Evans and his meeting with Ferrari?

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Re: Re:

ScienceIsCool said:
sniper said:
As people were asking for a scandal:
Documents have surfaced in Italy which offer proof of systematic doping by the defunct Italian Team Mapei, according to German television station ARD. During the 2001 season riders where systematically taking drugs such as EPO, testosterone, anabolic steroids, and also most likely synthetic insulin, the documents allegedly reveal.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/proof-of-systematic-doping-at-mapei/
Also, in 2002 Mapei's Stefano Garzelli tested positive whilst wearing the maglia rosa.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/cycling/1995010.stm

Remember, Sassi was head coach of Mapei between 1996 and 2002, which is when Mapei decided to stop as a team sponsor mainly because of the above two doping scandals.

As always, context is everything.

Squinzi says: “Slowly, we stayed in touch,” he said. “Until the end of 1996, when I cleared out the Mapei athletes who were prepared by [notorious doctor] Michele Ferrari: [Tomy] Rominger, [Abraham] Olano and [Gianluca] Bortolami, I entrusted the preparation of the athletes and the direction of the research center to Sassi. We all believed that it was possible to not only ride cycling, but to be clean and successful.”
http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/6740/Giorgio-Squinzi-remembers-Aldo-Sassi-clean-cycling-and-winning.aspx#ixzz4Svhbfbnb

So why was Sassi hired at the end of 1996? Squinzi had enough and sacked everyone working with Ferrari.

It would make no sense that someone tolerant of doping on their team would fire everyone associated with the most successful doping doctor in the world. He gave up his best riders and best results in order to get clean. Why, then, would he hire a dirty coach?

Of course, we all know that Mapei was still dirty which is why Squinzi pulled the plug in 2002. It just doesn't make any sense that Sassi was the one doing the doping.

John Swanson

I don't know what the story is with Bortolami, but Rominger and Olano both left because they were on contracts that paid mostly based on performance and Squinzi screwed them over on the bonuses. They never got the money.
 
Re:

djpbaltimore said:
The humorous part is that one of the comments from that thread about Sassi is "He's no Ferrari." Another is "I have not heard anything good or bad about the centre except that Sassi is looked at as anti-doping."

Eh, not sure the context of my comments, but his results certainly don't make him a Ferrari... I think at best Sassi wasn't involved but was fully aware of what his riders did, at worst he was a typical enabler. Can't exactly remember but I think it was the "being holy with Ivan" type of story which introduced doubt for me.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Re: Re:

Ferminal said:
djpbaltimore said:
The humorous part is that one of the comments from that thread about Sassi is "He's no Ferrari." Another is "I have not heard anything good or bad about the centre except that Sassi is looked at as anti-doping."

Eh, not sure the context of my comments, but his results certainly don't make him a Ferrari... I think at best Sassi wasn't involved but was fully aware of what his riders did, at worst he was a typical enabler. Can't exactly remember but I think it was the "being holy with Ivan" type of story which introduced doubt for me.
chicken dinner right here.

To me, from what I've read, Sassi's program, his expertise, was to provide state of the art internal testing.
He could guarantee you'd never piss positive.
In addition, I find it hard to believe he wasn't involved in organizing the team-wide doping at Mapei as reported by ARD, although, admittedly, one can give Sassi the benefit of the doubt there and assume he merely turned a blind eye.

Anyhow, the fact that someone like Shayne Bannan turned to Sassi in 2004 speaks volumes.
Bannan would have had one thing only on his mind: get results no matter how.
That alliance most certainly wasn't about racing clean.

As for the other top dogs Sassi later worked with: all they can be argued to have cared about is how to fly below the radar.
 
Dec 25, 2016
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Re: Re:

sniper said:
Ferminal said:
djpbaltimore said:
The humorous part is that one of the comments from that thread about Sassi is "He's no Ferrari." Another is "I have not heard anything good or bad about the centre except that Sassi is looked at as anti-doping."

Eh, not sure the context of my comments, but his results certainly don't make him a Ferrari... I think at best Sassi wasn't involved but was fully aware of what his riders did, at worst he was a typical enabler. Can't exactly remember but I think it was the "being holy with Ivan" type of story which introduced doubt for me.
chicken dinner right here.

To me, from what I've read, Sassi's program, his expertise, was to provide state of the art internal testing.
He could guarantee you'd never piss positive.
In addition, I find it hard to believe he wasn't involved in organizing the team-wide doping at Mapei as reported by ARD, although, admittedly, one can give Sassi the benefit of the doubt there and assume he merely turned a blind eye.

Anyhow, the fact that someone like Shayne Bannan turned to Sassi in 2004 speaks volumes.
Bannan would have had one thing only on his mind: get results no matter how.
That alliance most certainly wasn't about racing clean.

As for the other top dogs Sassi later worked with: all they can be argued to have cared about is how to fly below the radar.

I think Sassi was doing more than just internal testing and seeing the recent results of some football teams (Juve/Leicester/Chelsea/Sassuolo) one can expect his methods have evolved outside of cycling.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Agreed.
In soccer there isn't even a need to "fly below the radar" since there isn't any kind of serious testing.
And so the only plausible reason I can think of why the Mapei Institute (particularly also Sassi's brother) got successfully involved in soccer is because they knew exactly where to get the juice and how to properly juice up.
 
http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/chris-froome-and-cadel-evans-interview-each-other-about-races-retirement-and-the-2008-tour/

Chris Froome: It’s fair to say that when I came into the sport, I was pretty naïve in respect to where the sport was in terms of moving on from the doping era, and the general mentality in the sport. In the 2008 Tour there was a load of guys implicated. One of my team-mates, Moisés Dueñas, Stefan Schumacher, Riccardo Riccò, Bernhard Kohl, it was an absolute mess. I can remember feeling, ‘What have I got myself into?’ There were guys getting carted off left, right and centre. Your career being much longer, you’ve probably seen even bigger changes. What would you say about the sport now compared to when you started?

Cadel Evans: The biggest thing I saw change, and it was changing in 2008, was the mentality of riders towards those who had been caught. The mentality towards them was changing in that year. People who were cheating were starting to be looked down upon in a stronger fashion. I think the change in mentality was the biggest influence. Everyone involved in the sport from top to bottom, sponsors, journalists, riders, coaches, everybody wanted a clean sport and that was starting in 2008. I heard comments from riders who were from an earlier and darker period than I was and it was interesting to hear those negative comments from people. That was refreshing.

We have a new candidate for the year doping stopped being cool. Or that ALFD did the testing that year instead of the UCI, and actually wanted to catch people. Also nobody knew that Roche had helped WADA to develop a test for Mircera. Take your pick.

Fortunately doping was no longer cool by 2009, when Contador went thermonuclear up Verbier, Armstrong podiumed with funky blood values, and Wiggins became a mountain goat.
 
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2003 : Telekom, became T-Mobile in 2004.
Cadel staying at Teide with the best of Fuentes/Ferrari/Freiburg clients (Kessler was there too) is quite telling imho
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Oufeh said:
2003 : Telekom, became T-Mobile in 2004.
Cadel staying at Teide with the best of Fuentes/Ferrari/Freiburg clients (Kessler was there too) is quite telling imho
2003 is when Vino went to Tenerife for the first time, though i'm not sure if it was to meet Fuentes or Ferrari. http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/vinos-victory-overshadowed-by-questions-about-his-past/

If it was Ferrari, then Evans being there with vino doesn't bode well for his story that he only met ferrari once in 2001-ish.

Poor Cadel. Having worked so hard to stay clean whilst all his Mapei colleagues were doping causing Mapei to implode and forcing Cadel to find a new team in 03. And he ends up at Telekom!
 
Jul 5, 2009
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May 26, 2010
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Evans when in Europe resides in Stabio, in the Region of Ticino right on the border with Italy.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Benotti69 said:
Evans when in Europe resides in Stabio, in the Region of Ticino right on the border with Italy.
cheers.

Stabio made an interesting appearance in the Donati report as one of the places where EPO was available (over the counter I assume) in the early EPO days.
My Italian is not good enough for a translation, so I'm putting up the original section:
Scheda n. 8 (A.L., tecnico svizzero) Riferisce che in una farmacia di Stabio, in Svizzera, vicino al confine con l’Italia, ha visto lo stayer “Ro”, per due volte durante il 1993, acquistare farmaci (Epo si presume, poiché egli ha genericamente riferito che si trattava di una cura per i globuli rossi) per alcuni milioni. “Ro” era in compagnia di un uomo con i baffi (sia il tecnico dell’atleta Valentini, sia […] li hanno). Sembra che si sia rifornito di Epo solo per sé. “Ro” attualmente non ha squadra, ma risulta in trattativa con la “Amore e Vita” di Fanini.
https://sites.google.com/site/dopingitalia/home/documenti/doping-nel-ciclismo---dossier-di-sandro-donati-1994
Who's "Ro"?
Rodolfo Massi maybe? Joined Amore e Vita in 93.
 
Jan 27, 2010
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I love this recent superficial transcript...
http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/chris-froome-and-cadel-evans-interview-each-other-about-races-retirement-and-the-2008-tour/

even better is the commentary left by the editor, who transcribed the 'interview' (Edward Pickering).

I have a few questions for Mr. Pickering.
1. Did you research into Cadel's shady past prior to asking him about doping then and now?
2. Did you read this thread before spearheading that interview?
3. Was your intent to just parrot whatever these riders stated, allowing them to spawn more dubious and elusive doping 'stories'? Or, did you want to actually ask them the difficult questions that this thread amalgamated in a few days?

Overall, Mr. Pickering you may be an editor but your journalism skill(s) is (are) quite poor, if not insulting to the learned readers of CN.
NW
 
Oct 16, 2010
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11:10 into this vid of stage 19, TDF 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwEMzxq4RwY
Evans drops back, makes a bike change, and starts a remarkable comeback, leading the chasing group back to the race leaders.
It's the stage that wins him the TdF.

He doesn't seem to have a mechanical there; by spinning his wheel he basically shows us there is no chain/derailleur problem. And once he sees the team car is not there yet he just hops back onto his bike.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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sniper said:
11:10 into this vid of stage 19, TDF 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwEMzxq4RwY
Evans drops back, makes a bike change, and starts a remarkable comeback, leading the chasing group back to the race leaders.
It's the stage that wins him the TdF.

He pretends to, but doesn't really seem to have a mechanical there; by spinning his wheel he basically shows us there is no chain/derailleur problem. And once he sees the team car is not there yet he just hops back onto his bike.
So that's one weird bike switch, one that certainly didn't damage his TdF aspirations that year.

Now lets look at his bike for that year:
http://www.velonews.com/2011/07/tour-de-france/tour-pro-bike-cadel-evans-stage-winning-bmc-teammachine-slr01_181844
Bottom of the page, you can scroll through several photo's of his bike with commentary.

Several minor issues there:
1. On the 2nd photo, you see his di2 battery is mounted under the down tube ( "external short"). Why not mount it inside the seattube? I guess that's difficult if you already have something else hidden there.
2. For some reason Evans rides with an older model SRM cranks (photo 2). Why? I reckon his sponsor would prefer him to ride with the new cranks. Doesn't make sense. Or does it? Fact is, the cranks are attached to the spindle which is a standard part of the Vivax type bikemotor.
3. His saddle (photo 7). His bike needs to meet the minimum weight, which should normally be no problem. But he still opts for that extremely light yet massively uncomfortable sadle. In fact as it says below the photo it's the lleast popular model amongst pros. Doesn't make sense. Well, unless of course he's carrying considerable extra weight inside his seattube.
 
Jan 30, 2016
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Re:

sniper said:
11:10 into this vid of stage 19, TDF 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwEMzxq4RwY
Evans drops back, makes a bike change, and starts a remarkable comeback, leading the chasing group back to the race leaders.
It's the stage that wins him the TdF.

He doesn't seem to have a mechanical there; by spinning his wheel he basically shows us there is no chain/derailleur problem. And once he sees the team car is not there yet he just hops back onto his bike.


The same tour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBE4FfoYUuQ
2:06:20 Evans is in the back ready for a swap
2:07:20 team car in position
2:09:00 o no he just needed a chain lube
2:33:57 bike swap. According to dutch commentry it was his second flat so maybe more swaps.
3:00:50 stage victory
3:06:30 "I dont know what happened but I had to change bikes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-ojeabQIyw
"I think someone ran into my rear deailleur or something"
 
Re:

sniper said:
sniper said:
11:10 into this vid of stage 19, TDF 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwEMzxq4RwY
Evans drops back, makes a bike change, and starts a remarkable comeback, leading the chasing group back to the race leaders.
It's the stage that wins him the TdF.

He pretends to, but doesn't really seem to have a mechanical there; by spinning his wheel he basically shows us there is no chain/derailleur problem. And once he sees the team car is not there yet he just hops back onto his bike.
So that's one weird bike switch, one that certainly didn't damage his TdF aspirations that year.

Now lets look at his bike for that year:
http://www.velonews.com/2011/07/tour-de-france/tour-pro-bike-cadel-evans-stage-winning-bmc-teammachine-slr01_181844
Bottom of the page, you can scroll through several photo's of his bike with commentary.

Several minor issues there:
1. On the 2nd photo, you see his di2 battery is mounted under the down tube ( "external short"). Why not mount it inside the seattube? I guess that's difficult if you already have something else hidden there.
2. For some reason Evans rides with an older model SRM cranks (photo 2). Why? I reckon his sponsor would prefer him to ride with the new cranks. Doesn't make sense. Or does it? Fact is, the cranks are attached to the spindle which is a standard part of the Vivax type bikemotor.
3. His saddle (photo 7). His bike needs to meet the minimum weight, which should normally be no problem. But he still opts for that extremely light yet massively uncomfortable sadle. In fact as it says below the photo it's the lleast popular model amongst pros. Doesn't make sense. Well, unless of course he's carrying considerable extra weight inside his seattube.
So he stops in the worst situation you can think of to pretend to check his bike, then waits agonizingly long seconds for his team car, hops on a bike to regain the lost time? Come on.

re 1) There was no seatpost battery in 2011, you are looking at the standard solution on any Shimano-sponsored bike.
re 2) What is remarkable about a regular DA 7900 SRM crank, the crank that any other SRM-sponsored bike had?
re 3) This is massively fabricated, you can proof about anything if you want to.
 
Re: Re:

Tienus said:
sniper said:
11:10 into this vid of stage 19, TDF 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwEMzxq4RwY
Evans drops back, makes a bike change, and starts a remarkable comeback, leading the chasing group back to the race leaders.
It's the stage that wins him the TdF.

He doesn't seem to have a mechanical there; by spinning his wheel he basically shows us there is no chain/derailleur problem. And once he sees the team car is not there yet he just hops back onto his bike.


The same tour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBE4FfoYUuQ
2:06:20 Evans is in the back ready for a swap
2:07:20 team car in position
2:09:00 o no he just needed a chain lube
2:33:57 bike swap. According to dutch commentry it was his second flat so maybe more swaps.
3:00:50 stage victory
3:06:30 "I dont know what happened but I had to change bikes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-ojeabQIyw
"I think someone ran into my rear deailleur or something"
Was the falling moto rider part of the conspiracy as well?
 
Oct 16, 2010
19,912
2
0
Re: Re:

Tienus said:
sniper said:
11:10 into this vid of stage 19, TDF 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwEMzxq4RwY
Evans drops back, makes a bike change, and starts a remarkable comeback, leading the chasing group back to the race leaders.
It's the stage that wins him the TdF.

He doesn't seem to have a mechanical there; by spinning his wheel he basically shows us there is no chain/derailleur problem. And once he sees the team car is not there yet he just hops back onto his bike.


The same tour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBE4FfoYUuQ
2:06:20 Evans is in the back ready for a swap
2:07:20 team car in position
2:09:00 o no he just needed a chain lube
2:33:57 bike swap. According to dutch commentry it was his second flat so maybe more swaps.
3:00:50 stage victory
3:06:30 "I dont know what happened but I had to change bikes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-ojeabQIyw
"I think someone ran into my rear deailleur or something"
Lovely.
What are the odds, the more bikes they change, the faster they (Cadel, Cance, Sagan) go!
:lol: