Did you have to be on the Program to win ANYTHING?

[luckyboy]

Those GC-irrelevant stages where the break is just allowed to disappear and the péloton comes in several minutes down are usually the best chances for the clean riders to win races. Either that or big mountain stages where there are no bonus seconds, or the GC riders don't want to fight for them and so let the breakaways have a chance of winning. Those are the kind of stages David Moncoutié has been winning for a while, but the more common ones are those that finish without an MTF, like the stages Fedrigo and Casar won in the Tour, and the ones that Luís León Sánchez and Fedrigo won in 2009. I'm less convinced about Luisle, but David Moncouti and Pierrick Fedrigo are two riders I'm more than happy to stick my neck out and say are clean, and I'm reasonably satisfied by Sandy Casar.

Agree with this and most of your other thoughts ['training races'] in this thread.

I'm curious as to why Casar is only 'reasonably satisfying', but Fedrigo/Moncoutié are clean. You're talking about Madiot [+ Sainz]?

 

[Merckx index]

You talk about doping as if they choose which races to "dope for". Can you do a shot of EPO the night before an event and get an advantage? Sure. But most riders are on doping PROGRAMS. They do it to attain a higher level of fitness for a really long period of time.

Assume that if they're dopers, they're doping for much (if not most) of the season. The doping allows them to get a much higher overall fitness level.

I think you're both right and wrong. I agree that doping is generally carried out on a program, which the rider has to adhere to for most of the season. I rather doubt that in this era, riders pop something just for one race.

But being on a program does not equate to being at a competitive advantage in every race. For example, blood doping for most riders probably involves withdrawing blood periodically during the season, storing it for a few weeks, then re-infusing it. Immediately after withdrawal, a rider is not at an advantage; on the contrary, he is weaker than normal, though the use of EPO may minimize the time it takes for the lost red cells to be replaced.

Presumably, riders attempt to plan their season so that when they are not at an advantage, they aren't racing. If you have a withdrawal scheduled for a certain date, you probably won't race any time soon after that date. But this withdrawal/infusion schedule is hard to set up so that you will always be at your best. The idea is to transfuse for a small number of races that are of major importance. You might still enter other races without the benefit of a transfusion. Maybe in those circumstances you would take some EPO, but not necessarily. Depending on where you are in the transfusion/infusion cycle, the needs of passing passport tests, and other factors, it might not be practical to dope at all for certain races.

For example, immediately after a withdrawal of blood, the body boosts production of endogenous EPO to stimulate synthesis of red cells to replace the lost ones. You could further accelerate this process by taking synthetic EPO. but in doing so you run the risk of failing a passport test. Just by withdrawing blood, you significantly alter your mature cell/reticulocyte ratio, and taking EPO would further skew that.

I only know what I have heard others claim about this process, but my understanding is that if you're on a full program, everything is set up so you will be at your best at just a handful of critical times during the season. What you do the rest of the time has to be determined by the goal of getting ready for those dates, not by the need to do well in some secondary race that you have to enter, or want to enter.

 

[hrotha]

He wrote it in his famous e-mail. If you don't believe that bit, then you how can you believe any of the rest of it? You can't really pick and choose which bits fit your views and dismiss the rest as lies.

Of course you can. What he said about US Postal fits the observed data and everything we already knew very well. What he said about his Mercury days, not so much. It's perfectly reasonable to believe he's saying the truth about US Postal but not about Mercury.

 

[Francois the Postman]

It is very tempting to look at everything through the doping glasses, but there are lots of other weird and wonderful ways to stack the odds in your favour.

Cycling history is rife with allegations that certain wins were bought with the oldest dope of all: hard ca$h.

And then you have all sorts of "normal" human loyalties/rivalries that change the odds considerably.

I guess that dope is/wasn't always needed, but it certainly helps. And the current generation of doping even more so. A lot of what was used in ye olde days is chicken feed compared with the caviare on the menu over the last decade and a bit.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Agree with this and most of your other thoughts ['training races'] in this thread.

I'm curious as to why Casar is only 'reasonably satisfying', but Fedrigo/Moncoutié are clean. You're talking about Madiot [+ Sainz]?

With Luisle, yes, Manolo Saíz is the main thing, but I also seem to recall his name being mentioned with regards the Jesús Losa investigation that came to nothing (along with Luís Ángel Mate, Aleksandr Kolobnev and Daniel Moreno iirc). It may be nothing, may be something, may just be wrong place wrong time, may be something he did in the past but doesn't do now, but either way, it makes him harder to accept as clean than the three Frenchmen I mentioned.

Fedrigo and Moncoutié are riders who are renowned for refusing things from team doctors. Cofidis' team doctors have trouble getting Moncoutié to even take something as simple as a vitamin pill like you can get from the supermarket - 'you want vitamin C, eat an orange'. Pierrick Fedrigo is known for preferring 'real food' to supplements. He doesn't write down his km logged or his training hours, because to him, it's just riding a bike. Like Moncoutié, he seems to treat the racing as something they do because it's fun, not because it's work, and so they don't feel the urge to take things to get faster because it's of little interest to them.

I don't have any similar stories relating to Casar, but I am reasonably happy that FDJ are one of the teams in the péloton in which clean cycling can and probably does flourish, and I don't feel like I have any real reason to suspect Casar short of going "he's a professional cyclist ergo he dopes". I will also point out that I like Marc Madiot, and I'd rather see more Marc Madiots than Gianni Savios or Mauro Giannettis in the sport.

 

[brianf7]

Well I know of an old Doctor who won a gold medal at masters games. he got rumoer that ASADA were around testing so he took off home stating they need to get on with the presentation and stop wasting time he had paitents to see.

Two weeks later his prize money and medal was sent to him in the mail so he won and no podium.

No idea what he had in his doctors bag and never sugesting he took something he shouldnt.

 

[Fester]

In terms of season long doping, I read some where that (I think it was something by the late Dr. Sassi) that a chemically assisted rider can reach 3 peaks a year, that's 18 weeks going well. So the first 6 weeks could well encompass Algarve, Paris-Nice, Classics, then Dauphiné and Tour, then Vuelta and World Championships.

Moncounties classification wins are possible without doping. I just imagine the fight he put in!

 

[Libertine Seguros]

So the first 6 weeks could well encompass Algarve, Paris-Nice, Classics, then Dauphiné and Tour, then Vuelta and World Championships.

That first one looks suspicious to me.

In 2004 the Volta ao Algarve ran from February 18-22. Six weeks from February 18 = 7 April, given that 2004 was a leap year.

A top rider who does Algarve AND Paris-Nice is not normally targeting the likes of Gent-Wevelgem and the Ronde van Vlaanderen in their Classics season, but a more realistic 6-week period to include the Ardennes would entail not being on peak form for Paris-Nice, and definitely not for Algarve.

 

[luckyboy]

With Luisle, yes, Manolo Saíz is the main thing, but I also seem to recall his name being mentioned with regards the Jesús Losa investigation that came to nothing (along with Luís Ángel Mate, Aleksandr Kolobnev and Daniel Moreno iirc). It may be nothing, may be something, may just be wrong place wrong time, may be something he did in the past but doesn't do now, but either way, it makes him harder to accept as clean than the three Frenchmen I mentioned.

I meant Bernard Sainz - the guy mixed up with VDB and Gaumont. Reading some badly translated French site made me think Madiot had something to do with it, but I think he was just heard at the trial.

About Fedrigo, Casar and Moncoutié.....

Yeah I think FDJ are about the cleanest team, and probably Europcar too. Didn't know the story about Fedrigo.

 

[Escarabajo]

The one rider that was definitely undoped in the 90'ies, Christophe Basson, won a stage in Dauphiné Libéré in '99 iirc. Not a huge victory, but for the vast majority of riders on the Pro Tour (or whatever it's called nowadays) a stage victory in Dauphiné is a season's if not career's biggest achievement.

Good example.

But I also believe that in 1999 the Peloton turned down the programs a bit. Some probably turned it down a lot. Maybe Bassons capitalized on this fact. Or maybe he believed that the peloton was much cleaner in that year because of what happened in 1998 and suddenly he hit gold.