Dr. Maserati said:
A pretty large difference in attidues towards what constitutes good practice in these two articles on Dr. Lim & Dr. Ferrari.
Lim interview.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/paul_kimmage/article4322625.ece
Ferrari interview.
http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6610,s1-3-12-13773-1-P,00.html
Ok. I am gonna put on the same filtered glasses that a few of the conspiracy theorists on this forum view life with, and have a close look at the Lim interview.....
It is almost two years since the American Floyd Landis soared clear of the pack to win the 17th stage of the Tour de France. And it is almost two years since I first set eyes on Allen Lim. We were both in Morzine that afternoon and watched the final kilometres of Floyd’s epic ride from the same vantage point – a large, flat screen on one of the outside broadcast units positioned just behind the finishing line.
“Who’s that guy?” I inquired. “Which one?” “The small Asian guy.” “Oh, that’s Allen Lim.” “Allen Lim?” “Yeah, Floyd’s coach.” He was wearing headphones and being interviewed, but the thing that struck me most was how happy he looked. The guy was absolutely thrilled. Me? I wasn’t happy. For me, Landis’s performance was just too good to be true. I remember looking at the proud American as he stood on the podium and thinking: “This is a doper.”
And I remember frowning at his beaming coach: “And this is his sorcerer.”
It was so obvious he was doping. Everyone knew. Floyd had a look of roid rage on his face. That small Asian guy totally knew it. He knew right away that Floyd was gonna break away and kill the competition. You would have had to be in on the fix to know it.
So it was somewhat of a surprise to discover that Lim was a key member of Jonathan Vaughters’s staff at Garmin-Chipotle, the cleanest and most ethical team in the Tour de France. Had “JV” lost the plot? Can a leopard change its spots? ALLEN LIM is showing me how he makes his magic potion; it is 6:40 on a Wednesday morning in room 243 of a Novotel in a suburb of Nantes and his fifth working day on the Tour begins with a rice cooker, a frying pan and a small electric hot plate. “What you eat on the bike is fundamental,” he explains, removing rice and eggs and some packets of prosciutto ham from a specially designed case. “In China, they call this ‘chong’.”
For 92 minutes I watch, enthralled, as he applies himself with the precision and devotion of a gourmet chef . . . Pouring the water (1.75 litres)......//...... equally into 64 squares (seven per rider) . . . Wrapping the squares neatly in slips of paper foil.
“Do you think you would find that appe-tising in a race?” he demands, offering me a square. “Yes,” I reply, “it’s delicious.”
Right here is the problem. It is ridiculous that a physician is doing the cooking for the team. No need for blood bags and syringes, boys. Ingest everything.
Lim, 35, is no ordinary Gordon Ramsay. First out of bed each morning and last to hit the pillow each night, he’s a human dynamo, the heartbeat of Vaughters’s team and the brains behind most of their cutting-edge technology. Every night he spends hours poring over the data from the riders’ on-board computers. He’s found the “space boots” (a massage simulator) to ease sore legs; the “cooling hats” (an air-condi-tioned cap) to help them sleep in sweaty hotels; and the latest, a hand-cleanser, a policy recently introduced on the team bus.
“The culture that Jonathan has created here has always been one of, ‘If you’ve got an idea, speak up’,” Lim smiles. “The cleanser was Shannon Sovndal’s [a team medic] idea. His notion was that if we did something as simple as squirt-in [with a hand cleanser] when you come on to the bus, and squirt-out when you leave, we would eliminate some of the risk of getting sick in the middle of the race.”
Ya, right. He invented boots, hats, and hand cleaner. That is the secret to Garmin's success? GET A LIFE!! You're a loser if you think other teams hav'nt discovered those things and rice for energy! There is only one way to gain an unfair advantage over the competition. I won't say it outloud, but you are a fool if you deny it.
Lim has been blessed with a truly brilliant mind. He’s an encyclopaedia of physiology, a wizard with technology and a superb amateur psychologist. Chinese proverbs are (naturally) a speciality and during our 90-minute cookathon I was bombarded with favourite wisdoms and witticisms from everything from Waiting for Godot to The Art of War to Full Metal Jacket.
This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without it my life is useless . . .
However, there is one subject that, two years later, still leaves him curiously tongue-tied: “What happened at Morzine, Allen? Tell me about Floyd.”
Paul Kimmage is doing his best to work through all of the smokescreen and mirrors that Linn is throwing at him. I wished he had asked the tough questions sooner rather than throwing soft balls.
THE FIFTH stage of the Tour - a mostly flat 240km to Chateauroux - has just started; we’re sitting on the team bus travelling towards the finish and Lim is retracing the path of his journey through cycling. The younger of two boys born to Chinese immigrants, it began at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 when he watched, enchanted, as the road race passed near his home in the northern suburbs.
He bought an old Schwinn varsity bicycle, joined the Montrose cycling club and four years later finished fifth to George Hin-capie at the junior national championships - four places ahead of a skinny kid from Denver called Jonathan Vaughters. Hinca-pie and Vaughters would go on and make their names as top-class professionals (Hin-capie is riding his 13th Tour) but for Lim it was the end of the road.
“As much as I loved cycling then, and still love cycling now, it wasn’t in my head that I could be a professional,” ....//........was hired as a resident coach with the US cycling team in Colorado and started a masters in physiology.
That is the era when doping was accepted and encourage. This is where the seed was planted in his psyche that what was about to come was acceptable. Just look at those results and the people he was around. The dude was cooked!
It was at the University of Colorado that he encountered Professor Bill Burns, a kindred spirit he describes as his mentor. In 1997 they travelled to Asia to study the physiology of load-carrying in Nepal. “I had this very specific interest in human performance, and so I went off to Nepal with Bill,” he says. “I mean, if you think the Tour de France is hard, you’ve got guys in Eastern Nepal who [weigh] maybe 50 to 55 kilos who are carrying 75 to 100 kilo loads for three to six hours a day for maybe two weeks at a time. The terrain is so hostile that you can’t get goods across by any other means except a helicopter or human porting; it’s one of the last cultures of the world that exists in load-carrying.”
“And what did you learn?” I ask. “What surprised you?”
“It surprised me that their physiology was not unique; they weren’t healthier or better or more unique than the average American or any other guy out there but physically they could do things that we would consider to be unbelievable. What I learned out of that experience was that it wasn’t physiology; it was a lot about your mind and mindset. You just have to want to do it, or have to need to do it in their case.”
Oh OK. Where physiology can't be easily understood (detectable) you have to conclude it is utter will power that gives an athlete super human strength. You can see where this is going......
In 1998, he started a women’s professional cycling team and was offered financial support from the sponsor - Celestial Seasonings - to begin a PhD. ......//...... How do we quantify performance, especially in a sport like cycling where there are tactics and environment and so much that can play into the outcome?
“So my whole bent was on really trying to explore those notions, not just for athletes but from a clinical perspective as well.”
Three words....... E P O
“What about doping?” I ask. “Given your knowledge of physiology, I would imagine you were interested in the effects of doping in sport?”
“Not at all,” he says. “I grew up in a traditional [Chinese] family and from a cultural perspective, the notion of medicine to try to treat all ills wasn’t something that sat very well with me. Even in the work I did on the clinical side, with the cardiac and the cancer rehabilitation, the emphasis was always on physical activity.
“It wasn’t about what we could take to treat disease; it was about what you could do to change your habits, so the notion [of doping] to me was really grotesque, as grotesque as the meds are for using the pharmaceutical industry.”
This is where the story gets dark.
Well Mr Lim. Let me tell you something about Communist Chinese traditions regarding doping. You can't tell me all those gymnasts, swimmers, and other olympic athletes are all drinking herbal tea. It is a point of fact, and well known the world over, that the Chinese are the best athletes drugs can produce. Just look at Yao Ming! The guy was built with 4 chinamen!
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I don't think I even need to go into the rest of the article to make my point. Anyone who thinks Landis was clean is a liar. Anyone who thinks his coach didn't have access to that fact is a liar.
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