I've still only got Scarponi!
To “The Hitch”. Well if its Robert Millar, then there is an abundance of non-PC replies to the question “What’s wrong with him?”. I’ll sit that one out though as I don’t want to be nasty. Sorry for being paranoid back there, but my forum status said “editor in chief”, the posts here had been predictably unsympathetic, I’m a new guy and there had just been a prominent thread about “David Millar Anti Doping Hero!”
I said in my first post I wasn’t really looking to engage in debate with folk that assume that the entire peloton (or to expand, that all GC contenders) are actively doping. But it would be rude to ignore such a thorough post and you did bring up Sastre (who is a name in the poll in the link in the original post). I doubt my arguments will be anything new here.
Firstly, the term ‘clean’ is a loaded term and therefore not ideal, but its difficult to think of an alternative – so that is why I use it. The best alternative I can come up with is “No Case To Answer” (NCTA), so I’ll try that one out for size. I’m open to any suggestions for better terms.
Secondly, there are only a couple of dozen professional cycling teams at any one time that contest a Grand Tour. Usually barely a dozen of these will have any meaningful GC ambitions in a grand tour with the rest focussing on sprints, breakaways or seemingly nothing (Radioshack!). In such circumstances, being associated with various employees of dubious character is sadly unavoidable if you want to be a GC contendor. If a rider trying to be on the straight and narrow resolves to only signing for a team with no bad history, no riders exposed as cheats and no cheat as sporting director, then they are rapidly going to find themselves without a contract.
As for the specific insinuations about Sastre, look at the top ten the year he won the TdF. The field was very weak. There’s nobody there who was a top contendor AND a confirmed doper. Valverde has never threatened the TdF podium, Kohl wasn’t a top athelete with a proven track record and allegations and mutterings against Frank Schleck & Menchov are just that, allegations – these are not “
proven dopers” as you suggest. In the years prior to 2008, Sastre was a very consistent top performer in the TdF (9th, 8th, 3rd, 4th, 1st). In 2008 itself Sastre expended an absolute minimum of energy until the Queens stage. On that stage, he attacked at the very bottom of the climb and very gradually eeked out a lead against a field of rather average climbers. Had he gained such a time gap with an attack later on the climb, it may have been suspicious. But it appeared to be earned by hard graft and a slightly higher tempo over many kilometres. His victory was consolidated by a thoroughly ordinary Individual Time Trial on the penultimate stage (he came in 12th). In short, I’ve no worries about putting Sastre in the NCTA category (although I would be delighted to be referred to a “Is Sastre Doping?” thread, or any such thread for any of the other men listed in the poll of 2011 Vuelta contenders.
On the 5% boost issue. I think percentages can be misleading – what does 5% increased performance mean in competition. Does 5% on a 30 minute climb equate to being 90 seconds quicker? Why can a clearly doping climber (Kohl 2008) not even compete with fairly average riders with little to ride for in an individual team time trial, if, as you say, the difference between top atheletes is nearer 1% ? Surely he is within 5% of the ability of such equivalent riders even on a Time Trial and yet he barely scraped inside the top 10 in 2008 against a field of knackered riders with little to ride for? I know other factors are at play, but I think using the 5% argument doesn’t help with identifying who may or may not be cheating.
On a side note I just noticed Evans bet Samuel Sanchez by 5'27" back in 2008 and 4'55" this year. Reassuring consistency.
I’m delighted to listen and read any first hand testimony Landis & Chambers have about cheating in their respective sports. As soon as they start speculating on what people they have little dealings with are up to, I completely lose interest. They’ve no more knowledge than you or I about what such folk are up to.
no one is suggesting all 199 cyclists dope as you have claimed. Its only the top riders that get put under a deeper cloud of suspicion than newcommers tend to expect.
On the contrary, that is just about what every response to this thread has claimed – that every rider is a cheat, so why differntiate? I am glad that another beacon of common sense has shone on this thread! Playing Devils Advocate, at this years TdF a non-top rider tested positive. You shouldn’t be so quick to close your mind to them all (including humble water carriers) still being cheats despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary! EPO and its ilk are so cheap that even the big rollers of professional, er, cross country skiing can splash out on it. Its well within financial reach of even the lowliest grand tour rider.
Because at the end of the day Valverde, Di Luca, Basso, Armstrong, Contador, Vino etc etc, all of them represented the good clean cycling at one stage or another as well.
Yes. But all the above named also gave performances that you can point to that, frankly, defied belief and were too good to be true (with the possible exception of Basso because of his riding style (i.e. being defensive (in the TdF at least) made his cheating less obvious)). Of course we only catch a tiny fraction of the instances of cheating, as Vinokourov’s incredible performances in the past 2 years show more clearly than ever. But I’d challenge anyone to put a Sastre performance under my nose that was clearly beyond belief or inexplicable. Heck, I’d wager you’d struggle to produce one that was mildly eyebrow raising. That’s the good thing about Youtube and its ilk though. You can call up an example quickly and make me eat my words. Or you can look at Sastre’s timings on the final climb of a mountain stage and compare it to historic cheats. I don’t have those figures, but I’d wager he’ll be considerably slower, even in his glory year of 2008.
I’d also say I like to see people, in this sub-forum of all places, denounce this thread as a “stupid” one! I was getting a belly ache in the David Millar and Philip Gilbert threads! If people who would even now treat Ricco & Landis as equally deserving of our support as Sastre & Geraint Thomas regard this thread as “stupid” then it suggests the opposite is true.