Barry Bonds and Cycling

[Merckx index]

His new girlfriend is an Olympic medal-winning cyclist. And he’s ridden in both Levi’s Gran Fondo and Tucson’s El Tour. He seems like a walking advertisement for the health effects of stopping doping.

When they met, she could crush him on an incline, and apparently he loved that. "He's very animated about it, and very funny," said Mike Sinyard, the founder and CEO of Specialized Bicycle Components, who has befriended Bonds. "He couldn't believe it: 'How is this little, beautiful woman passing me going up this hill?'"

At 8 a.m., on an already-scorching October Saturday, 7,500 cyclists left from a community center in California wine country to ride one of three courses (Piccolo, Medio, Gran) in the Levi's GranFondo. The event is a mass-start ride that welcomes pros, weekend riders and parents with their kids, plus the only man ever to hit 762 major league home runs. A year ago, Bonds completed the 61-mile Medio course and took 32nd place in his age group, while still recovering from back surgery. The year before that, he rode the 111-mile El Tour de Tucson and finished in 5 hours, 47 minutes and 8 seconds, for 681st place out of 3,092 entries.

The founder of the ride, Levi Leipheimer, is one of the six Armstrong lieutenants who accepted a six-month ban from cycling after cooperating with USADA's investigation. He and Bonds have become friends, through the women in their lives -- his wife Odessa Gunn and Holden once rode on a team together -- and the baseball star's devotion to the bike. "He told me it saved him," Leipheimer said. "He said it gave him something that challenged him." Leipheimer has stayed at Bonds' Southern California mansion and discussed PEDs with his new friend. "He does talk about it, not in specifics," Leipheimer said. "He talks about the owners and the commissioner's office and their relationship to it."

Is that another Armstrong-like tease?

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/63887128/

 

[DirtyWorks]

His new girlfriend is an Olympic medal-winning cyclist. And he’s ridden in both Levi’s Gran Fondo and Tucson’s El Tour. He seems like a walking advertisement for the health effects of stopping doping.


Is that another Armstrong-like tease?

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/63887128/

There's no tease.
-Levi rode with Armstrong on Carmichael's doped USA Cycling "development" program. This is fact.
-Thom Wiesel, the owner of USA Cycling welcomes doping and has done so since before his takeover of USA Cycling.

We're at a time and place similar to years into Armstrong's 7x myth where it's a fraud to anyone looking at the facts of the matter yet no official body has detailed the fraud and put an official stamp on it as USADA did Armstrong's activities.