Re: Re:
vedrafjord said:
staubsauger said:
Red Rick said:
Jancouver said:
Saint Unix said:
[
The second Ricco bust?
Or the 3rd Di Luca bust?
Frank Schleck
I don't remember
Arguably it's Schleck who was 3rd at the Tour the year before. Since Menchov, just like Di Luca, Sanchez and Ricco 2.0 weren't big names anymore when they got caught and Contador instantly was about to get covered up. But Fränk was busy with a pretty mediocre season when he tested positive and maybe already was in decline. Ricco was the new kid on the block when he got caught. Runner up at both the Tour of Italy and Lombardy. Twice stage winner at the Tour. Tested positive while being in the polka dot jersey. Had won the Tre Cime stage at the Giro and 2 stages at T-A. He just had become a superstar. Absolutely a big gun. But that was 2008!
It's Di Luca in 2009 actually. Runner up at the Giro. Champion back in 2007. Winner of multiple classics. About to sign a big paycheck contract with Lampre because of his Indian summer. The Cera positive eventually ruined his career.
2008 Tour was a special case because:
a) The manufacturers of CERA (Roche) helped WADA develop a test while it was still in clinical trials.
b) CERA stays in the body much longer than EPO.
c) The French ran anti-doping themselves at the 2008 Tour due to the dispute with the UCI and seem to have done a much better job of it, considering the number of guys they caught.
It was braindead of Di Luca to get caught for CERA in 2009 when Ricco, Piepoli, Schumacher, and Kohl were all serving bans for same.
If the likes of Menchov and di Luca 2013 weren't big names because their stars had faded by then, then Samu isn't either because we're now several years removed from his biggest successes and recent years have been hanging back into the Zubeldia zone. I suspect he's simply chasing another year at the top level and has either missed a memo on what's being tested for now or took too big a risk on something he'd been microdosing.
As for di Luca being busted for CERA in 2009, it is worth noting that his case was that he submitted six tests in the 2009 Giro (I thought it would likely have been more as he led from stage 5 until the stage 12 ITT, and won stage 4 as well, but we're using di Luca himself as a source here) and only two of these were positive with CERA. Given the long half-life of CERA and that it was known to be detectable from the point of Riccò and Piepoli being busted in the Tour (at which point Schumi probably knew he was toast, having won a stage and been tested, so went all out for the rest of the race. Kohl quietly accumulated and by his own admission flushed his final blood bag after being told to tone it down) it would appear that it essentially became useless from that point, as once it was detectable its long half-life made it no more advantageous than regular old first generation EPO, same as how darbo was detectable so early that when Johann Mühlegg got busted for it in 2002 they hadn't even got around to putting it on the banned list. What's most likely I think is that di Luca had stored blood bags in a down period when he was using CERA to manage his hct% and that when he used those during the Giro he'd got the half life calculations wrong so one of the bags still had sufficient CERA to trigger a positive. But really, just watching the 2009 Giro was enough to know that Killer was doping so, given that he didn't actually
win the race and could be dismissed as a wildcard team rider getting reckless while pushing for a return to the PT (as you noted, Lampre were onto him).
And also, LPR Brakes-Farnese Vini were just beyond the pale in that race, let's face it, and it was mainly di Luca getting greedy in search of a stage win in his home region of Abruzzo that stopped them winning, because they chased a lot of breaks unnecessarily through that last week rather than letting Menchov's depleted reserves, with only really Laurens Ten Dam of any mountain strength, try to control the race. And let's look at the LPR 9:
121 Danilo di Luca - 2004 Oil for Drugs (2007 ban), 2009 CERA, 2013 EPO, banned for life
122 Gabriele Bosisio - 2009 EPO positive following biopassport irregularities
123 Riccardò Chiarini - 2010 raided in Padova investigation, 2014 EPO positive (after going from LPR/de Rosa to Androni then moving to MTB)
124 Giairo Ermeti
125 Jure Golčer - 2004 50% hct failure
126 Matteo Montaguti
127 Alessandro Petacchi - 2007 salbutamol, 2010 raided in Padova investigation
128 Daniele Pietropolli - 2009 Mantova Investigation
129 Alessandro Spezialetti - 2004 Oil for Drugs (2008 ban)
Of 9 riders that's 5 who've failed tests, four of whom for bannable substances (1 of which an egregious overuse of TUE values) and only two who've not been placed under investigation or sanction. And several who may not have served bans at the time but were known to be dubious for a long time (Chiarini, for example). That was probably LPR's problem, that they were simply too strong in Italy to be a lowly wildcard team, but there was simply too much unpalatable about the team's continued success with the sport trying to rehab its public image that made di Luca - who of course had previous himself - riding in such a transparent fashion become persona non grata.
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