Sinkewitz, positive for rHGH

[mr. tibbs]

Rolf Aldags comments are mystifying.

Perhaps the media should ask why for a long time there was no team willing to sign Sinkewitz after his doping violation

I cant work out whether he is saying:

(a) That Sinkevitz didnt get a ride for while cos he broke the rules of Omerta or
(b) It was well known within the peleton that he was well into his prep and was likely to get caught again should he return.

If Omerta still is a problem then I dont know why people like Aldag dont come out and say it rather than giving cryptic soundbites to the assembled Journos.

Furthermore, Aldag himself is an admitted doper who is now quite employed in cycling. Why should he have a job in cycling and not Sinkewitz?

That whole paragraph with Aldag made me frown. Given his past, it makes him sound like a fool. To paraphrase: "It was okay when I did it, and I don't think it's wrong for a team to hire me even though (or especially because) I just quietly admitted to having done it myself a decade after the fact but didn't try to shed any light on the culture of doping in cycling.

"But for him to do it. (And talk about it, no less!) Well. That's just wrong, and it's no surprise that no one wanted to hire him. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a stable of young cyclists to influence and 'train.'"

Hypocrites, all of them.

 

[Escarabajo]

I do remember this.

But I think that was the number for growth hormone I believe you will find. The blood doping, was remarkably lower, may have been aroun the teens, or perhaps 30, for an entire peloton (of circa 190 med checks).

I assume we are talking one and the same "period". The larger, considerably larger number, nigh on all the peloton, were growth hormone I do believe. There was a significantly smaller number, around 20% of the former number (which may have come in at around 4/5ths of the peloton).

One and the same study no?

+1 on the bolded.

I agree with you on this. 70% on blood doping was extremely high. 70% on HGH at the time is more than believable. This number is more in phase with the Log-normal distribution which is encountered more often in more specific groups rather than larger groups. Like for example when comparing the Pro-Peloton versus all competitive cyclists. You would probably expect a normal distribution for all competitive cyclists. Just a guess.

In our line of work we find that natural ocurring in the distribution of events is more log-normal than normal, but when we take all the groups and combine them together we get the so famous normal distribution.

 

[Escarabajo]

If he wants to ride again he needs to go with the complete denial route this time around.

Well, did we expect something different from him if he wants to ride again?

No choice I guess.

 

[roundabout]

He can deny all he want. Even if he somehow magically gets acquited, nobody should be stupid/desperate enough to sign him.

 

[thehog]

Furthermore, Aldag himself is an admitted doper who is now quite employed in cycling. Why should he have a job in cycling and not Sinkewitz?

That whole paragraph with Aldag made me frown. Given his past, it makes him sound like a fool. To paraphrase: "It was okay when I did it, and I don't think it's wrong for a team to hire me even though (or especially because) I just quietly admitted to having done it myself a decade after the fact but didn't try to shed any light on the culture of doping in cycling.

"But for him to do it. (And talk about it, no less!) Well. That's just wrong, and it's no surprise that no one wanted to hire him. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a stable of young cyclists to influence and 'train.'"

Hypocrites, all of them.

One might remember when Ullrich was busted... Aldag started making statements about Jan and that he would always "room" on his own and saw "strange" things - implying that Ullrich was doping.

Big Jan said he looked forward to writing a book which then brought on the the Zabel and Aldag confessions. Aldag is very much a hypocrite. He was happy to dope with them all but threw Ullrich under a bus to save his own neck.....

 

[python]

<snip>70% on blood doping was extremely high. 70% on HGH at the time is more than believable.<snip>

Actually my recall was not bad. certainly a collective recall was fuller

..: the use of growth hormone is as bad as was the use of EPO and blood doping in the 90's.

and

As soon as there will be a water-proof test for growth hormone, it will show that 80 percent [of the peloton] is taking it.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/lab-director-alleges-blood-doping-at-tour

 

[thehog]

He can deny all he want. Even if he somehow magically gets acquited, nobody should be stupid/desperate enough to sign him.

He still has his current contract. Why would anyone else need t sign him?

 

[roundabout]

Then Aldag should understand Sinkewitz really well.

 

[roundabout]

He still has his current contract. Why would anyone else need t sign him?

Do you really think it won't be his last contract?

 

[thehog]

Do you really think it won't be his last contract?

They've not fired him as yet. Bloody hell Ricco was riding up until has botched transfusion. Mosquiero will be riding soon..... The Contador case has set a precedent. If the B sample comes back false then Das Sink will be riding very soon.

 

[spalco]

I don't know if "precedent" is the right word really. I'm sure with a rider of Contador's or Ricco's caliber DSs are willing go a couple steps farther than someone with palmares as meager as Sinkewitz's. Nobody really needs him, so why bother with the negative attention?

 

[Angliru]

Maybe they had reasons to think he was suspicious? Should they have looked the other way because if they nailed Sinkewitz people would think funny things about the UCI? HGH is very hard to find, as you say. What makes you think his samples were the only ones to be tested? Maybe he just was unlucky?

Conspiracy theories tend to fail in that they never provide a motive for the crime. But the motive is crucial. A generic "they don't like Sinkewitz" won't do when they're harming themselves in the process.

I would think that anyone who has been busted once is on their radar and likely to be targeted for testing more often than the rest.

 

[Angliru]

"Stinky pits" is what Christian Vandevelde publicly called him, after Sinkewitz was ejected from the 2007 Tour. He also wished violence on the guy.

You will note that this is the same Vandevelde who didn't utter a peep when his former team leader at the Fuentes-fueled Liberty Seguros team, Roberto Heras, was popped for EPO in 2005. VDV was also characteristically silent when his team leader at the Fuentes-fueled CSC team, Ivan Basso, was popped in 2006. And golly gee, never said a word about David Millar, either. Nor about the Landis allegations.

Easy pickins is easy pickins, eh Christian?

I'd imagine that they were all people that he developed some type of relationship/friendship with leaving him less likely to publicly condemn them in the manner in which you state he did with Sinkewitz.

 

[Escarabajo]

I'd imagine that they were all people that he developed some type of relationship/friendship with leaving him less likely to publicly condemn them in the manner in which you state he did with Sinkewitz.

So why do it. If you are not going to be consistent with everybody is better to not comment about it. IMHO.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Sinky is unpopular. He was unpopular before he came back; he came back with PSK Whirlpool, did fairly well, then spent half a season without a team before joining ISD and doing pretty well. Perhaps naïvely, or out of the belief that because of how he had behaved upon being caught he would be more likely to return clean than many, I came to the conclusion that his good results in the second half of last season were due to being fresher than everybody else around him due to only doing half a season's worth of racing. Maybe they even were, but as he said back in December, he was looking forward to the first time in years that he's entered a season's racing with stability, knowing who he's racing for, what his racing program will be, and he can prepare properly.

Evidently "prepare properly" has a certain euphemistic meaning in the Sinkewitz household.

Frankly, though, the opposition his comeback has faced compared to di Luca (remember he was banned back in '06-'07 then came back and was stilled doped to the eyeballs, and still manages to be back less than 2 years down the line now) is farcical. I think there IS a level of negativity towards him because of breaking omertà, but I also feel that di Luca has the benefit of being Italian; strong tifosi, strong national racing scene meaning there will always be a smaller team willing to take a punt on him for the race results and attention it will garner. German cycling is not like that. If Sinkewitz CAN come back after this, he's not likely to get any contract in a major team of the top 2 levels. He's not likely to be welcome at the German teams for youngsters like LKT Brandenburg, Heizomat-Mapei or Seven Stones, which basically leaves him with Nutrixxion-Sparkasse or going back to a small Central/Eastern European team like PSK, like Aktio Group-Mostostal Pulawy, like Radland Kärnten, like Ora Hotels or Alpha Baltic; teams that won't race much that appears on the radar for any but the most dedicated followers of the sport.

 

[D-Queued]

JV weighs in on Twitter

This was recently posted on Twitter:

@euanlindsay ... After having a serious "anti-doping" German journalist beg me to take Sinkewitz on my team? I don't know?

In response to

@Vaughters JV, how would you go about getting cycling back on German TV?

Anyone know who the journalist was that swore Stinky pits was clean?

Dave.

 

[blackcat]

"Stinky pits" is what Christian Vandevelde publicly called him, after Sinkewitz was ejected from the 2007 Tour. He also wished violence on the guy.

You will note that this is the same Vandevelde who didn't utter a peep when his former team leader at the Fuentes-fueled Liberty Seguros team, Roberto Heras, was popped for EPO in 2005. VDV was also characteristically silent when his team leader at the Fuentes-fueled CSC team, Ivan Basso, was popped in 2006. And golly gee, never said a word about David Millar, either. Nor about the Landis allegations.

Easy pickins is easy pickins, eh Christian?

well, I have heard (multiple Chinese whisper degrees of separation) that a la Ms Odessa machine Gunn, who uttered her husband's practices on Rabo, that Mrs CVdV got a little nervous when there was a test in the wings early last year, hypothetically, a test, that Sinky might have fallen foul to.

There were ampoules in the fridge, and someones other half got anxty.

OK, all heresay. But deCanio should get on this cos he thumped Chocko Brooks over his fridge in Italy when at Linda Mac.

Those that preach the loudest often reveal, it is but instructive, cos they should be criticizing the sport writ large, and not making relativist comparisons, then making scapegoats on Saunier, on Ricco, on Sinkewitz. The bluster and opprobrium is revealing, a little projection going on methinks. Hypocrites, protected by their anglo saxon tongue.

 

[Ney the Viking]

well, I have heard (multiple Chinese whisper degrees of separation) that a la Ms Odessa machine Gunn, who uttered her husband's practices on Rabo, that Mrs CVdV got a little nervous when there was a test in the wings early last year, hypothetically, a test, that Sinky might have fallen foul to.

There were ampoules in the fridge, and someones other half got anxty.

OK, all heresay. But deCanio should get on this cos he thumped Chocko Brooks over his fridge in Italy when at Linda Mac.

Those that preach the loudest often reveal, it is but instructive, cos they should be criticizing the sport writ large, and not making relativist comparisons, then making scapegoats on Saunier, on Ricco, on Sinkewitz. The bluster and opprobrium is revealing, a little projection going on methinks. Hypocrites, protected by their anglo saxon tongue.

*blinks* Erm could someone please translate/explain what blackcat wrote? It looks interesting, but I cannot for the life of me figure it out

 

[MarkvW]

Wow!

well, I have heard (multiple Chinese whisper degrees of separation) that a la Ms Odessa machine Gunn, who uttered her husband's practices on Rabo, that Mrs CVdV got a little nervous when there was a test in the wings early last year, hypothetically, a test, that Sinky might have fallen foul to.

There were ampoules in the fridge, and someones other half got anxty.

OK, all heresay. But deCanio should get on this cos he thumped Chocko Brooks over his fridge in Italy when at Linda Mac.

Those that preach the loudest often reveal, it is but instructive, cos they should be criticizing the sport writ large, and not making relativist comparisons, then making scapegoats on Saunier, on Ricco, on Sinkewitz. The bluster and opprobrium is revealing, a little projection going on methinks. Hypocrites, protected by their anglo saxon tongue.

Now that's defamatory! And written in the style of the old Hollywood gossip mags, too!

 

[Escarabajo]

*blinks* Erm could someone please translate/explain what blackcat wrote? It looks interesting, but I cannot for the life of me figure it out

Did you try Google translation services?

Maybe it will figure out the language.

 

[hrotha]

Come on, it takes some researching and googling but it's not that hard to figure out once you know who's who. Odessa Gunn is Levi's wife, Mrs CVdV is Vande Velde's wife, Sinky is Sinkewitz, deCanio is Matt DeCanio, Chocko Brooks is Benjamin Brooks, Linda Mac is the 2000 Linda McCartney team, and I am bored.

 

[ludwig]

I'm a cynic, I know, but it seems to me its in the interest of the UCI to get riders like Sinkewitz out of the sport. Sinkewitz spoke frankly about doping and how he was driven to do it and how widespread doping was, and consequently he was ostracized from the sport.

Think about it peoples--Sinkewitz's disgrace and confession played a major role in German TV being fed up with cycling and the downfall of the Deutschland Tour.

So it's not surprising that this guy turns up with a positive when he tries to come back--write him off as an unrepentant doper and get him out for good. If Sinkewitz tries to argue he's just did what he needed to do to compete, then the authorities say he's just a villian trying to justify his repeated mistakes.

This would explain why Kohl never tried to come back. Omerta finds ways to exact vengence.

 

[ludwig]

This was recently posted on Twitter:

@euanlindsay ... After having a serious "anti-doping" German journalist beg me to take Sinkewitz on my team? I don't know?

In response to

@Vaughters JV, how would you go about getting cycling back on German TV?

Anyone know who the journalist was that swore Stinky pits was clean?

Dave.

No surprise here. Vaughters won't touch any rider that violates the omerta code. Hiring someone like Sinkewitz would put him at odds with the rest of the peloton.

 

[hrotha]

I'm a cynic, I know, but it seems to me its in the interest of the UCI to get riders like Sinkewitz out of the sport. Sinkewitz spoke frankly about doping and how he was driven to do it and how widespread doping was, and consequently he was ostracized from the sport.

Think about it peoples--Sinkewitz's disgrace and confession played a major role in German TV being fed up with cycling and the downfall of the Deutschland Tour.

So it's not surprising that this guy turns up with a positive when he tries to come back--write him off as an unrepentant doper and get him out for good. If Sinkewitz tries to argue he's just did what he needed to do to compete, then the authorities say he's just a villian trying to justify his repeated mistakes.

This would explain why Kohl never tried to come back. Omerta finds ways to exact vengence.

Problem is, Sinkewitz came back in 2009.

 

[ludwig]

Problem is, Sinkewitz came back in 2009.

Right, but no Pro Tour team would have him. Riders who are banned for doping with palmares like Sinkewitz usually have no trouble getting Pro Tour rides when they return.

I think the fix is still in. I hope I'm wrong, but this sort of thing is the norm in cycling.