How to Determine if Contador is Innocent

[JPM London]

You're right too. There's absolutely no reason to believe Contador's story. That's not in contradiction with the statement that it's not completely ludicrous (although it still seems to me completely ludicrous).

Here's a serious question: why do we care? It seems all of us with common sense are convinced that essentially all riders in the big tours (in all the professional races?) are doping in some way ... It seems the real problem is how to create an environment in which they wouldn't want to - and that seems damn near impossible as long as there is money involved - at least not without implicating state authorities more seriously in what would be a tremendous waste of public resources (is doping in cycling really a social problem meriting government attention? in sports at all? if sports want to be professional wrestling, what's the problem? Some of us don't watch professional wrestling, and soon we'll stop watching boxing, cycling, and track and field too, not to mention football in all its forms, etc. - I mean who seriously thinks that Lance Armstrong is any more doped than Lebron James?).

Actually, and I'm happy to be called naive here, I'm not of the opinion that everybody dopes - not all the time and not even for the GTs. I think also that I'm not the only one on here either thinking that.

If I thought everybody doped in cycling and that there was no way of change I don't think I'd follow it - I don't even think everyone did EPO in the nineties. A lot did, but not all...

I've stopped caring too much about other sports - I think there's a kind of intensity in cycling you don't see elsewhere and I love the duality of colleague/adversary in the peloton. Honestly, though, the do/don't dope duality is a factor to some degree as well - there are stories within and outside the races... Sports and suspense thriller rolled into one.

Totally agree with you that doping is rife in other sports and the defensive, pointing-fingers-at-cycling is just the top of hypocrisy in my book.

I don't care too much about the legal details in the doping cases as much as what's convincing to me.

I like there to be something solid - like, say, frozen samples with EPO in them in a way that actually shows the change over a whole Tour. That kind is very difficult to get around - although I haven't heard of anybody convicted on the basis of that sort of thing (yet).

Having a trace amount of something like CB is not too convincing to me, though. Yes, I know it can indicate both a CB abuse or a transfusion. Yes, I agree the meat theory can sound a bit silly. Yes, for the moment I'm completely disregarding the DEHP as there's nothing public/official on it. If (or should I say when) Conti gets 1-2 years for the CB I'll be left sitting there thinking: Did he actually do it? I'd much, much prefer if something came out of the 09 IV kits or something more solid on the current DEHP rumours. Then I'd be happy they'd caught a cheater - but the other scenario? That's a bit like finding a penny in the street and arguing a crime must have been committed.

Just as I'm writing this I'm thinking back to the 80's and how funny it was that back then, here in the western world we thought eastern European women in general were giant, square, had mustaches and were very, very ugly - because the only ones we saw were the athletics cyborgs at the olympics. Don't remember much talk about doping, though... Today they obviously make up a very decent proportion of supermodels. Not quite the same, eh? Anyway, I digress...

That's a good question, and underscores the problem with this test. Many studies of DEHP have been carried out. In some cases the subjects worked in specific professions where it was expected their exposure to the substance was higher than normal; in other studies, subjects were used without addressing the question of their normal routines. In all cases, DEHP is found in the body, and the differences between individuals who might be exposed to higher environmental levels and those who are not is not that great. That is, most individuals in any study have relatively low levels (around 50 ng/ml) of certain metabolites. There are outliers in these groups with much higher values, and there are individuals who tested at one time have much higher values than when tested at another time. But these differences do not seem to correlate very much with environmental exposure.

IOW, I'd be very surprised if the TDF environment, by itself, had much effect on DEHP levels. Indeed, since the riders are outdoors so much of the time, if anything, I would think exposure from the air, for example, would be much less. Maybe the procedure for preparing and eating food could contribute, but I think it unlikely it would result in much higher values.

The food preparation is also very much the same I gather, so an effect, if any, would probably be a constant anyhow, wouldn't you say?

Maybe we should have a DEHP part of the passport - but if it is so prone to unexplained volatility it's prob a dead end anyway...

 

[Chuffy]

Amen to the above.

 

[python]

yesterday riis spoke to berto from milan. he told a danish paper this morning that berto sounded very much better than before because of the german ping ponger acquittal.