Who is Leipheimer's Doctor?

Martingale

In the Tour of California Levi left (almost) everybody behind in the toughest climb and put almost 30 secs. on Dave Millar in the final TT. Looks like he uses the same doctor as Lance.
Am I alone on this?

campagsarge

Easy - but I know where you are coming from. Astana have the same anti-dope squad as CSC so although ASO have banned them from their races you would hope that they are clean.

Certainly the 2nd and third riders are clean as is the fifth (Cancellara) - now that is the surprise, Cancella coming in 5th, a whole 1 min and 5 seconds behind the winner. Cancellara did say his was knackered after the 7 hour slog the previous day and that he is keeping his powder dry for the Classics, whereas the Astana boys have a point to prove - hopefully though by not taking advantage of race sponsor Amgen's products.

LL was a whole 1 mph faster over the course. Wiggins was a further 24 seconds back so Levi certainly gave them a seeing to. Although to be fair to Leiphiemer, he can TT a bit.

I see that Zabriskie's facial furniture is coming on a treat. Reminds me of the 'tache sported by Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) in Gangs of New York, though I doubt weather Dave would be able to chop up a ham as well as Bill.

iainf72

Martingale wrote:

In the Tour of California Levi left (almost) everybody behind in the toughest climb and put almost 30 secs. on Dave Millar in the final TT. Looks like he uses the same doctor as Lance.
Am I alone on this?

Max Testa is his coach.

The new ProCycling Slipstream article talks a bit about the benefits of his new position.

campagsarge

That is a great name for a coach. Lets not forget that he did a very good TT in the final TT stage of the '07 TdF.

Astana have been really building up to this race to get some podiums and a good overall GC.

kellys_heroes

lets all just rejoice that we wont see Astana at the tour and there boring wheel hanging tactics,folk slag Cadel evans wheel sucking.....Leipheimer is the king of the wheel hangers.....Bruyneel has finally got his come uppence ...lets not mince our words . his team were one of the worst at drug taking....anybody else find it weird how ex riders who left there team got caught - aka good doctor ?? his signing of Basso was unforgivable.

campagsarge

Interestingread.

Wonder how the drag of the Trek measures up to the Cervelo P3C that Cancellara rides or the rather fetching Specialzed S-Works Transition?

dulldave

So he won. Does that make him a doper?

As I recall Levi nearly time trialled his way to win the TDF last year. And wasn't Testa the doctor who was replaced at Motorola because he wouldn't help the riders get EPO?

I don't think there is anything suspicious looking about his win. Astana had the best team and a point to prove so he was always in with a great chance.

campagsarge

I agree with you dulldave. It is a said reflection of our sport that any victory can give its fans a degree of doubt.

I really do think that cycling is changing for the better, its just going to take time.

mr-ed

kellys heroes wrote:

lets all just rejoice that we wont see Astana at the tour and there boring wheel hanging tactics,folk slag Cadel evans wheel sucking.....Leipheimer is the king of the wheel hangers.....Bruyneel has finally got his come uppence ...lets not mince our words . his team were one of the worst at drug taking....anybody else find it weird how ex riders who left there team got caught - aka good doctor ?? his signing of Basso was unforgivable.

Is it assumed Armstrong doped?

Don't want to start any arguments, just always assumed he was clean, but from reading Pro-Cycling (Da Cruz interview) again recently and the comments he made. Just wondering...

Bronzie

mr-ed wrote:

Is it assumed Armstrong doped?

Yes, by the majority of people who post in the "Race" section - just have a look. There seems to be a growing tide of (mainly circumstantial) evidence to back this up.

NJK

Bronzie wrote:

mr-ed wrote:

Is it assumed Armstrong doped?

Yes, by the majority of people who post in the "Race" section - just have a look. There seems to be a growing tide of (mainly circumstantial) evidence to back this up.

I thought it was common knowledge that he started taking the juice in 98, every other GC rider was on it. Guilty as charged especially as he very rarely appears or comments on anything to do with cycling, doping and other riders who he now knows were on the stuff. I know if i had trained as hard as he did and nearly got beat by a whole group of dopers i would have had a few more comments to make!

mr-ed

By the time Armstrong started winning stuff I'd sort of lost interest in cycling and only just found out how much I like it again recently! I'm probaly going to go and find out now that all the people I liked when I was young (Indurain!!) were all doing it now!

Bronzie

mr-ed wrote:

I'm probaly going to go and find out now that all the people I liked when I was young (Indurain!!) were all doing it now!

People who know a lot more about it than me reckon Lemond was the last clean grand tour winner - EPO arrived in the peloton in the early 90's just as Greg was finding it harder and harder to keep up with guys he'd wiped the floor with before.

Interestedcp

campagsarge wrote:

Easy - but I know where you are coming from. Astana have the same anti-dope squad as CSC so although ASO have banned them from their races you would hope that they are clean.

No, I don't think that Astana shares any anti-doping personnel with CSC, I don't even think that Rasmus Damsgaard has anything to do with Astana's anti-doping program except that Astana allegedly are using the anti-doping procedures he developed for CSC.

What I like about team CSC's /Damsgaard's anti-doping program is that the actual lab work on the samples are done by independent researchers at Bispebjerg Hospital; they don't depend on the money, but are motivated by the opportunity to get and analyze a lot of data from people doing sports on an extreme level. The results of the test are uploaded to a website, so potentially the UCI could read the results before even Team CSC knew them.

But there are no such descriptions on how Astana actually implement Damsgaard's anti-doping procedures on Astana's/Bruynell's homepages. Only some rather non-committed statements that makes it hard to see what, if anything, Astana does to combat doping. I.e. does the UCI have access to the doping test results, who takes the doping samples, where are the samples analyzed? etc.

My own opinion on this is that Astana never was and never will be serious about combatting doping; Contador (AKA "AC" from the Puerto files and the Manolo Saiz pupil), Klöden (The doping refugee from T-Mobile who claims that the night delivery of a package of cooled down medicine valued to 1000 D-Mark to his wife, from the same source that delivered known doping product to other T-Mobile riders, just were some cooled down vitamins), JB's former work with Lance Armstrong (enough said).


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Regards

fto-si

campagsarge wrote:

Certainly the 2nd and third riders are clean as is the fifth (Cancellara) - now that is the surprise, Cancella coming in 5th, a whole 1 min and 5 seconds behind the winner. Cancellara did say his was knackered after the 7 hour slog the previous day and that he is keeping his powder dry for the Classics, whereas the Astana boys have a point to prove - hopefully though by not taking advantage of race sponsor Amgen's products.

How can you be so certain?

secretsqirrel

Not heard any complaints from Damsgaard that his name is being taken in vain?

forearms Van Petegem

Martingale wrote:

In the Tour of California Levi left (almost) everybody behind in the toughest climb and put almost 30 secs. on Dave Millar in the final TT. Looks like he uses the same doctor as Lance.
Am I alone on this?

Levi was doing blood transfusions on Rabobank, under the aegis of the Rabobank management back in 2002. Ask Odessa his wife, she has a big mouth.

The only reason he won that timetrial at the Tour is because he got a transfusion a day or two before the tt. I would not be surprised if he was running artificial haemoglobin too.

Anyone else care to speculate why he demolished the field, and why he lost about 6 minutes in the first timetrial in 2006 whilst at Gerolsteiner?


NB. Leipheimer has always been a more than competent tter. Back in the 2001 Vuelta, where he placed 3rd on GC, he finished both tts second I believe. I think there were 4 tts. A prologue, where he also might have come second, and a mtn tt.

But as they say about Spain, the cops wont stop you if you have your epo ampoules strapped to your windshield. But we must appreciate, on dope, Levi has always excelled in the chrono. Back late 90's domestic US, he was winning tts.

But that last tt, was utter BS LL. Dope thru the nose.

Doping is not a level playing field, many tiers.

blazing_saddles

It's pretty obvious that Alberto Contador is on the same programme, too.

Look at his ITT at the recent Basque Country. He was 30 seconds up on the field, including a very comeptitve Cadel Evans, inside of 4kms! :shock:

Now we have Kloeden, always a good trialist, but rarely at his best in smaller events, win the ITT in Romandie from Thomas Dekker, having come off his bike in the final bend.

Even the lowly domestiques morph into top trialists and pack the top end of results.

The only thing more competitive than the racing, is the quality of the doping.

flattythehurdler

RichN95.

Blazing Saddles wrote:

It's pretty obvious that Alberto Contador is on the same programme, too.

Look at his ITT at the recent Basque Country. He was 30 seconds up on the field, including a very comeptitve Cadel Evans, inside of 4kms! :shock:

Now we have Kloeden, always a good trialist, but rarely at his best in smaller events, win the ITT in Romandie from Thomas Dekker, having come off his bike in the final bend.

Even the lowly domestiques morph into top trialists and pack the top end of results.

The only thing more competitive than the racing, is the quality of the doping.

All of this looks a little dodgy I'll admit, but rumour has it that they knew that they would get a late Giro invite back in February, so have been targeting that, hence the form ahead of the Tour contenders.

Although the Basque ITT was hilly, it certainly raised my eyebrows - I expected Evans to win

forearms Van Petegem

RichN95 wrote:

Blazing Saddles wrote:

It's pretty obvious that Alberto Contador is on the same programme, too.

Look at his ITT at the recent Basque Country. He was 30 seconds up on the field, including a very comeptitve Cadel Evans, inside of 4kms! :shock:

Now we have Kloeden, always a good trialist, but rarely at his best in smaller events, win the ITT in Romandie from Thomas Dekker, having come off his bike in the final bend.

Even the lowly domestiques morph into top trialists and pack the top end of results.

The only thing more competitive than the racing, is the quality of the doping.

All of this looks a little dodgy I'll admit, but rumour has it that they knew that they would get a late Giro invite back in February, so have been targeting that, hence the form ahead of the Tour contenders.

Although the Basque ITT was hilly, it certainly raised my eyebrows - I expected Evans to win

Contador was always going to win that tt.

Contador is a great prologue rider, and great hilly tter. The tt was short.

Evans was nearly 4 months off his mid july peak. He was never gonna come in at 100% and bury himself.

Contador had a home tour, the first after the Tour, and had a big expectation. If that tt was in July, I would expect Evans just, but not by much, because the tt is right in Contador's hitting zone.

Contador was the Spanish u23 tt champat 18. Saiz signed him up on the spot then. He has always been one of the better prologue riders. He just needs a few years before he develops his ability in tts that are 40 to 50km+ in length. The Tour GT tts.

I think Contador is conflated with Valverde in his tt abilities. Valverde could only tt when he had boosted via doping, and then he could only really excel in medium to short tts, and the uphill tts. Valverde is however one of the best prologue riders in the peloton.