Now Ricco gets busted for EPO

fruit bars with eyes

i see hincapie is pleased about this - it shows cheats are being rooted out. maybe if postal/ discovery had taken a harder line with boonen, basso, andreu, mondini, heras, landis, hamilton, beltran et al. when they passed through then this 'cleansing' process could have started earlier.

millar is still routinely called a 'drug cheat' in this country in the press- sort of a weird definition of 'cheat' given zulle, virenque. pantani, ullrich, armstrong, basso, rumsas, frigo, vdb, musseuw, simoni, garzelli, vino, vasseur, zabel, aldag, bolts, riis, brochard, morau, dufaux, rous, hamburger, di luca, casagrande, aitor gonzalez, guidi, mayo, sinkewitz, kashechkin, kessler, astarlosa, petacchi and a million others no one has heard of

go further back and it's even harder to name a clean champion. so it's a cultural problem. which means we need the names in the papers not to be the riders - who are the symptom. we need headlines with the names of doctors, labs, drug companies, team managers and soigneurs. amateur cycling doesn;t have the same issues in this country because there is no doping infrastructure. millar didn't go from the national 25 to EPO- he found himself immersed in pro culture same as everyone else(and i mean everyone bar a freakish few mineral water drinkers).

more positive tests will not lead to a clean sport- they'll only lead to more positive tests- surely we have learned that by now? time to go for the big boys- and they aint pedalling about the alps next week....

blazing_saddles

The head of the French anti-doping agency confirmed all 3 EPO cases have been for CERA.

Kléber

So Beltran on CERA. What chance, for example, other Liquigas riders likel Kreuziger and Nibali get tested. Did Cardenas really leave the Tour because of a sore tendon or did he just get out in time?

Apparently CERA it stays in the system for a good while.

ricadus

skavanagh.bikeradar wrote:

Either way nobody has yet cried foul on the grounds that there isn't a test for it yet. They might be surprised but they haven't started leaping to the old standard "the test is flawed" yet. Mind you early days. That will come in the court case later.

It'll happen. I foresee another tedious Landis-like case attempting to attack points of procedure in order to overturn the result.

blazing_saddles

From the beeb commentary at the mo, it seems they think the French have developed a valid test as a result of tests taken at the Giro. Not sure how true that is, but it's what they are saying...
Not sure how the RCS, who were under the UCI testing and the ASO, who aren't could manage this. If it is true, more trouble ahead?
Could this effect the Giro standings as well?
Wouldn't such a test need to be accredited?
Lots of questions and few answers as yet.
A better kept cycling secret, than most, if confirmed....

skavanagh.bikeradar

Makes a change for the testers rather than the tested to be ahead of the curve for once. Good though.

attica

Anyone else find this image from the SD website ironic?



Shady men in black in the team car perhaps!!!

skavanagh.bikeradar

No.

graeme_s-2

On the BBC coverage they've just said that Thor Hushovd's directeur sportif has said that Thor isn't feeling well today, and won't be contesting the sprint finish at the end of the stage. :?

knedlicky

Blazing Saddles wrote:

DaveyL wrote:

I'd find it very hard to believe they'd be getting stuff that was still in clinical trials.

Wasn't Frigo caught with something that was at a similar stage of development, in the San Remo, 2001 raid?

It's not hard to get medicines which are in their trial phase; they are usually prescribed through doctors, hospitals and clinics with the patient's agreement; it's not all lab work by a long chalk. Sometimes doctors are paid by pharmaceutical companies for finding volunteers, so have an interest in finding customers.

Also, phase I volunteers have to be healthy, i.e. not have any major illness and certainly not the one the drug has been developed to treat. This allows a lot of scope for conjecture about cyclists of the early 2000s and their access to Cera. Even in later phases (from 2004 in the case of Cera), when volunteers are supposed to have a related ilness, I imagine records can be manipulated.

cougie

I'm sure I've seen that Thor was the only Credit Ag rider tested so far - so I dont think he will be one of the suspects.

Wonder if Cav will be in the bunch today ?

bigdawg

this is the same guy busted for an out of comp test for cocaine right...??

the thing that really is annoying me about this is the bit about uci knowing who was taking it in the Giro and doing FA about it... Something showed in their test that was wrong, as has happened many times in the past, why is there not a ruling stating you explian why youve got the blood workup of an anaemic 5 year old or youre out...??

Theyre supposed to be governing body ffs....

attica

Well at least medical science is getting advanced, good news for people with kidney problems.

Sorry, looking for a silver lining

squired

So, assuming this test is about to be verified and the tour positives can be used to ban riders..... does this mean they can then re-visit the Giro tests and hand out bans on those riders too? We often hear about samples being held for newer tests as and when they become available, but I'm yet to see evidence of it. The nearest we came was when the Lance Armstrong samples supposedly tested positive for EPO.

fruit bars with eyes

DaveyL wrote:
I'd find it very hard to believe they'd be getting stuff that was still in clinical trials.



are you kidding?- they got rsr 13 before cancer patients in about 2000

robmanic1

If Cav gets pinched I'm quitting - end of!
Imagine the Brit-press jumping on that one. Us cyclists will be despised even more!

aac

Nothing's been mentioned about bans though, as it's not 'official' sanctioned tests in the eyes of the governing body, is it? So the most that can happen is that riders can be booted out of ASO events which are 'private' in the same way you can get barred from a shop or a pub. Teams have withdrawn their riders when informed of the result so it could be argued that they've accepted the result, and they certainly can't whine about it to the UCI because they've accepted ASO terms and conditions to ride outwith the UCI control (and safety net when it comes to drug-testing). There is the French anti-doping law which is kicking in which may prove interesting.

What would be funny is blow the rest of the Tour's anti-doping budget by surprise testing everyone at the start of tomorrow's stage, and in a few days time we'd have a better indication of who's possibly clean or not, or at least who's using this newly-testable CERA.

DaveyL

fruit bars with eyes wrote:

DaveyL wrote:
I'd find it very hard to believe they'd be getting stuff that was still in clinical trials.



are you kidding?- they got rsr 13 before cancer patients in about 2000

I clarified what I meant in a subsequent post - that they only go to certain products and methods out of necessity (or if a massive performance gain is involved) and so may not have *needed* to start using this one til recently.

leguape

Blazing Saddles wrote:

From the beeb commentary at the mo, it seems they think the French have developed a valid test as a result of tests taken at the Giro. Not sure how true that is, but it's what they are saying...
Not sure how the RCS, who were under the UCI testing and the ASO, who aren't could manage this. If it is true, more trouble ahead?
Could this effect the Giro standings as well?
Wouldn't such a test need to be accredited?
Lots of questions and few answers as yet.
A better kept cycling secret, than most, if confirmed....

Could be that AFLD have been trialling the test and it exists but that WADA had not yet ratified it so as to not alert the suspects that they were closing in on them. Remember Sydney 2000 when athletes suddenly started heading home when they arrived in the Oz sunshine and discovered that EPO testing might just work?

DaveyL

Would be nice if there had been a bit of co-operation between ASO and UCI!

fruit bars with eyes

DaveyL wrote:

fruit bars with eyes wrote:

DaveyL wrote:
I'd find it very hard to believe they'd be getting stuff that was still in clinical trials.



are you kidding?- they got rsr 13 before cancer patients in about 2000

I clarified what I meant in a subsequent post - that they only go to certain products and methods out of necessity (or if a massive performance gain is involved) and so may not have *needed* to start using this one til recently.

yes sorry i understand the point now- but even then i am not so sure- maybe they go for the earliest stage of development so that they get ahead of tests... :?

DaveyL

It's a good point - the earlier you get it, the less chance of getting caught. I guess there are also risks associated with taking developmental stuff, but I suppose these guys aren't too concerned about that kind of thing...

skavanagh.bikeradar

Or anything else. Gits.

iainf72

bigdawg wrote:

the thing that really is annoying me about this is the bit about uci knowing who was taking it in the Giro and doing FA about it... Something showed in their test that was wrong, as has happened many times in the past, why is there not a ruling stating you explian why youve got the blood workup of an anaemic 5 year old or youre out...??

It's not as simple as that. WADA are trying to sort this out and were trialing it with the biological passport.

It's not unusual for them to know who's up to naughtiness. Same thing last year and year before.

bigdawg

exactly its happened year after year and the UCi sit back and ignore it...

as this has been headlines for the last ten tours or so surely the uci should finally say explain your blood results... or well be having this same conversation for the next 10 years...

jimmythecuckoo

Does anyone think we may have finally reached the watershed for the Tour?

Kléber

aac wrote:

it's not 'official' sanctioned tests in the eyes of the governing body, is it

The AFLD is WADA accredited. It's unthinkable that the riders won't get a ban from the UCI and their local federation.

bipedal

The key thing is the Tour making up its own rules - if they can chuck riders out for suspicion of doping, and don't have to wait for WADA and the UCI to ratify tests they can be much more responsive to the current doping climate: that is a huge incentive to be, or at least appear squeaky clean

Any sniff of naughtiness and bang goes your Tour invite, plus you'll get chucked out even if you're using deluxe bang up to date drugs

Kléber

Millar put it well today, teams have to take responsibility. It's no use having crocodile tears from the Saunier managers today, they should have spent the money on internal anti-doping schemes.

Sponsors like Saunier should think twice about employing cowboys to run their teams, ex-riders with a devastating history of doping behind them don't make safe team managers. Just ask CSC who got very scared even if Riis played the "honesty" card, just as Discovery who pulled out early after they couldn't take any more of Bruyneel and his recruitment of Basso and now we see Saunier come a cropper.

robmanic1

overall it must be a good thing that these cheats are getting pinched, trouble is we're all watching the tour and playing "spot the doper" now.