Tour de France 2007 thread (2 Viewers)


Suggesting Groenewegen will be suspended for nine months. This means that he is not allowed to race until May 6, 2021.


Jakobsen is back on the bike allegedly. It's going to be hard for him, as I don't see him being able to contest sprints again. I hope his face got reassembled OK at least.
 
MILANO - SAN REMO tomorrow.

apart from watching races I pay little attention to what is going on behind the scenes anymore.

a couple of major stories from over the winter that caught my eye:

Tom Dumoulin decided to put his career on hold in (23 January 2021):



this has happened before, most notably with Kittel, so unless Tom changes his mind quickly
at his age, his career seems over.
as far as i know nothing has since surfaced that indicates his hand was forced. but who knows?
of the established stars really only Dumoulin and Pinot seemed to ask questions about doping.
in 2019 it emerged that witnesses in the Operation Aderlass case were shown pictures of
Dumoulin and Roglic to see if they could ID them but neither was implicated in the trial.

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in Innsbruck on 13 January 2021 former Aqua Blue 2017 Vuelta stage winner Stefan Denifl was given
a two year prison sentence (16 months suspended) for defrauding his employers through doping.
he was also fined 349,000 Euro (seemingly his wages from 2014-2018) but Denifl's former team
sponsor IAM said they didn't want the money back.

and in Munich on 15-1-2021 the main doctor involved in the case - Operation Aderlass - Mark Schmidt
(a German based in Erfurt) was given a sentence of 4 years 10 months and fined 158,000 after
confessing to a series of charges, mostly related to blood doping practices.
he was also banned from practicing medicine for three years.



while doping has been and sporting fraud have been crimes in some countries for as long as 20 years.
I have never heard of anyone inc. medical people being jailed on these charges before.
this is a Rubicon moment.
I don't think prison was remotely warranted here (it very rarely is in any walk of life*)

I'd give Denifl a smaller fine / a life ban and strike off Schmidt as a doctor and fine him.

* wouldn't give a fuck about Dr. Ferrari / Lance/ Bruyneel / Brailsford / Shane Sutton though.

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as far as the Dr. Richard Freeman case goes. I think I already took the piss out Shane Sutton here before.
but here is another reminder of what a dangerous psychopath he is -


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the best part of the year for cycling is coming up (April). hopefully the classics won't be postponed.
but if it has to happen then so be it.

and finally an Irish cyclist is getting the coverage they deserve -
everyone knows Sam Bennett now. about time.
 
one of the things I was always fascinated by was Froome's insistence he would never be done for doping. I always interpreted as meaning that he was doing it, but in such as way as to carefully hide his tracks.

Its a toss of a coin as to I'd rather see busted between Wiggins and Froome. I think I'd rather see Wiggins go down. Arrogant cunt.
 
Brailsford and Shane Sutton were the masterminds. so I want Dodgy Dave gone next.
Wiggins and Froome were just the puppets but it could have been anyone they got their hands on.
 
one of the things I was always fascinated by was Froome's insistence he would never be done for doping. I always interpreted as meaning that he was doing it, but in such as way as to carefully hide his tracks.

Its a toss of a coin as to I'd rather see busted between Wiggins and Froome. I think I'd rather see Wiggins go down. Arrogant cunt.
I always interpreted that as them only abusing TUEs.

Wiggins is the less pleasant seeming of the two, by a fair amount, but I think he didn't believe the clean Sky bullshit, whereas Froome seems more convinced in this and he just coincidentally happened to become a good rider the moment they hockeyed a rake of corticosteroids and T into him.
 
Yeah I think the one thing you can say for Wiggins is that after his one year it seems like he wanted to go off the drugs. Still fuck him though.
he was doped off his nut when he was with garmin. He might have cooled the jets a it after winning the tour, but he was deffo on the gear before that.
 
I always interpreted that as them only abusing TUEs.

Wiggins is the less pleasant seeming of the two, by a fair amount, but I think he didn't believe the clean Sky bullshit, whereas Froome seems more convinced in this and he just coincidentally happened to become a good rider the moment they hockeyed a rake of corticosteroids and T into him.
they were about to cut Froome loose that time. If you remember the sequence of events in that Vuelta (2011). Froome wasn't orginally on the team. His contract was just about to expire with no sign of them renewing. Then someone gets sick or injured on Sky and they need a last-minute replacement. They sent for Froomey, cos its getting late in the year and the big guns are either focusing on late season classics, or have finished for the season.

I don't have much recollection of the first 2 weeks of that Vuelta, but I went over to watch the last week as a good few of the stages were held around Cantabria/Basque Country. From the stage on the Angliru, to Pena Carbaga, to the end, was an absolute joke.

Lets not forget that Froome is the 'rightful' winner of that Vuelta, despite finishing second, thanks to dirty Cobo getting busted. The same dirty Cobo who Froome, an absolute non-entity until then, was racing up climbs with, and who bet him on a couple of occasions.

The thing was, I don't think Sky would have been arsed investing in juice for a donkey like Froome. He was a lone wolf, and its most likely his missus' weight-lifting family that masterminded his rise to prominence, and who looked after it since then. Thats kinda why I was curious about Froome's comments. TUEs would be the obvious connection to make, but there's no way he was just sticking to whatever Sky's dodgy doctors were writing on prescription pads.

Froome's is the most obvious case of doping I can remember from my time watching the sport. Even moreso than Armstrong, Pantani, Ullrich, or even Riccardo Ricco or Alexander Vinokourov. Those guys all had a bit of raw talent. Froome didn't. He was an outright donkey.

But Wiggins was just a fucking prick from day 1. Him and his prick wife and get fucked, the pair of them.

Incidentally, I was looking at the numbers from Stuyven's ride in the MSR yesterday. Fucking bonkers. I've only started watching watts since I got a smart-trainer in October, but I couldn't hold the numbers those lads averaged for more than a few minutes, let alone hold it steady for 300km. Just fucking nuts.

And the numbers from Van de Poel's finish in the Straide Bianche. 1300 watts on that final climb. Fucking what?

One thing is fairly evident. Doping is still rife in cycling.
 
The thing was, I don't think Sky would have been arsed investing in juice for a donkey like Froome.

See, prednisone isn't that expensive, and Sky were exceptionally well funded. If Sky are sending a rider, they are prepping him, properly. Regardless of the rider: if he's getting sent on a grand tour, he's getting prepped. We know they had carte blanche on the TUE bit, we know they were pushing T intravenously.

Froome was middle tier at best. I believe he had bilharzia, and i believe he was a fat fuck for the majority of his early career. I think the the TUE abuse happened to suit him extraordinarily well, and minus the weight and infection he turned into what he did.

I think he thinks he's clean too. But the Sky reality warping shield enveloped him, and he believed that injecting steroids for his health is also normal and clean.

The TUE thing is easily the biggest problem in cycling until someone actually does something about it. I think doping, as in old school, blood bags, blood boosters etc is way down. TUEs are in part filling the gap though. and as usual, the UCI et al knows this, and as usual they could stop it instantly whenever they choose to (publish all TUE applications and grants). And they choose not to.
 

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