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As I corrected a population of just 2, not 4 million. Naturally Slovenia doesn't have the infrastructure or the resources to produce a series of riders of their calibre, but it does have foreign scouts looking on that know who isn't being watched and tested so rigorously in the youth ranks. And someone else finds another freak crating fish at the market. You have to know were to look in the woods to find the truffles.
On the other hand, Cycling can't afford to catch another fish that's too big to fail, just as the great financial banking institutions can't go bust each time the markets blow up lest the entire house of cards collapses.
At least Ricco had some rockstar quality
At some point they/someone might decide enough is enough and catch a bigger rider to send a signal. It's probably not going to be Vingegaard though, but I didn't expect it to happen to Contador either.
Didn't the news of Contadors positive get leaked in some way without which we might have never found out?
It was just 2 years ago that we were ready to count Pog’s TDF wins on 2 hands. I wouldn’t anoint JV the new Lance just yet.
Maybe, but I assume it would still have been possible to acquit him if he had been seen as too big a fish, like they later did with Froome.
One was an enemy of the Empire, the other was the Empire.
It's absolutely uncanny how, in the wake of Contador's debacle, Froome's improbable transformation began to take place. Armstrong had not yet fallen and the cycling establishment got another way to maintain it's growth interests in the english speaking world, first with Wiggins and then Froome. So that by the time the latter should have been popped, there was no way he could fall. For it would have been (after Armstrong's ruination) one devastating image blow too many and meant the end of cycling's premier team, hence its number one global publicity pig. Although Sky did ultimately save face, unsurprisingly Froomegate led to the Murdock sponsorship abandoning ship, to be replaced with Radcliffe's money at Ineos. The hog is still fed. However, now you have a situation in which I doubt any of the golden boys of the latest generation shall be taken down. Cycling and sport in general has reached a point at which the war against doping, if it was ever truly going to be effective, is no longer convenient to anyone. Sponsorship and hence investments would dry up and nobody benefits from that.
I don't recall Contador ever having been accused of motor doping. Cancellara and Hejdal, yes, with clearly Froome's spinning up the Ventoux raising eyebrows, indeed right in the face of a floundering Alberto.
It wasn't really convenient in 2010 either considering there had been some major doping scandals surronding the Tour in both 2006, 2007 and 2008, and I would have understood it if the UCI and ASO wanted Contador to be seen as a clean winner after the way the 2007 Tour ended.
I would actually find it better if the riders were using mototrs and not potentially risking their own healths with dodgy doping methods, but that is of course a different discussion.
I was watching RAI live coverage at the time and no such declarations were made, let alone the Italian media going nuts for this reason. If anything they were praising Contador for coming back after the crash.
Much of the cycling talent in the USA comes out of Durango, population 20,000. Turns out when the "cool" sport in HS is mountain biking rather than football or baseball, you can actually find a lot of diamonds. (Although in the case of Durango I think there's also a fair bit of eugenics going on, as outdoors enthusiasts move there and mate.)
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