So Suddenly the Tour is clean. Where did this idea come from

[Dr. Maserati]

One train of though I've been pondering with:

The French riders underperforming from 2000
-> French sponsors scaling down their team budgets
-> 2009 Bouygues Telecom & Cofidis drop out of ProTour due to poor results
-> It gets increasingly hard to get new French sponsors
-> 2010 At the very last minute Bouygues gets Europcar as a new (low budget) sponsor
-> 2011 Europcar produces best performances by French riders since 1998

I find it extremely fascinating that when French sponsors are finally starting to lose their belief on their riders performing one team with a new sponsor produces great results. I'm not pointing any fingers but to me it looks like Europcar finally brought major doping back to French teams

No, if logic is to be applied it would be at the end of a contract that a team might start suddenly performing.

Also, this really cannot be applied to Europcar - when they were Bouygues they were always in the running for a stage victory.
The only difference in this Tour was TV's performance which was a result of the bunch chasing because of crashes.

 

[Big Doopie]

Then, the notorious dopers, have had cases before or just declared such by The Clinic, seem to have had a really hard time to stay on their bikes. Like HWSNBN in his last Tour. Lots of scrutiny with regards to doping. Falling performances throughout. Very, VERY strong prologue for an old guy, and then just fading, holding back his $$$ domestiques.
Contador had hard times and recovered mostly on class. Basso, well into the game again after doing time, is still but a shadow of the rider he was pre-Puerto. He "should" be winning tours easily now, HWSNBN out of the way.
The presumed supertalents or superdopers may have for a significant part have been top responders to their optimal programs, and now taking it a bit more easy, are losing a lot of their edge over the also rans.

I would have hated to see the RS train make up half the top-10 though. It would not have sped up the climbs much, but the sport does well without them. Better to doubt the front runners than to knwo they are dirty.

great post (along with many here).

i guess i keep coming back to "what would a cleaner (not clean) tour look like?"

1. questionable past performers slowing down
2. allowing others to shine more than usual -- not changing their perfs from past years, but now being more competitive.
3. the racing in the alp mountain stages in the third week looking like the closest thing to pre-epo racing and so freaking exciting and dramatic because of it.

i think the 2011 tour was the best tour in 20+ years. and i am hopeful that it was due to a doping-limited peloton.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

I agree with " winterfold " , the only bikes you guys see are those in magazines !

Asked for a moratorium on " Doping of the TDF racers " and "dr m. " pipes up with spurious comments and gets the thread locked !

Family name is real and "resting " is that i am doing little on the bike after several months of giving my " doctors advice ( embolisms ! ) a wide berth ".

Reading my blogs could put you in the picture but then there is nothing other than "sinitron" to THIN the blood for you to pick over !

UCI will over the next couple of weeks give you plenty to speculate about if you need to exercise .

Perhaps i will find time to read the efforts you people made on the results for 2009 & 2010 , could be there are the same sort of behaviour patterns ?

It wasn't me who locked the thread (or called for it to be locked) - take it up with the Mods, I would be more than happy to discuss your comments.

 

[pmcg76]

Just want to throw a few more bones in the scrap here. It is true that a lot of big names went out early and this led to more lesser lights being further up the rankings. But do people believe those same contenders who crashed out would have made the race harder and faster? Judging by the way the top guys were struggling and cracking, I find that hard to believe otherwise all the contenders who crashed out would have walked away with this Tour.

Perhaps as well as looking at positions, we should note time gaps to the top riders. Over the last 10 years, very few French riders have finished within 20 minutes of the winner. Top French guys over the last few years have been 2010 Gadret @24.04 or Roche@ 16.59
2009 Le Mevel@14.44 thanks to a soft break.
2008 Casar @19.25 again thanks to soft breaks

The only other French riders to finish within 20mins in the 00s was Moreau x 3, Francois Simon(again a huge break) and Cyril Dessel@ 8.41 in 06(was Dessel a break beneficiary as well?).

This year Voeckler, Peraud, Rolland, Taaramae(as good as being French) & Coppel all finished within 20mins and Jeanneson was just outside. This is the best French performance in over 20 years. Whether the French are now doping or the race is cleaner, its an interesting statistic.

 

[Big Doopie]

...Whether the French are now doping or the race is cleaner, its an interesting statistic.

yes it is.

the sense of hope for future gc results coming out of french riders is also unparalleled in recent times.

is it because they feel they have at least a shot now...

imagine rolland hanging on and playing cat and mouse with armstrong and pantani with 3km to the top on l'alpe...and actually winning?

not bloody likely.

 

[hfer07]

I tend to agree. I tend to suspect that for various reasons the doping has been dialed back in some races - we can see in the Giro and TOC that there are still plenty of eyebrow raising performances. But even so I wonder what would have happened if say RS had made it to stages 18 and 19 with Horner, LL, Kloeden, Brankovic, Popovych and HZ all healthy if we would have ended up with a super-train. What would have been the effect if we had had JVDB and Jelle in the mountains together. Likewise, if Ricco hadn't botched up his DIY transfusion he would have probably been there for Vac, alongside BL and Hoogerland.

We could easily have had a top ten with Horner, Kloeden, Levi, Ricco, Wiggums, JVDB, Vino + Dertie and the Schlecks in but for mishaps.

This is why I would be a little bit hesitant to say 'cleaner tour' for one, and why I would also be a bit careful about viewing it as a success for the biopassport and investigations.

if your rational is correct-then the Schleck Bros should have annihilated this tour since their doper colleges/competition departed early & had left a weak Contador & Evans to deal with.... overall the gaps are relatively close-considering the 1:20 "issue" from stage one- otherwise the gaps could have been really tight---now -don't get me wrong- dope took place & Evans was the one who benefited the most....

 

[Mrs John Murphy]

if your rational is correct-then the Schleck Bros should have annihilated this tour since their doper colleges/competition departed early & had left a weak Contador & Evans to deal with.... overall the gaps are relatively close-considering the 1:20 "issue" from stage one- otherwise the gaps could have been really tight---now -don't get me wrong- dope took place & Evans was the one who benefited the most....

The Schleck's are funny ones. Million dollar legs, 10 cent brains. What I think it shows is that all the drugs in the world can't overcome the inability to descend and woeful tactics.

 

[LastDamnation]

Depends which Horner/LL/Kloeden were going to turn up. If the Horner/LL from TOC had turned up then who knows. Lotto look so charged they are glowing, if JVDB is on the same mix as Gilbert and JV then I would have expected a very strong performance. The same goes for Wiggins

Sorry if I'm missing something, but where is the evidence that Wiggins is particularly charged?

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

I don't agree that that Cadel is the first clean rider to win the TDF. Lets do the numbers
1/ Cadel in the past years has cracked on tough mountains. he has not held it with the pure climbers
2/ Cadel has not lasted more than 2 weeks on other TDF or Giro. His last week has seen an exhausted athlete.
3/ Cadel was right in front in the first week competing with the sprinters and in the last week hanging with the climbers including attacking and leading the chase.
4/ At 34 Cadel is able to recover in the way he couldn't in his 20's??

Everything points to juice. At 34, just say whatever and go for it, if they catch me I don't care, I won the tour and I can retire at 34.

I will overlook this one, better him than AS in yellow...but don't be back at 35...don't push it.

Evans did L'Alpe d'Huez in about 40.25 in the third week of the 2006 TDF. If he's doping now he certainly was back then.

 

[roundabout]

And in about 41.46 in 2008.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

And in about 41.46 in 2008.

That was after a crash in the 2nd week, I think. He was obviously not at his best back then.

 

[Irish2009]

Clean no, cleaner perhaps. I would say cleaner as more riders were in contention going into the final week, most riders had at least one bad day, the only performance i thought was suspect was the day Andy won with his Landis-esque break, but he to faltered......

 

[Frosty]

2006 tour went up alpe d'huez the day after a rest day so you could expect times to be a bit quicker.

 

[karlboss]

Yet another voice for cleaner, but not clean tour, though part of me would like to believe clean can now compete.

Still wondering how high up the first clean rider finished? This is the first time for many years I am not absolutely certain the winner was doping.

Before you accuse me of being naive please read what I wrote.

 

[maltiv]

Yet another voice for cleaner, but not clean tour, though part of me would like to believe clean can now compete.

Still wondering how high up the first clean rider finished? This is the first time for many years I am not absolutely certain the winner was doping.

Before you accuse me of being naive please read what I wrote.

Why is Evans any less suspicious than Carlos Sastre? Both were on shady teams when winning, but neither of them have any involvement in any known scandals or anything.

 

[JMBeaushrimp]

Just want to throw a few more bones in the scrap here. It is true that a lot of big names went out early and this led to more lesser lights being further up the rankings. But do people believe those same contenders who crashed out would have made the race harder and faster? Judging by the way the top guys were struggling and cracking, I find that hard to believe otherwise all the contenders who crashed out would have walked away with this Tour.

Perhaps as well as looking at positions, we should note time gaps to the top riders. Over the last 10 years, very few French riders have finished within 20 minutes of the winner. Top French guys over the last few years have been 2010 Gadret @24.04 or Roche@ 16.59
2009 Le Mevel@14.44 thanks to a soft break.
2008 Casar @19.25 again thanks to soft breaks

The only other French riders to finish within 20mins in the 00s was Moreau x 3, Francois Simon(again a huge break) and Cyril Dessel@ 8.41 in 06(was Dessel a break beneficiary as well?).

This year Voeckler, Peraud, Rolland, Taaramae(as good as being French) & Coppel all finished within 20mins and Jeanneson was just outside. This is the best French performance in over 20 years. Whether the French are now doping or the race is cleaner, its an interesting statistic.

The "french" don't have a lock on genes...

Watch it, dumdum. You're starting to sound racist...

These are Nationalities. Not races. "The French" does not equate to a genetic group ...

Sheesh, take that tinfoil hat off for a minute...

Ooopss... pmcg, check your PM. Sorry about that.

 

[mastersracer]

pretty robust correlation between opinions of a cleaner Tour and the desperation of The Clinic. Wasn't there a time when charges of doping were actually grounded in at least a well-conceived conspiracy theory, appearing in a Joe Papp email, or being named on Matt DeCanio's website? Now all it takes is falling off your bike???

 

[Granville57]

Personally, I think that if Horner, LL, JB, Kloeden etc had made it to the mountains we would have seen a different tour...

We could have had a top ten of Schlecks, RS riders, AC, Cuddles Wiggums, JVDB, and Vino would we be saying the tour looked cleaner then?

But do people believe those same contenders who crashed out would have made the race harder and faster?

When Andy attacked on his way to the Galibier, no one moved. If one guy chased, others would have to follow. Given the pre-Tour form they were showing, I have a hard time imagining that either Horner or Wiggins wouldn't have reacted to Andy's move. That could've had quite an effect on how the rest of the race played out.

Faster? I don't know.
Harder? I believe so.

Horner was looking ridiculously primed for the Tour. With a healthy Klöden and Brajkovič in the mix? Who knows what would've happened?

 

[Sørensen]

Well wait until next year when 2011 TDF winner Cadel Evans is losing by 5 minutes to 2012 TDF winner Alberto Contador. All those informing us cycling is now clean will regain their sanity and proclaim, that cycling is in fact not clean.

 

[danjo007]

sastre was not clean. he rode the days where everyone was doped.

 

[Granville57]

I was going to start a new thread for this but perhaps that's not necessary.

Here's my question:

What type of scrutiny were this year's TdF leaders under?

Will we have access to the number and types of tests that the GC contenders were subjected to? Obviously Hushovd (non-GC) and Voeckler would've been tested every day in yellow, but Evans and A. Schleck only won one stage each (minus the TT) and weren't ever really "leading" the race but for the final day.

And Contador? Given that his entire future is in question based on his past, would he have been subjected to extra monitoring? If not, why not?

So, who did the testing and will we see the records of such (not the results necessarily but the process—types, frequency, etc.)?

 

[karlboss]

Why is Evans any less suspicious than Carlos Sastre? Both were on shady teams when winning, but neither of them have any involvement in any known scandals or anything.

Sastre Alpe d'huez in 39'31" sitting right along side riis's time. Cadel Evans 2011 Ascent 42'30" sounds a whole lot more plausible to me.

 

[hrotha]

sastre was not clean. he rode the days where everyone was doped.

Same as Evans. Sastre turned pro in 1998, Evans in 2001.

 

[Velodude]

I was going to start a new thread for this but perhaps that's not necessary.

Here's my question:

What type of scrutiny were this year's TdF leaders under?

Will we have access to the number and types of tests that the GC contenders were subjected to? Obviously Hushovd (non-GC) and Voeckler would've been tested every day in yellow, but Evans and A. Schleck only won one stage each (minus the TT) and weren't ever really "leading" the race but for the final day.

And Contador? Given that his entire future is in question based on his past, would he have been subjected to extra monitoring? If not, why not?

So, who did the testing and will we see the records of such (not the results necessarily but the process—types, frequency, etc.)?

About Andy Schleckhas been referred to before in an article dated 19 July 2011 (Saturday being 17 July 2011 - the weekend before the final week) :

Andy Schleck complained on Twitter about a quick succession of drug tests Saturday, including one in a restaurant where he had to carry a urine sample as others were dining.

The International Cycling Union and France's anti-doping agency are doing hundreds of doping checks during the race. UCI officials have been unapologetic about the intensity of its doping controls.

 

[sniper]

hrotha posted this article earlier.
http://www.lalsace.fr/actualite/2011/07/24/le-docteur-megret-sur-ses-gardes
the guy says he's worried about the legality of corticoids, as they can be used to increase the effect of EPO, thus allowing for lower doses of EPO to be more effective, i.e. allowing for microdosing.

he also presents lots of interesting average output data.
Pantani in 1995 470 W in the alpes.

This year: A.Schleck was 1 min 12 faster up the Izoard than Armstrong in 2000.