Sagan Clean?

[sniper]

Unless he's sponsored by Haribo, no, sugar rush is not the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions.

 

[saganftw]

im surprised none of you have started investigating long hair as a potential PED/masking agent...there must be a reason to not cut hair

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

im surprised none of you have started investigating long hair as a potential PED/masking agent...there must be a reason to not cut hair

I thought the long hair was obvs? Too much testosterone.

 

[Scatto]

Well, I do have a hypothesis on the hair and his strange behaviour, but don't read further unless you are willing to waste time. He might intentionally exaggerate the craziness, so that we tend to look over what's unusual, for instance emptying a full bag of gummy bears right after the finish. If Greg Van Avermaet would do this, it would raise far more questions. This is literally what Voet said: the biggest stars have least problems to avoid the controls, because the people around them are so much in awe that they become naive.

 

[King Boonen]

If GvA ate a full bag of gummy bears right at the finish of a race it would literally raise no questions at all except in the most paranoid minds the internet could muster.

The only exception would be if he'd just won the TdF atop Ventoux and then it wouldn't be the gummy bears that raised the questions.

 

[sniper]

Re:

Well, I do have a hypothesis on the hair and his strange behaviour, but don't read further unless you are willing to waste time. He might intentionally exaggerate the craziness, so that we tend to look over what's unusual, for instance emptying a full bag of gummy bears right after the finish. If Greg Van Avermaet would do this, it would raise far more questions. This is literally what Voet said: the biggest stars have least problems to avoid the controls, because the people around them are so much in awe that they become naive.

*like*

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

Well, I do have a hypothesis on the hair and his strange behaviour, but don't read further unless you are willing to waste time. He might intentionally exaggerate the craziness, so that we tend to look over what's unusual, for instance emptying a full bag of gummy bears right after the finish. If Greg Van Avermaet would do this, it would raise far more questions. This is literally what Voet said: the biggest stars have least problems to avoid the controls, because the people around them are so much in awe that they become naive.

And he woulda got away with it too, if it wasn't for you pesky kids. Cause that is what you are saying: 'He's very clever, but I'm very, very cleverer and can see right through his schemes with my special perception goggles, unlike the dumb schmucks in the peanut gallery blinded by the limelight.'

 

[sniper]

Re:

Some must have had a precious sense of self-recognition upon reading this:

...because the people around them are so much in awe that they become naive.

 

[Tom the Engine]

Re:

It does sound silly and it may be non-causal, but Every suggestion of doping practices sounds laughable until proven true, so don't judge too soon.

Yes, and I didn't categorically dismiss your hypothesis. That's why I clicked on your links expecting to read something interesting that is at least marginally related to your suspicion. Only to find that it has absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever except a mention of gum or gummy bears. Seriously, did you even read the articles you posted?
Crazy speculations are fair game in the Clinic, but backing them up with ridiculous links is nonsense.
(And don't give snipers support too much weight. He'd literally endorse random typing if he thinks the incentive behind it fits his narrative. It's like the background noise in old analogous radios.)

It's still not clear to me what the role of the gummy bears would be in this. First I thought that you argue that the bears themselves contain a natural "masking agent" (as implied by the link to the pot smokers who want to pass drug tests by ingesting gelatin..). But now this seems gone and "of course" the bears only act as a container for another substance. So what's the benefit of carefully preparing every single gummy bear and openly inhaling them if you could have your stuff in a bottle or anything else more inconspicuous?

 

[Echoes]

Re:

...there must be a reason to not cut hair

Indeed no need to find a conspiracy theory about that, Pier Paolo Pasolini gave the explanation 45 years ago in the Corriere della Siera and it fits very well with the character discussed here.

This September I was in the small city of Isfahan, in the heart of Persia. Persia is an underdeveloped country, as one horrendously says, but [its economy] is rapidly taking off, as one says in a likewise horrendous way. … One night, I was walking through the main street when I saw two monstrous beings among all those ancient, beautiful boys, full of an ancient human dignity: they were not really ‘capelloni’ [longhairs], but their hair was cut in a European fashion, long at the back, short at the front, straw-like, artificially stuck around the face, with two filthy tufts over the ears. What was this hair saying? It was saying: ‘We do not belong to this mass of wretched creatures, underdeveloped poor fellows who were left behind in a barbarian age! We are clerks in banks, students, sons of people who grew rich and work in the oil companies; we know Europe, we have read a lot. We are bourgeois: and here is our long hair that bears witness to our international modernity of privileged people.’

By the way, masking agent or not, eating Haribo gummies is silly and unhealthy as it gets. I'm not a top athlete and would never eat such sh*t. Sugar rush?? Lol.

 

[Catwhoorg]

I routinely use gummy bears as fuel on long trail runs.

I make no claim as to anything other than they do that job well for me, and with minimal stomach issues.
I tolerate them much better than GU for example.

 

[sniper]

Re:

I routinely use gummy bears as fuel on long trail runs.

I make no claim as to anything other than they do that job well for me, and with minimal stomach issues.
I tolerate them much better than GU for example.

That's one thing.
This is a whole other thing:
https://twitter.com/gagedesoto/status/835878769894260736

 

[mike75]

Sagan is just weird. It seems like as his hair (and beard) get longer, he becomes more and more aloof. I make no claims as to Sagan's doping or non-doping, but it seems a bit of a reach to think him scarfing down fistfuls of gummy bears is him trying to mask some kind of doping.

 

[Valv.Piti]

I wonder whats not suspicious at this point.

Then again, when we already have decided that in order to win classics you need to dope and motordope, why all the fuss about it anyway?

 

[yaco]

Reckon Sniper and his cohorts should hire someone with an infra-red camera or similar to take pics of rider's feed bags and bidons - You never know what you'll find !

 

[sniper]

Re:

Reckon Sniper and his cohorts should hire someone with an infra-red camera or similar to take pics of rider's feed bags and bidons - You never know what you'll find !

yes let's do that. But not before we check the background of every CAS jury member for any kind of conflict of interest that could cloud their judgement and cause them to conspire against clean athletes. :lol:

 

[sniper]

Re:

I wonder whats not suspicious at this point.

Then again, when we already have decided that in order to win classics you need to dope and motordope, why all the fuss about it anyway?

You sound like you've never even met or known a clean athlete trying to compete with pro's.
If you would, then you'd know what 'the fuss' is all about.

 

[Netserk]

Re: Re:

...there must be a reason to not cut hair

Indeed no need to find a conspiracy theory about that, Pier Paolo Pasolini gave the explanation 45 years ago in the Corriere della Siera and it fits very well with the character discussed here.

This September I was in the small city of Isfahan, in the heart of Persia. Persia is an underdeveloped country, as one horrendously says, but [its economy] is rapidly taking off, as one says in a likewise horrendous way. … One night, I was walking through the main street when I saw two monstrous beings among all those ancient, beautiful boys, full of an ancient human dignity: they were not really ‘capelloni’ [longhairs], but their hair was cut in a European fashion, long at the back, short at the front, straw-like, artificially stuck around the face, with two filthy tufts over the ears. What was this hair saying? It was saying: ‘We do not belong to this mass of wretched creatures, underdeveloped poor fellows who were left behind in a barbarian age! We are clerks in banks, students, sons of people who grew rich and work in the oil companies; we know Europe, we have read a lot. We are bourgeois: and here is our long hair that bears witness to our international modernity of privileged people.’

By the way, masking agent or not, eating Haribo gummies is silly and unhealthy as it gets. I'm not a top athlete and would never eat such sh*t. Sugar rush?? Lol.

How does the bolded describe Sagan's hair?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EyxCAmCEpQ

 

[PeterB]

Re: Re:

By the way, masking agent or not, eating Haribo gummies is silly and unhealthy as it gets. I'm not a top athlete and would never eat such sh*t. Sugar rush?? Lol.

You don't need to be top athlete to experience that feeling when you really really need to get some sugar into your body. You don't care at that moment whether it is healthy or not - your body screams for sugar and it helps tremendously. And your favourite rider approves
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos...reg-van-avermaet-cocacola-picture-id532729836

 

[GJB123]

Re: Re:

I wonder whats not suspicious at this point.

Then again, when we already have decided that in order to win classics you need to dope and motordope, why all the fuss about it anyway?

You sound like you've never even met or known a clean athlete trying to compete with pro's.
If you would, then you'd know what 'the fuss' is all about.

As if you believe that any athlete competing at a top level is clean! Do not make me laugh! Every name suggested to you is just an invitation for you to spout as much nonsense as possible to proof that the particular athlete must also be doping, motor doping or otherwise cheating.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

I wonder whats not suspicious at this point.

Then again, when we already have decided that in order to win classics you need to dope and motordope, why all the fuss about it anyway?

I miss the old days when winning was what was deemed suspicious. I thought I could cope when just riding a bike became suspicious, but now that training and eating sweets are deemed suspicious I'm having problems aligning myself with the new alt-reality.

But, this new Puritanism toward sugar-laden junk food and its powers as a masking agent ... well it finally proves something, so it does. There can be no doubting now:

Coke and a Sub...and I woulda spotted it earlier too, only I was so blinded by his fame...

 

[Catwhoorg]

Re: Re:

I routinely use gummy bears as fuel on long trail runs.

I make no claim as to anything other than they do that job well for me, and with minimal stomach issues.
I tolerate them much better than GU for example.

That's one thing.
This is a whole other thing:
https://twitter.com/gagedesoto/status/835878769894260736

Yeah I reserve THAT for Jaffa Cakes and Girl Scout cookies.

 

[fmk_RoI]

To the poster who kicked this off, two questions:

1) what is being masked? It must be something taken during the race, yes, otherwise the masking could have been done ... well, less publicly?

2) what do you think the masking agent is? Are you suggesting this is like the flake of soap powder in the urine that used to be used to spoil tests? Or are you suggesting that the gummy bears contain some agent that changes the evidence of doping within the body, say turns EPO in, I dunno, sugar? Or are you suggesting it's just the normal diuretic, used down through the ages of anti-doping as a way of reducing the concentration of metabolites of flushing them from the system quicker?

Having tossed this theory out there, you really do need to stand it up, explain the science. And properly explain it, not just chuck up some URLs you found when you Googled a couple of key words in the questions.

 

[GraftPunk]

Re:

I routinely use gummy bears as fuel on long trail runs.

I make no claim as to anything other than they do that job well for me, and with minimal stomach issues.
I tolerate them much better than GU for example.

This x100. Gummies are always in the stash for training/marathons/trail runs for me as well and for the same reason. That's not to say that Sagan's wolfing them down wasn't odd, but I've done the same on occasion. YMMV I suppose.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

By the way, masking agent or not, eating Haribo gummies is silly and unhealthy as it gets. I'm not a top athlete and would never eat such sh*t. Sugar rush?? Lol.

You don't need to be top athlete to experience that feeling when you really really need to get some sugar into your body. You don't care at that moment whether it is healthy or not - your body screams for sugar and it helps tremendously. And your favourite rider approves
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos...reg-van-avermaet-cocacola-picture-id532729836

I agree.
But one would expect his over-paid soigneurs and nutritionists to care.
As you and fmkrol have nicely illustrated, a simple fanta or a coke would make a tadbit more sense.

At best, Sagan singlehandedly made an absolute mockery of sports nutrition as it is preached by the likes of Asker Jeukendrup.