the asian said:In a conversation between Vaughters and Frankie Andreau, in 2002 JV says that according to Peloton rumour Ulrich's HCT level never rose above 42.
I think we can believe that Ulrich toned down his doping after Festina, and only went full scale after he hooked up with Fuentes quite possibly in 2003.
Also agree that Ulrich was also a big natural talent so he would not need to be on a doping program to the same extent as Lance in order to succeed.
Also i believe after the new EPO test was developed in 2000 riders would have been more cautious in their EPO and until blood doping became widespread with the availability of Fuentes to a majority of cyclists,it could have been quite possible to ride a top ten in the Tour clean.
Certainly the Top 10 in the Tour between 1999-2002 are not as notorious as the top 10 between 2003-2005.
Furthermore among the retested urine samples of the 99 Tour, of the 81 Urine samples that were not Armstrong's only 7 tested positive for EPO, whereas 6 of 15 Armstrong samples tested positive, so o2 vector doping may have not been as widespread as people assume in the years 1999-2001 specially after the Festina scandal.
87 samples, 13 positive for EPO and 6 belonged to Armstrong. I don't think anybody knows how many people the remaining seven samples may have belonged to, as little as 1 additional person or as many as 7 I suppose. Lets say it was 2 additional people, so we had three dopers of all the usable samples at the 99 tour. I think second place deserves that win, odds are good they were clean.