BMC Soigneur caught with 195 does of EPO

[Ferminal]

There is no evidence of that. Trent Lowe himself says that he was not offered anything by Del Moral and the only thing that was done at the Spanish government owned clinic was standard tests required by the UCI. When was the last time a Slipstream soigneur was caught with 195 doses of EPO? When was the last time a rider on Garmin said that the team owner paid $80K for his doping program? Both of those happened at BMC.

So how do you think Lowe and White "saw the world differently", maybe they disagreed on politics?

Amazing how Slipstream's sudden talents of 2008 and 2010 go in the "cleanest Tour in decades". Or how their 2009 talent went the next year after moving away from the team.

If BMC are running a USPS or Phonak operation I can't see how they are getting value for money.

 

[hrotha]

So how do you think Lowe and White "saw the world differently", maybe they disagreed on politics?

Amazing how Slipstream's sudden talents of 2008 and 2010 go in the "cleanest Tour in decades". Or how their 2009 talent went the next year after moving away from the team.

If BMC are running a USPS or Phonak operation I can't see how they are getting value for money.

Vande Velde isn't getting any younger, and Hesjedal was pretty strong by the end of the race. I don't know if he crashed on top of losing time the first week, but he didn't seem to be far from his 2010 level by the end.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

So how do you think Lowe and White "saw the world differently", maybe they disagreed on politics?

Ask Lowe. Maybe White did not agree with a lazy rider piling on the pounds to become what was described as the "fattest pro rider I have ever seen".

Amazing how Slipstream's sudden talents of 2008 and 2010 go in the "cleanest Tour in decades". Or how their 2009 talent went the next year after moving away from the team.

They both did well helping Danielson after he emerged as Garmin's best shot at a top ten finish. They both are responsible for Garmin winning the team competition.

If BMC are running a USPS or Phonak operation I can't see how they are getting value for money.

They just won the Tour with the oldest winner in ninety years. It sounds like money well spent to me.

 

[Ferminal]

They just won the Tour with the oldest winner in ninety years. It sounds like money well spent to me.

But like you say, the team is rubbish.

Mathias Frank in Switzerland was more suspicious than anyone in BMC at the Tour (aside from Evans of course). Morabito should really be doing better if he is on The Works.

 

[Lanark]

But like you say, the team is rubbish.

Mathias Frank in Switzerland was more suspicious than anyone in BMC at the Tour (aside from Evans of course). Morabito should really be doing better if he is on The Works.

BMC-rider Thomas Frei was on The Works, and was probably a worse rider than most of the team they had this Tour. It's not like they had a team of super-domestiques that where performing adequately, they had a very weak team that was performing quite good.

 

[Franklin]

BMC-rider Thomas Frei was on The Works, and was probably a worse rider than most of the team they had this Tour. It's not like they had a team of super-domestiques that where performing adequately, they had a very weak team that was performing quite good.

Bookwalter, Quinziato, Santaromita, Hincapie, Morabito, Burkhardt certainly didn't perform quite good....

Tbh, I find that a reasonably respectable lineup of TT specialists and all round hard men. They were completely invisible when it counted... saying he had a weak team that performed quite well is really changing reality imho.

 

[Benotti69]

Bookwalter, Quinziato, Santaromita, Hincapie, Morabito, Burkhardt certainly didn't perform quite good....

Tbh, I find that a reasonably respectable lineup of TT specialists and all round hard men. They were completely invisible when it counted... saying he had a weak team that performed quite well is really changing reality imho.

for a 'clean' tour they did perform well. 2nd TTT, kept Evans out of trouble, i dont think he finished lower than 25th on any stage. If you are comparing them to the blue train then no.

i dont think the tour was clean, but cleaner than the Tdfs of the 90's till last year.

But if what is being reported of a new epo that is undetectable coming out of China, expect to see more blue trains and faster tours

 

[sniper]

if the tour contained more clean riders or even clean teams than in other years, wouldn't we have expected more riders/teammanagers to raise their voice and complain e.g. about AC's participation or raise questions regarding the 195 BMC ampuls?

I heard a couple of guys "more or less" complaining that AC's case had not been ressolved before the start, but I heard not a single rider really complaining about Dirty being obviously dirty... And I heard not a single rider/teammanager questioning BMC's cleanliness.

This leaves a couple of possibilities:

1. the number of doped riders is the same as every year (regardless of whether they are actually doping less heavily or not)

2. there are more clean riders now, but they are still outnumbered by dirty riders and thus do not dare to challenge the omerta...

3. there are more clean riders, and they somehow don't care that they are being cheated by dirty riders such as Dirty.

 

[Lanark]

Bookwalter, Quinziato, Santaromita, Hincapie, Morabito, Burkhardt certainly didn't perform quite good....

Tbh, I find that a reasonably respectable lineup of TT specialists and all round hard men. They were completely invisible when it counted... saying he had a weak team that performed quite well is really changing reality imho.

They did a great TTT, and on the flat they had the best team after Leopard, Evans never left the first 30 riders in any of the flat stages, for a large part due to his team. In the mountains his team was weak (although not even that weak, they still could do some work for him in the stages in the Alpes), but most of those guys are weak climbers in the first place, they did great on the flat part of the tour (and with all the abandons this year, that was hardly a formality), and pretty decent in the mountains.

 

[craig1985]

Cadel is clean because Mike Tomolaris said so.

 

[JMBeaushrimp]

for a 'clean' tour they did perform well. 2nd TTT, kept Evans out of trouble, i dont think he finished lower than 25th on any stage. If you are comparing them to the blue train then no.

i dont think the tour was clean, but cleaner than the Tdfs of the 90's till last year.

But if what is being reported of a new epo that is undetectable coming out of China, expect to see more blue trains and faster tours

Do tell...

 

[Benotti69]

Do tell...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/2011-tour-de-france-the-cleanest-in-recent-years

Nevertheless, Pharmacologist Michel Audran warned of "an indetectable EPO produced in China at the time of the Beijing Olympics", and Grappe said he feared future possibilities of "manipulating the muscle fibers, the central nervous system and the tolerance threshold to pain."

 

[JMBeaushrimp]

Ahhh...

The old 'muskdeer' defense. Anytime you can put 'gland' and 'muskdeer' in the same sentence you know you've got a winner.

I'm going to throw 'taint' in just for good measure...

 

[sniper]

Der Spiegel about whether Cadel is a worthy winner of this years Tour:

Ist Cadel Evans ein würdiger Sieger?

Er war arithmetisch der Schnellste, die drei Tour-Wochen über der Beständigste und er hat die wenigsten Fehler gemacht. Also ist er ein verdienter Sieger. Der Tour würdig ist er in dem Sinne, dass er sich bei der Sieger-Pressekonferenz am Samstag in Grenoble in die Reihe seiner Vorgänger einreihte. Keiner von diesen war in diesem Jahrtausend zu einem klaren Anti-Doping-Statement in der Lage.

"Is Cadel a worthy winner? Yes, since he was quickest. And yes, just like the previous winners of the past decade, he wasn't capable of taking a clear anti-doping stance in his closing pressconference."

http://www.spiegel.de/sport/sonst/0,1518,776308,00.html

 

[durianrider]

If one wants to ride at xyz watts per kg then you need to do what others are doing to ride at xyz Wpk.

 

[MarkvW]

If one wants to ride at xyz watts per kg then you need to do what others are doing to ride at xyz Wpk.

That statement is unsupportable. If other people are taking HCG to ride at xyz, and taking HCG makes you sick, then you will suffer from copycatting other people. Training, and doping, will only bring results if the training/doping is tailored to your physiology.

"Do(ing) what others are doing" because others are doing it, is a foolish way to train.

Further, not everyone needs to dope to win. Some Lemonds are just plain physiological freaks. Such a freak would be foolish to chemically tinker with a working system.

 

[auscyclefan94]

But like you say, the team is rubbish.

Mathias Frank in Switzerland was more suspicious than anyone in BMC at the Tour (aside from Evans of course). Morabito should really be doing better if he is on The Works.

Matthias Frank? I find it funny that after the first time someone has a good performance or a break throught performance they are suspicious. Matthias was on the Tour team last year so they must of seen him as decent.

Bookwalter, Quinziato, Santaromita, Hincapie, Morabito, Burkhardt certainly didn't perform quite good....

Tbh, I find that a reasonably respectable lineup of TT specialists and all round hard men. They were completely invisible when it counted... saying he had a weak team that performed quite well is really changing reality imho.

Santaromita was dissapointingly but the others did quite well. Saying they were invisible when it counted is wrong.

Der Spiegel about whether Cadel is a worthy winner of this years Tour:



"Is Cadel a worthy winner? Yes, since he was quickest. And yes, just like the previous winners of the past decade, he wasn't capable of taking a clear anti-doping stance in his closing pressconference."

http://www.spiegel.de/sport/sonst/0,1518,776308,00.html

What a moronic statement. Typical german media. I guess he should take the Armstrong approach by continually saying that he is not taking drugs. I guess that would mean he is clean

That is because BMC is such a crap team that nearly the only rider capable of doing anything is Evans.

Evans lucked out, the stars aligned, and he won an unlikely victory. But we could have easily been talking about how Evans lost the Tour because he did not have the climbing domestiques to help him chase during stage 18 and 19.

The question is why would Evans manager not even attempt to see what kind of deal he could make with Slipstream. Everyone at that time knew that Wiggins was trying to weasel out of his contract. Did blackcat advise Rominger that Slipstream would surely know that Evans is a doper because of the cleft in his chinny chin chin?

Wow.... just wow.

They just won the Tour with the oldest winner in ninety years. It sounds like money well spent to me.

saying that you slow down at 34 is a myth. completely not true. I've read papers from other scientists saying it depends on various different variables. Age is not necessarily a sign of slowing down.

 

[Ferminal]

Matthias Frank? I find it funny that after the first time someone has a good performance or a break throught performance they are suspicious. Matthias was on the Tour team last year so they must of seen him as decent.

Settle down, I simply said he was more suspect than the Tour team. If you feel that I am making an accusation then you must believe the Tour team is relatively suspect.

 

[sniper]

(...)
What a moronic statement. Typical german media. I guess he should take the Armstrong approach by continually saying that he is not taking drugs. I guess that would mean he is clean
.

typical German media, yes. But moronic? I'm not sure.

Here we are, trying to figure out on the basis of no evidence day in day out who's clean and who's not.
The best indications you get of a doped or clean rider is the way he talks or reacts to questions about doping.
It's no evidence, duh, but it's still the best indication you can wish for (other than a positive test of course) and it's more reliable than most of the evidence discussed here. So yes, if a rider were really really clean, you'd expect him to talk differently about doping than Cadel does (not only this year, but also previous years, he never took an anti-doping position). Very simple actually.
If Cadel's micro-doped to the eyeballs, then indeed he's wise not to let himself into any discussions about doping.
Call the German cycling media stubborn, they do have a sense for reality.

 

[Damiano Machiavelli]

saying that you slow down at 34 is a myth. completely not true. I've read papers from other scientists saying it depends on various different variables. Age is not necessarily a sign of slowing down.

If it was a myth then someone older than Evans would have won the Tour since 1923. It was not for lack of trying.

 

[Jeanne]

typical German media, yes. But moronic? I'm not sure.

Here we are, trying to figure out on the basis of no evidence day in day out who's clean and who's not.
The best indications you get of a doped or clean rider is the way he talks or reacts to questions about doping.
It's no evidence, duh, but it's still the best indication you can wish for (other than a positive test of course) and it's more reliable than most of the evidence discussed here. So yes, if a rider were really really clean, you'd expect him to talk differently about doping than Cadel does (not only this year, but also previous years, he never took an anti-doping position). Very simple actually.
If Cadel's micro-doped to the eyeballs, then indeed he's wise not to let himself into any discussions about doping.
Call the German cycling media stubborn, they do have a sense for reality.

Don't agree on the whole "reading-faces" thing and the like. That tells us exactly nothing, and there exists a bunch of scientific research about it.

Cadel's statement, or non-statement was sorta interesting. He said the only thing he can do is be a good example. So is he trying to tell us he is clean? If so, why not say I'm clean. Or is he being a good example for all the other dopers, making statements you can interpret however you want, or a good example for not getting caught.

 

[sniper]

Don't agree on the whole "reading-faces" thing and the like. That tells us exactly nothing, and there exists a bunch of scientific research about it.

Cadel's statement, or non-statement was sorta interesting. He said the only thing he can do is be a good example. So is he trying to tell us he is clean? If so, why not say I'm clean. Or is he being a good example for all the other dopers, making statements you can interpret however you want, or a good example for not getting caught.

for cycling, it's difficult, cuz you have, say, a 10% of clean riders, but since they mostly ride at the back, they never get interviewed, so we hardly ever get to compare those interviews with interviews of guys like Cadel and Dirtie.

in the thread on voeckler, though, there is this nice little interview of voeckler and bernardeau by kimmage. Ok, no video footage, but still, these guys at europcar at least seem to be much more explicit in taking an anti-doping stance.

 

[Galic Ho]

I love coming to the clinic. Even when a guy worked with Sassi for 10 years he's still suspect. If Cadel is suspect, then I guess there is not much hope for the rest of the GC contenders.

Sassi knowingly doped many riders. Look at the teams he worked for. They don't call it the Mapei Clinic for no reason dude. Sassi's main concern was the reckless disregard for rider health other doping doctors (Ferrari) showed. I'm guessing you never heard Ferrari's comment that epo was as dangerous as orange juice.

Cadel has been suspect for years. Heck, any of the guys in the top 5, maybe the whole top 10 from 2006/2007 if they had that form at this years Tour, they'd have annihilated the competition quite easily. Do the math. How can you be slower and less threatening four and five years later, but finish higher? That doesn't mean you are clean, because it denies what happened years back. It means you are cleaner. Put it this way, you were far superior in all assets against the clock 4/5 years ago, but now you do better! That doesn't mean you are clean, it just means the natural bell curve is a bit closer and augmented performances have dropped, naturally favouring one or two guys.

Though the numbers are down, that doesn't make you clean, least of all when it ignores the fact when the numbers were higher, you too, were up there competing for the win.

 

[Jeanne]

for cycling, it's difficult, cuz you have, say, a 10% of clean riders, but since they mostly ride at the back, they never get interviewed, so we hardly ever get to compare those interviews with interviews of guys like Cadel and Dirtie.

in the thread on voeckler, though, there is this nice little interview of voeckler and bernardeau by kimmage. Ok, no video footage, but still, these guys at europcar at least seem to be much more explicit in taking an anti-doping stance.

yeah, I read that interview. But unless anyone is able to say clearly: I don't cheat/the team doesn't cheat, of course there's always doubt. And as anyone wrote in one of the threads (don't exactly remember where), I also don't think it is likely that this sport will ever be clean. Not that it ever has been.

 

[Nearly]

Cadel is clean because Mike Tomolaris said so.

May be not but some with credibility happen to agree with this if the following extract fromhttp://www.cyclingnews.com/news/2011-tour-de-france-the-cleanest-in-recent-years is anything to go by:-

"Frédéric Grappe, doctor in biomechanics and long-time trainer of the FDJ team, was confident that this year's Tour has been one of the cleanest yet. "We have seen real cycling, the cycling we should always see," he told Le Journal du Dimanche.

"Cadel Evans' performances are the best way to measure this. He's been stable for the past eight years. He doesn't do any better than in previous years. It's the Schlecks and Contador who are slower. This Tour has been one of the slowest on the climbs since 2004," commented Grappe, who is usually known for his scepticism with regard to doping."

Not sure why this statement is not receiving much attention in the clinic.