue won't hire him again too bad, see what media can do with all these doping hysteria

 

[hrotha]

probably unzue won't hire him again too bad, see what media can do with all these doping hysteria

Why would he? He's probably the one who leaked it to El País in the first place.

 

[thehog]

Clearly doesn't have the "my friends at Sky" card. Poor chap. This stuff is laughable at times.