Miburo said:What about liberti seguros? Half the team was called to dope (tour'06) but not their team leader?
Granted 7 years ago the mentality was clearly different. Now it's just "Yea i called it..."
Yeah, but the links with Vinokourov himself were rather tenuous, he had only just joined the team, it wasn't clear if he was a Fuentes client etc. Of course, it's hard to recall what the communis opinio was 7 years ago, but from what I remember, he wasn't really suspected as much as you would assume based on his results, teams etc. Although to be honest, I never liked Vino, so I was glad he got caught
I think the triple combo of the 2006 (Puerto, Landis), 2007 (Vino, Rasmussen) and 2008 (Ricco, Schumacher, Piepoli, Kohl) Tours really took the blinders off of a lot of people, and even naieve cycling fans discovered that doping wasn't restricted to some dirty Italians and dubious eastern block riders, but that everyone was doing it. The almost universal suspicion that people like Santambrogio and Froome now get was unheard of only 5 years ago.