Monday, September 10, 2007

TDF another 2 cents

The TDF recap issue of Procycling had some pretty interesting doping allegations. They were pushing a France + Germany=clean vs Italy and Spain=doped agenda pretty hard. The DS of Bouyges Telecom (JM Bernaudeau) claims the UCI was distributing a dossier that should young red blood cell counts that were consistent with no doping for France and Germany, but "other nationalities were identical to each other, but in a completely different place on the graph". If the UCI really has this info and the science shows that to be consistent with doping, why aren't they dropping the hammers?

Sandy Casar had an interview that was pretty interesting. He didn't drop any names, but called a lot of things like he saw them. He called out Phonak,Pozzatto, Riis, Moser, and Armstrong for behavior he didn't agree with. He also cites Pat McQuaid and some UCI stat that 60% of Spanish and 50% of Italian rider's blood had "anomalies" in them. Again, why isn't the UCI cranking up the pressure?
It used to be easier to write off guys who were out of contention as "Sour Grapes" but as more and more winners test positive, they seem more and more credible.
In addition to conjecture there was a very MLB stat geek breakdown of Rasmussen's time trialing.
No matter how you cut it. This was not your usual TDF puff piece but an above average issue of a great cycling mag

No comments: