Leipheimer suspicious blood values in 05

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  • stagehopper
    stagehopper Posts: 1,593
    that's a very American attitude you have ;)
    @stagehopper
  • frenchfighter
    frenchfighter Posts: 30,642
    RichN95 wrote:
    French Fighter, an interesting list but what criteria are you using to determine whether they are dopers?

    According to you, for example:

    Dopers: Leipheimer, Toschnig

    Clean: Pereiro, Zubeldia

    I'm not sure I'd be able to make that distinction. Just going by the convicted/banished riders, makes the point.

    I agree. It is lighthearted, mostly because I like the red bold....

    Anyway, for Pereiro and Zubeldia I couldn't think of anything linking them off the top of my head. As for Leipheimer, I would be surprised if this guy hadn't doped pretty hardcore like those around him. Tosching - I thought he was involved with some blood doping with Gerolsteiner and mentioned by Kohl, but then that is why I added the '?'
    Contador is the Greatest
  • mrushton
    mrushton Posts: 5,182
    Do we think that there was a TdF/giro or Vuelta in the last 40 years where some form of stimulant wasn't used? And before that there was underhand tactics. It's just that science merged with sport and offered opportunities for 'improvement'.
    M.Rushton
  • Le Commentateur
    Le Commentateur Posts: 4,099
    Abdoujaparov wrote:
    To be fair, the weight of evidence does suggest that americans value winning more than people in other countries. How many articles etc can you find saying the opposite? Bet you'd find plenty mentions of brits liking plucky losers.

    The US mentality BB describes is part of the american dream.

    It used to be part of the Greek Dream, too. The ancient Greeks in the real Olympics certainly took an approach at odds with de Coubertin's noble 19th century concept of sport.

    For the Greeks, there was no pious nonsense about ‘it’s not winning, it’s the taking part that counts.’ Winning was all that mattered. Victory, symbolized by an olive branch at Olympia, could be traded for more concrete benefits back home. The kudos of victory brought material rewards and political power. For the losers there was no silver or bronze – all they could expect were derision and ignominy. The poet Pindar describes the losers slinking back home, spurned by their mothers and girlfriends, ‘lurking in byways, hoping to avoid their enemies, stung by their ill fortune’.

    The risks associated with losing were all the greater because the games were open to all-comers. The winner of the very first Olympic race was Koroibos, a baker from Elis. So it was not just a matter of losing the race: if you were an aristocrat, you risked losing your reputation too, to some upstart from a no-horse town. And yet catastrophic loss of face is precisely what the Greeks were prepared to risk at the games for the chance to inflict it on rivals.

    Given the high stakes, it is not surprising that bribery and race-fixing were common. Those who were found out were fined and the money used to make bronze statues of Zeus, which lined the road to the stadium. The statues named and shamed the cheats, a warning to others to stay on the straight and narrow, but as the number of statue bases suggests, the message did not get through.
    Un uomo solo al commando

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