Official Tour De France thread 2006. (1 Viewer)

[inspector horse]

ah well salvodelli 8th, but what a ride from valverde coming in 5th, tt being his major weakness

 

[error type 11]

The prologue was on itv3 today so heres hoping theyll be covering the stages live every day

 

[IFF]

i read with great interest the shane stokes story in today's irish times

according to him, in the Operacion Puerto, there have been footballers, basketball players, tennis, and athletics people involved aswell but why have the media in spain only named the cyclists.

it doesn't seem fair and it seems biased against cycling

actually naming innocent until proven guilty individuals isn't fair aswell. Trial by media doesn't exist as the media becomes the judge, jury and executioner

 

[Cormcolash]

I dunno if he is there, although I did read that he wasn't part of the scandal, but I reckon Vinokourov will have a shout at this year's tour now that Armstrong isn't riding.
Either that or Pantani will come back and win.

 

[inspector horse]

I dunno if he is there, although I did read that he wasn't part of the scandal, but I reckon Vinokourov will have a shout at this year's tour now that Armstrong isn't riding.
Either that or Pantani will come back and win.

vino is out by the fact that loads of his team are implicated meaning astana-wurth cant field 6+ riders which is mandatory to compete

 

[nuke terrorist]

the real problem as i said on the TDF 2005 thread a year ago is nothing was ever done to combat doping in spain until this year. NOTHING.
nothing by the government, nothing by the spanish cycling federation, nothing by the courts/public porsecutors.

in france the federation did a lot to change things post 1998 and there and in other countries the legal authorities got majorly involved ( belgium and italy ).
this gave sports people a free hand to do almost and take almost anything they want without censure - doping is only now in the process of becoming illegal in spain. this was in the news only a couple of days before manolo saiz and dr. fuentes were arrested.

in french cycling doping has been largely eliminated (no french cyclists are named in the investigation ) which is why french cycling has been so weak since 1998.
for example :
- david moncoutie was the only frenchman rranked higher than # 64 in the pro tour ranking at the end of 2005 at # 30.

- frederic guesdon winner of paris - roubaix in 1997 is still the youngest french rider to have won a one day classic ( unless i'm very much mistaken but i doubt it).

there was even a major change in attitude in the teams and there management who may well have been part of the doping culture in in their own careers.
french cycling is what i call 'crap but cool'.
however in spain nothing changed at all.

no one should be shocked about this it was sadly an accident waiting to happen. i hope this will be a watershed that leads to a revolution against doping similar to the one french cycling president daniel baal spearheaded in 1999 i've been thinking for a while that (when) something like this happening it would be the only way to wake the cycling authorities up that they had do much much more.
i've not been impressed with pat mc quaid as president of world cycling the UCI and his mentor hein verbruggen who he took over from was only interested in image damage limitation rather than making hard decisions.

at least some dopers will now be sorted out but alot more remain in the race i have to believe. this will cost cycling a massive lot of sponsorship in the years to come. if the riders are found guilty then they are no loss forget them i'll still keep watching even if i still don't trust the winners most of the time.

i missed the prologue to watch the world cup but i'll watch the rest. apparently mancebo has announced he is quitting cycling.
anyone found guilty will be banned for two years and banned from the pro tour for two futher years.

 

[IFF]

i missed the prologue to watch the world cup but i'll watch the rest. .

the world cup game started at 4pm. the cycling was over at 3:30pm. i am confused as to why you had to miss the cycling in order to watch the football match between england and portugal

what a ride from valverde coming in 5th, tt being his major weakness

odd statement. so far this season in pro tour events:

-7th Prologue of Dauphine Libere @8 seconds. top 4 were Zabriskie, Hincapie, O'Grady and Lang. a further second behind was Thor Hushovd
-9th in the longer TT in Dauphine libere. 2 minutes behind Zabriskie but only 1:10 behind Landis and other main contenders
-2nd Prologue in Tour of Romandy. 6/10 of a second behind Paolo Savoldelli
-2nd in 24km TT in the Tour of the Basque Country. 6 seconds behind Gomez Marchanta. it was the same day as Numbersixvalverde (who's named after the owners holiday home in portugal. not the cyclist) won the grand national

sorry when it comes to cycling i am a know all know nothing

 

[IFF]

This is a satirical take on the operacion puerto scandal:

Tour de France News Flash

More people implicated in Operacion Puerto, the drugs scandal that is rocking the world of cycling. While we won't name the names, they are in total 38,678,485 people that have been implicated. tags have been found with the following names on them - "Sam", "Pebbles", "Rover", "Ruby", "Max", "Lucky","eddy"and "Rocky"

Some people have been willing to give comments in relation to their implication. Joan Nolte said "I have no knowledge of any wrongdoing. I am innocent. This is appalling that i should be implicated. Mrs Nolte owns a dog called Sam and is therefore uilty until she can prove herself innocent. Mrs Nolte's next door neighbour Nick Male, who also owns a dog called Sam, told our reporter "not to be stupid and to go home" and New Yorker bruce Almighty when confronted, who also owns a dog called Sam, said that he wished he was god again so his prayer for these allegations to go away would come true.

Other people implicated like 4 year old Bronagh Larkin, owner of Pebbles said "our reporter was bold". asfter this she screamed for her mommy and started crying. a sure sign of her guilt. The Clark family have also been implicated and are refusing to admit their obvious guily. they said they had no comment for CF and threatened us wth there lawyers. The are obviously guilty. They have owned dogs that have been called "ruby" and "rocky".

Names have been changed to protect the gulty

*dragnets music starts*

 

[inspector horse]

the world cup game started at 4pm. the cycling was over at 3:30pm. i am confused as to why you had to miss the cycling in order to watch the football match between england and portugal



odd statement. so far this season in pro tour events:

-7th Prologue of Dauphine Libere @8 seconds. top 4 were Zabriskie, Hincapie, O'Grady and Lang. a further second behind was Thor Hushovd
-9th in the longer TT in Dauphine libere. 2 minutes behind Zabriskie but only 1:10 behind Landis and other main contenders
-2nd Prologue in Tour of Romandy. 6/10 of a second behind Paolo Savoldelli
-2nd in 24km TT in the Tour of the Basque Country. 6 seconds behind Gomez Marchanta. it was the same day as Numbersixvalverde (who's named after the owners holiday home in portugal. not the cyclist) won the grand national

sorry when it comes to cycling i am a know all know nothing

just what i'd heard/read but those results certainly contradict that, ill swot up in future

 

[inspector horse]

[MEDIA]mms://vipeurosport.yacast.net/eurosport/2006/07/02/hlts_stage 1_27482_4_18_0_320x240.wmv[/MEDIA]

 

[mr pharmacist!!!!1]

did anyone watch the documentary this morning on tg4 on the history of the tour de france?
fascinating stuff, even more fascinating was watching steven roache trying to present segments off it, stiff as a board and sentences stopping and starting from him trying to read the cue cards.

 

[ilovehoovering]

did anyone watch the documentary this morning on tg4 on the history of the tour de france?
fascinating stuff, even more fascinating was watching steven roache trying to present segments off it, stiff as a board and sentences stopping and starting from him trying to read the cue cards.

i saw the end of that. the closing comments were painful. think it was Sean Kelly though. or so Paula said. she's the cycling fan in the house.

 

[paula]

yeah, that was sean kelly. unfortunately missed most of the documentary (it was narrated my david duffield too!). sean kelly is v wooden but his grumping and lack of patience with mike whatshisname on eurosport was always amusing.
this is the first year i've been without eurosport though so i won't get to watch the tour properly. highlights on itv and tg4 isn't the same. i'm a bit of a flaky cycling fan the rest of the year, but i always liked watching the tour.

 

[Cormcolash]

Haha Duffield is a legend. The only cycling commentator if you ask me!
They need to get rid of all the drugs shit in cycling. For next year's Tour they should just insist on testing EVERYONE all the time so there could be no doubt of cheating.

 

[inspector horse]

anywhere streaming the tour?, rai sport seem to only stream the giro

 

[joematic]

some chaotic sprinting in the first couple of days. apparently yer man Thor had his arm slicked open my one of those comedy oversized novelty plastic hands! unlucky.

blood spinning. the practice of removing ones own blood, thus causing the kidneys to produce the bodies natural EPO, which, in turn, stimulates the bone marrow into producing more red blood cells to compensate. the athlete then reintroduces the original blood to further boost the red cell count thus improving performance.

I heard Leoos is planning on using this technique over the coming months. However, instead of replacing the original blood, he will introduce a mix of buckfast and lucozade. time will tell if this improves his performance in any major sporting event.....

 

[GARYXKNIFEDX]

Will the Buckfast get past the drug tests? What with it being a tonic and all that.

 

[inspector horse]

some chaotic sprinting in the first couple of days. apparently yer man Thor had his arm slicked open my one of those comedy oversized novelty plastic hands! unlucky.

one of these lads supposedly

and boonen claims he was electrocuted

t wasn't just Big Thor. World champion Tom Boonen, who got boxed in that mad dash to the finish, outrageously claims he was electrocuted (yes, that's electrocuted!) by a rogue appliance."I was hit in the shoulder by a camcorder. I felt an electric discharge, it really hurt,"

 

[Cormcolash]

Haha, sounds like Tom Boonen is going to try and introduce diving to cycling in his attempts to claim a stage win!

 

[nuke terrorist]

former giro pink jersey and stage winner laurent roux who rode for TVM and casino is among people who have been convicted in a dope dealing ring in france. he was the next big thing in french cycling about 1997 but was done for testosterone in 1999 and was later caught again doping a few years ago ending his career after he long since blown it anyway.

yeah IFF i shouldn't have missed the prologue it was on early. i forgot that when the dauphine was on too and missed iban mayo winning a stage .