Naughty Astarloa (allegedly)

iainf72

Nice to see the old stomach problem excuse is still in full effect

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id= ... may29news2

LangerDan

Didn't he pack in last years Dauphine with some form of bug and as a result missed the TdF?

LangerDan

cyclingnews are reporting that Astarloa has just been fired

GroupOfOne MkII

To have to fire one rider may be regarded as misfortune, but to fire two looks like carelessness. Am sure that's what old Oscar would have said had he been a cycling fan.

Possibly not the biggest surprise when you consider his career, with one standout year (2003) amongst a sea of averageness.

Then again I suppose he's not actually been found guilty of something yet, on the other hand you don't sack someone for nothing.

forearms Van Petegem

yes, a Corti/Saeco rider

GroupOfOne MkII wrote:

To have to fire one rider may be regarded as misfortune, but to fire two looks like carelessness. Am sure that's what old Oscar would have said had he been a cycling fan.

Possibly not the biggest surprise when you consider his career, with one standout year (2003) amongst a sea of averageness.

Then again I suppose he's not actually been found guilty of something yet, on the other hand you don't sack someone for nothing.

LangerDan

His spell in Cofdis and the rumours of being involved in a number of doping inquiries can't have helped either. Was it just my poor memory of was Igor more visible in races this year?

14:43 CEST
Milram has fired its rider Igor Astarloa. The Basque was taken out of the race by the team, following irregularities after some blood tests. Milram took the consequences, although the 2003 World Champion has not accepted the decision and involved a lawyer. Astarloa was not tested positive, but the so-called blood passport that the riders are now required to use, showed irregularities. The blood passport was introduced to get around the problem of not having the means to detect certain substances, instead looking for strange parameters that could indicate foul play.

It is the second firing at Milram in a short period of time, following the Petacchi case.

GroupOfOne MkII

forearms Van Petegem wrote:

yes, a Corti/Saeco rider

He was under Corti at Barloworld too....

He's ridden for Mercatone Uno and Cofidis too...poor chap has some awful luck picking teams to ride for doesn't he

ricadus

He was once Mercatone Uno's star spring classics rider.

timoid.

Is this a sign that Milram has cleaned up its act. And a reason they are doing so badly this year?

drenkrom

It's not Milram that caught him and it's probably not Milram that was supplying him with whatever he might have been doing (the details are still extremely thin on this one, no?). They did not waste any time in firing him, but I guess they still had their hand on the red button from the Petacchi case. Apart from firing him, the team didn't have a hand in this event.

Milram's poor performances (what an understatement!) explain themselves when you look at their roster. With Zabel losing the zip and Pettacchi gone, they need to get on a major signing streak if they want to get out of the rut.

Whatever Astarloa was (maybe) doing, it wasn't working too well. Surely not as well as when he was World Champ.

blazing_saddles

Would it not be the UCI?
Interesting, if it is.
I can't see either of the Astana pair, who left with the same excuse,
getting fingered. It'll be swept well and truly under a Swiss carpet.
They'll get the UCI, VIP treatment. (Valverde Immunity in Puerto)
Otherwise, the ASO would have a field day.

GroupOfOne MkII

I think the problem with upsets stomachs, is that quite often cyclists will get them during a major race, which is probably why they're used as a good excuse when packing someone off the race for another reason. Means though you can't label anyone who get's an upset stomach a doper.

Kléber

I'm just not that good at maths to count the number of riders who suspiciously disappear mid-race. One minute, they're in the leaders jersey or winning stages, the next minute they've got food poisoning but oddly no one else on the team (same hotel, same food, same conditions) gets the bug.

We need to know more about his blood values. After all one dodgy reading doesn't mean much. But I'd put money on this being a doping scandal. Astarloa's been in the wrong place at the wrong time too often, to many dodgy results.

As for Milram, they seem hapless. No good riders, no results and stuck with doping scandals. If I was running the dairy group, I'd replace Stanga too.

iainf72

According to the reports it's an internal test which showed odd results.

The "passport" doesn't exist - Only in McQuaids mind.

drenkrom

iainf72 wrote:

According to the reports it's an internal test which showed odd results.

Indeed. I stand corrected.

GroupOfOne MkII

Kléber wrote:

As for Milram, they seem hapless. No good riders, no results and stuck with doping scandals. If I was running the dairy group, I'd replace Stanga too.

Stanga was replaced over the winter when the team changed from being 'Italian' to 'German'. Gerry van Gerwen is the new man in charge.

timoid.

So Millram have become good boys.

Going to get harder to cheat in the future:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2046539 ... heats.html

How many would this catch out if done on the entire peloton today?

forearms Van Petegem

Timmy, the hair test was the one that idiot with a handbag Bobby Julich was whinging about when they took his hair at Paris Nice. He wrote a bit how it was over the top and they were being treated like criminals.

No Bobby you dumb prick, you were eing treated like the doper you were over those best years, 'specially your CSC EPO salad years. When that satirist was asking the peloton "did you dope today" at Deutchland Rund, he almost grabbed him by the collar asking "name, employer, tv station" (unsaid welfare number, shoe size...) so the CSC apparatchiks could put him/his employer/tv station on the CSC blacklist. Voigt was just as bad. He doth protest tooooooo hard... instructive. And who is still attacking the peloton like it is stage 3, yes, its Jensie!


h

Timoid. wrote:

So Millram have become good boys.

Going to get harder to cheat in the future:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2046539 ... heats.html

How many would this catch out if done on the entire peloton today?

iainf72

forearms Van Petegem wrote:

Voigt was just as bad. He doth protest tooooooo hard... instructive. And who is still attacking the peloton like it is stage 3, yes, its Jensie!

Oi! You stop it - It's perfectly normal for people Jens size to climb uber steep mountains faster than tiny skinny guys.

DaveyL

You guys really need to set out a bunch of guidelines as to what is acceptable for a clean rider to be able to do at every point in the race. It would be a big help to us cycling fans who have no idea who's clean and who's not. I just don't know who or what to believe anymore...

Some sort of indexing would be excellent. It would need to involve a lot of parameters though. Team, team's reputation, rider's past teams, their reputation, rider's height and weight (obviously), what they had for breakfast, what they watched on TV last night, how much work they've done in previous stages. Then we could run our fingers down the list, cross-reference it with the rider, say for example, Jens, and be able to exclaim "Holy Moly, he shouldn't be able to attack a break like that on Stage 18! Cheat!"

iainf72

We've done this before.

If they speak english and aren't american, they can pretty much do anything without question. After that it gets rather complicated :P

DaveyL

So you say, but remember David Millar's previous life and the trashing that Rob Hayles got on here a month or so back. A whole load of folk were queueing up with the "He's a Brit, Brits don't dope nudge nudge wink wink" but no-one seemed to be saying it and meaning it. I guess it's a bit like these mythical USPS/Disco "fanboys" I keep hearing about but never see...