Big Doopie said:
however, i certainly don't want any "ex-" doper to come back and win a GT. it makes me want to puke.
What's your stance on Basso? He won the 2010 Giro, but his training data and testing info was posted publically to go and look at.
Remember, Valverde was closely monitored from Puerto to his eventual sanction, so he may not have been charging to the full Riccò before his suspension (not to the extent of the Kelme days). And the guy has been a superstar in the making ever since he first got on the bike as a child. At some point down the road he went from being a super-talented kid to a super-talented-and-juiced adult.
This GT route is well suited to a guy like Valverde. There are a bunch of medium mountains, not long enough to tail him off, and liable to come to a sprint of the elites, which was always his strength.
I also don't buy that he only decided to do the Vuelta just before the start. It was probably the plan all along. Apart from the TDU, this looks an awful lot like a normal Valverde race program. And he was poor between Paris-Nice and this Vuelta; he was a domestique at the Tour de Suisse, and his tour was derailed by crashes.
There are three guys who are clearly streets ahead at this race. Alejandro Valverde being one of them, when you look down the list of names in the race, isn't a surprise. The route suits him and he's a top quality rider. Maybe he's back on the sauce, maybe he isn't. I wouldn't like to say. But for a guy like Don Alejandro, he doesn't need to be doping to 2009 di Luca levels to do this. Too many one-climb stages where fatigue doesn't come into account enough, and makes recovery easier.
If they'd had a couple more stages like the Cuitu Negru, then we could be more clear on the matter, as he's never really liked multiple major col stages. Bola del Mundo will tell us more than Fuente Dé ever could, because there you had an exhausted Katyusha team who'd been leading the péloton for two weeks until that point, and Valverde had the psychological advantage and the men up the road to share pacing duty with.