'98 retro testing...
Comments
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I don’t tow the line the sports doping is a spill off from warfare doping.disgruntledgoat wrote:
Interestingly, this came up too... Players were taking amphetemines from the wartime stock in the 50s, the contact with the East German athletes, sports stars etc at various international tournaments led to steroids introduction into American sports in the 1960s, these were originally researched by the Nazis with a view to creating batallions of Aryan supermen.mididoctors wrote:The suspicion I have is that doping really is and was unnecessary for high level performance and that most of it is actually a traumatic overspill from WW1 and WW2 where most of the hardcore initiation (and the drugs) grew from, and thats a story bigger than the sport. the demands of the event were on par with the excesses of human endurance placed on people during the stress of warfare
It’s true armies were often doped, mainly on alcohol, in order to booster blind courage. This occurred as long ago as the 1300s during the England-France Hundred-Years War, and it’s said during the US War of Independence the American army led by George Washington defeated the British at Trenton because the British troops had been fed too much ‘courage’, i.e. were too drunk to fight.
The accepted practice of allowing or even encouraging soldiers to get drunk before they entered battle was eventually forbidden in 1872, when laws forbidding drunkenness amongst soldiers were passed in many European lands. Of course, the Americans showed there was a way around this in Vietnam, where the doping didn’t have to be from alcohol.
As for the Nazis having “a view to creating batallions of Aryan supermen”, that’s far from the truth. In WW2 some German soldiers were injected with testosterone, with the hope that endurance would be increased, however, the amount of testosterone given was so small that it had a negligible effect and the tests were abandoned.
Amphetamines were around then but mainly used by Hitler and his immediate staff to create a positive atmosphere in his bunker even when things were going totally wrong.0 -
mike6 wrote:Crankbrother wrote:bockers wrote:
Oh dear :roll: Dare we ask for some evidence :?:Crankbrother wrote:So, doping confirmed on a team that contained a British cycling 'legend' ... That's happened more than once now, a lot more than once ... Do we still assume that the Brits were immune to pressure and the quest for results?
As expected, knee jerk 'of course we didn't we're British' type response ... Nothing can be assured, hence putting forward discussion on the topic ...
The ceremonial car journey for Froome on Sunday was very interesting as I expect every one of those envolved had to smile through the knowledge of indescretion ... LA had to cheat to win in the era he cycled ... What made Greg, Bernard and Miguel so special? History has proven doping works ...
Why is it "Knee jerk" to ask for evidence? Its not right to say to someone "you have to prove you are not cheating" How can they do that? Boardman ASKED for samples to be taken so they could be tested when the procedures caught up with the doping. What more do you want?
Armstrong has a LOT to answer for. Because he got away with it for years, for whatever reason, be it clever doctors or having the UCI in his pocket (allegedly) anyone who wins any race now is tarred with the same brush. "Must be a doper then".
It's correct to keep asking the question until a full answer is given ... Not just an answer that is technically the truth ... And certainly we should not discount any questioing based purly on nationality ... Everey nation has cheats ...0 -
Crankbrother wrote:It's correct to keep asking the question until a full answer is given ... Not just an answer that is technically the truth ... And certainly we should not discount any questioing based purly on nationality ... Everey nation has cheats ...
But you will never ever be satisfied with any answer, just like the 9/11 trutheres and the Moon landing doubters. You will never be able to accept that Froome, Boardman etc did not dope. You will always want more proof, fuller answers, VO2 results.... or you would have nothing to say on here.
I on the other hand believe they did not, but will be able to accept the contrary they did if I see the evidence and will be disappointed and briefly upset. But in the wider scheme of things it matters little.0 -
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Removed from the Australian Olympic Committee’s Athlete’s Commission two days after he admitted to used EPO during the 1998 Tour de France, it appears that earlier this year Stuart O’Grady had been willing to declare he had never used banned substances.
O’Grady was voted onto the AOC Athlete’s Commission after the London Olympics last year and, under AOC rules, was required to sign a declaration attesting to having always competed clean.
According to Fairfax Media, the AOC had been chasing his signature for several months. It said that email correspondence was exchanged in relation to this, and O’Grady indicated in February that he planned to sign the declaration.
However that signature was not put to paper.
Read more: http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/15096 ... z2aFNvLh2dContador is the Greatest0 -
frenchfighter wrote:Removed from the Australian Olympic Committee’s Athlete’s Commission two days after he admitted to used EPO during the 1998 Tour de France, it appears that earlier this year Stuart O’Grady had been willing to declare he had never used banned substances.
O’Grady was voted onto the AOC Athlete’s Commission after the London Olympics last year and, under AOC rules, was required to sign a declaration attesting to having always competed clean.
According to Fairfax Media, the AOC had been chasing his signature for several months. It said that email correspondence was exchanged in relation to this, and O’Grady indicated in February that he planned to sign the declaration.
However that signature was not put to paper.
Read more: http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/15096 ... z2aFNvLh2d
It's difficult to like someone who was prepared to perpetuate such a lie.0 -
Zabel admits some heavyweight doping:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/zabel-a ... 96-to-2003
What with Cipo and Zabel proper dopers Cavendish is really looking solid as the best sprinter of all time and his career is far from over.
I hope Zabel gets removed from all his positions of responsibility. It is a far worse amount of doping than many and he is also only talking about it when his back is to the wall.Contador is the Greatest0 -
frenchfighter wrote:Zabel admits some heavyweight doping:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/zabel-a ... 96-to-2003
What with Cipo and Zabel proper dopers Cavendish is really looking solid as the best sprinter of all time and his career is far from over.
I hope Zabel gets removed from all his positions of responsibility. It is a far worse amount of doping than many and he is also only talking about it when his back is to the wall.
Agreed.
What is really sad is how some, when faced with no alternative to their dilemma, have come out with the "I only did it once" line and that is when you caught me. It's laughable. I believe O'Grady admission is to a pre-Tour dope yet he was suspicious on Stage 14 of the '98 Tour. Zabel makes me incredibly angry, he lied then lied again. You couldn't trust him to tell you the correct time.0 -
Why give up in 2003? Seems an odd date
Sorry, link is
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/zabel-a ... 96-to-20030 -
Zabel: "I knew exactly that it wasn’t allowed and no one forced me to take Epo, that was my decision. I never had a structured doping plan, never had (doping) experts around me, and so I never saw myself as a ‘superdoper’. I only had recommendations.“frenchfighter wrote:Zabel admits some heavyweight doping:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/zabel-a ... 96-to-2003
The German press has doubts about whether there was a doping plan and whether he used experts – maybe he’s still trying to not involve everyone who was involved, or maybe trying to avoid telling how much he was into doping.
Jef D'hont, previously involved with Telekom, recently said of Telekom “They all simply lied, Ullrich, Zabel and DS Walter Godefroot, and the biggest actor of all is Erik Zabel.“
Zabel said he realised right after the press conference in 2007 (where he admiited brief use of Epo in 1996) that he’d been stupid in lying, because at the time he was still involved in helping his son’s ambition to enter road racing and was requiring the son to abide by certain rules which he himself hadn’t followed.
That personal guilt probably weighs heavy with him, probably more than any professional guilt (afterall 'Everyone was doing it , etc, etc').
I’m not really keen on Zabel – like Voigt he always came over too smooth, ‘honest’ and charming for my taste. But I don’t really agree with FF, if ex-dopers are doing a proper and good job in their new positions (i.e. aren't just figureheads, like I think Olano probably was).frenchfighter wrote:I hope Zabel gets removed from all his positions of responsibility. It is a far worse amount of doping than many and he is also only talking about it when his back is to the wall.
Because (as I’ve already mentioned in a previous post) it means only those named from 1998 are penalised, not those who did the same but whose samples have gone missing or are degraded, or who were lucky enough not to be tested.
It would be interesting to hear Cavendish’s take on Zabel keeping his job on cycling or not, because Cav probably owes something to Zabel for the tactical and mental grooming he received from Zabel.0 -
Does anyone believe that Zabel is actually telling the truth now?
No dope til 96? and then gave up in 2003. And of course it wasn't organised by the team.
He's had two chances to come forward with the truth and has failed both times.
And as for O'Grady's confession :roll:It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.0 -
Quite. It is weirdly quiet on here - despite this sorry set of evasions and McQuaid's new federation memberships and rule rewriting. Good to see posts from Andyp and Timoid though.0
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This witch hunt is pointless. Let's just face it, up to and including this era, the whole peloton was on something or other, the authorities and sponsors were complicit or simply turned a blind eye. No one in their right mind is going to come forward to volunteer their use of EPO or what ever unless it is obvious they have been rumbled. Just move on concentrate on the now and future of cycling, making it as clean as possible. Riders and teams will always be trying something to get an advantage over rivals. The systems in place to detect unlawful advantage just have to be robust.
As a mere mortal I couldn't ride the TdF unless I took some sort of supplement/enhancement and even with this I would still probably get dropped in the first hour, so chapeau to them all, even the dirty ones who have prematurely lost their lives because what they took was detrimental to their health. The pressure to win or even finish the most gruelling event in the world must be immense either as a GC contender, KoM, sprinter trying not to get eliminated or as a lowly domestique riding your legs off to support your GC rider. I couldn't do it. Chapeau to them all.Life is like a roll of toilet paper; long and useful, but always ends at the wrong moment. Anon.
Think how stupid the average person is.......
half of them are even more stupid than you first thought.0 -
the sad truth coming to light is that all this doping was ATEOTD completely unnecessary because sustaining a high performance racing calendar is/was perfectly feasible without all this crap.
I am not overly down on any them..even the ones still lying. what a strange place their heads must be in now."If I was a 38 year old man, I definitely wouldn't be riding a bright yellow bike with Hello Kitty disc wheels, put it that way. What we're witnessing here is the world's most high profile mid-life crisis" Afx237vi Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:43 pm0 -
Timoid. wrote:Does anyone believe that Zabel is actually telling the truth now?
No dope til 96? and then gave up in 2003. And of course it wasn't organised by the team.
He's had two chances to come forward with the truth and has failed both times.
And as for O'Grady's confession :roll:
hard to take them seriously now isn't it.
they have fvcked themselves right up..... its an ask to job in the team though."If I was a 38 year old man, I definitely wouldn't be riding a bright yellow bike with Hello Kitty disc wheels, put it that way. What we're witnessing here is the world's most high profile mid-life crisis" Afx237vi Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:43 pm0 -
what really annoys me is we still have riders covering this up by saying I did it all on my own it wasn't with the help of the team, even know we know in some cases, ONCE and T-Mobile they had doping programs on the team. All this covering up is something the UCI should be looking into0
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One thing to take individual responsibility, quite another to dob your mates in I suspect. These guys mainly rely on cycling for their livelihood I would think.... The power of the omertà0
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Mikey23 wrote:One thing to take individual responsibility, quite another to dob your mates in I suspect. These guys mainly rely on cycling for their livelihood I would think.... The power of the omertà
This is where the UCI are weak and need to take more action. All the time we still have ex dopers and doctors etc around all the teams this will keep happening0 -
What really disappoints me is that these former pros are being punished when they do own up. I mean come on, it's nearly 20 years back, hardly encourages anyone to admit to more than they have to does it.
It's all so much bullshit, the kings new clothes, we all know they were on the sauce as did the people employing them so why the mock outrage when it comes out.
it's a hard life if you don't weaken.0 -
Tom Butcher wrote:What really disappoints me is that these former pros are being punished when they do own up. I mean come on, it's nearly 20 years back, hardly encourages anyone to admit to more than they have to does it.
It's all so much bullshit, the kings new clothes, we all know they were on the sauce as did the people employing them so why the mock outrage when it comes out.
Except in O'Grady's case he had the option of coming clean and getting a reduced sanction, he chose not to and worse told outright lies... guys like Zabel, O'Grady and Olano are holding positions in public and commercial bodies having in effect lied on the resumés, one doesn't get away with that outside cycling (if found out), so why should they?0 -
Apparently Jan could be next up with a tearful mea culpe: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/ullrich ... or-perjury0
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Mildly tangential, but a decent big-picture summary from last week's Economist; not that any of it is exactly news, especially the inherent conflict of interest at the UCI:
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21581978-sportsmen-who-take-drugs-may-be-prisoners-different-game-athletes-dilemma
...or for that matter, the continued ability of the the Dismal Science to state the bleedin' obvious after the fact...
However, the assertion that the greatest incentive not to dope is not the risk of being caught but the confidence that your competitors are clean is relevant to the T&R vs "now" debate. Look at it this way:
"If I ride PYA and come second to a doper, he might get outed in 15 years' time after I've retired"
vs
"If I ride PYA and come second to a doper, he'll get caught and by Christmas I'll get awarded the win and next year I'll win on the road"
So which is a better use of time/money/effort to get to:"I'm clean, he's clean, let's get on with the racing"?
[Note: I'm not naive enough to think the testers can stay ahead of the doping techniques, and so retro testing will always be needed - but blood passports - effectively checking for the outcome not a defined sub-set of inputs - do go some way to mitigate that.]I'm not saying pedestrians in Hackney are stupid.. but a fixed bayonet would be more use than a fixed gear...0 -
Airmiles wrote:Mildly tangential, but a decent big-picture summary from last week's Economist; not that any of it is exactly news, especially the inherent conflict of interest at the UCI:
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21581978-sportsmen-who-take-drugs-may-be-prisoners-different-game-athletes-dilemma
...or for that matter, the continued ability of the the Dismal Science to state the bleedin' obvious after the fact...
However, the assertion that the greatest incentive not to dope is not the risk of being caught but the confidence that your competitors are clean is relevant to the T&R vs "now" debate. Look at it this way:
"If I ride PYA and come second to a doper, he might get outed in 15 years' time after I've retired"
vs
"If I ride PYA and come second to a doper, he'll get caught and by Christmas I'll get awarded the win and next year I'll win on the road"
So which is a better use of time/money/effort to get to:"I'm clean, he's clean, let's get on with the racing"?
[Note: I'm not naive enough to think the testers can stay ahead of the doping techniques, and so retro testing will always be needed - but blood passports - effectively checking for the outcome not a defined sub-set of inputs - do go some way to mitigate that.]
the game really played by the majority of the population is tit for tat.. prisoner dilemmas are short term at best.
the really salient thing of note is how peer pressure and public opinion are instrumental at detecting defection.
As you point out the t and r is quite clearly modified by the notion of where the finishing line on punishments is but lying to avoid these cut off time exposes lies SO CLEARLY by those who define their crimes within these boundaries it all just comes across as absurd bull5hit
see timoids post above
the paradigm doesn't have to be perfect to expose the truth.
the question is would lessening the punishments for confession elicit more truth earlier....? as tom points out it seems a bit harsh(is it?)
My thoughts are this is going to go where its going to go. There is no stopping now and people should have been smarter earlier.
"If I was a 38 year old man, I definitely wouldn't be riding a bright yellow bike with Hello Kitty disc wheels, put it that way. What we're witnessing here is the world's most high profile mid-life crisis" Afx237vi Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:43 pm0 -
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Full transcript of the interview here in German
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/erik-z ... -1.17338820 -
So of those implicated who were still involved in the top end of the sport:
Zabel (Katusha) - gone
Heppner (NetApp director) - gone
Julich (BMC trainer)
Merckx (Team Bontrager director)
Stefano Zanini (Astana director)
Blijlevens (Belkin director) - gone (is he still on Eurosport?)
Jacky Durand (Commentator Eurosport)
Olano (Vuelta Espana director) - gone
Chanteur (President UNCP)
Quite a clear out. Are the circumstances of the re-testing (Senate inquiry/research re-testing by AFLD) exceptional or is there a likelihood for anything similar?0 -
I see new opportunities opening up for all of us as DS's and TV commentators0
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do they roll this forward?
next tour 2014 the 99 retests?.... or do they call it a day when they reach whatever year it was they could detect epo.."If I was a 38 year old man, I definitely wouldn't be riding a bright yellow bike with Hello Kitty disc wheels, put it that way. What we're witnessing here is the world's most high profile mid-life crisis" Afx237vi Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:43 pm0 -
People losing their jobs over this is stupid. It actually makes me angry.
So they were doping in 98, like just about everyone. Big deal. Have they been doing the right thing over the last few years?
I love the gossip but that's all it is. It's not relevant to anything, it's all just pointless.Fckin' Quintana … that creep can roll, man.0 -
No-one made them dope. What about the people that didn't get jobs in the first place because of them.iainf72 wrote:People losing their jobs over this is stupid. It actually makes me angry.
You'd get fired in any other industry if, say, you were caught stealing. Even retrospectively.
So it may not be helping the sport recover, but these people deserve their 'punishment' even belatedly.0
