Cookster15 said:That's not how I recall it. Evans was 3+ minutes down when Rasmussen got pulled after the Aubisque stage. Without the dope I doubt if Rasmussen would have been within 3 minutes. Until 2007 Rasmussen was just KOM stage hunter, nobody considered him a serious GC threat. I remember that Tour well and Evans was suffering like a dog to hang with Rasmussen and AC in the mountains - particularly the Pyrenees. In fact of those 3 he was the only one who looked absolutely stuffed at MTFs. If Evans was doping then he was on low grade fuel. Even in their MTB days Evans never gave Chicken a 2nd thought. Then in 2007, whoa! In fact, in hindsight, Chicken's sudden rise seemed remarkably similar to Bernard Kohl's in the following year.
How I remember it was seeing AC and MR attacking each other savagely and repeatedly in the big ring between the ski village Gourette and the summit on the Aubisque. Evans blown out the back after the second attack. I've ridden that climb and the speed those guys were going and the way they were playing with each other was "otherworldly".