Time to put up or.....

2

Comments

  • bigmat
    bigmat Posts: 5,134
    Is there anything a rider can do to prove they're not cheating?

    A good start would be to actually state unequivocally that they are riding clean. There are too many who just trot out the old "I've never tested positive", "I'm not cheating anybody" etc. etc. Or who, somewhat surprisingly, refuse to condemn another rider who has tested positive to the extent that they don't accept themselves as a grand tour winner. Not saying that means they aren't clean, but its an example of something they could do persuade me that they might be.

    We can never know for sure though, I think Rick's pretty much right - as long as the sport seems clean and nobody is taking the mick too much, that's probably the best we can hope for - brings cycling into line with most other pro sports to be fair.
  • Crankbrother
    Crankbrother Posts: 1,695
    Despite the thinking that good ol' Greg is clean the fact that he keeps beating the drum and that he won in a time when others (by their own admission) doped I just can't get the sums to match ...

    Cadel has a history of dodgy teams but he wasn't tearing it up for either so who knows on that one ... Think he won his Tour clean though ...
  • BikingBernie
    BikingBernie Posts: 2,163
    Despite the thinking that good ol' Greg is clean the fact that he keeps beating the drum and that he won in a time when others (by their own admission) doped I just can't get the sums to match ...
    Until Epo hit the peleton the benefits to be had from doping were much less, so a clean rider could still beat a doped one.
    Cadel has a history of dodgy teams but he wasn't tearing it up for either so who knows on that one ... Think he won his Tour clean though ...
    Surely, following the logic you applied to Lemond, it would be safer to conclude that you 'just can't get the sums to match'?
  • Crankbrother
    Crankbrother Posts: 1,695
    Other than Contador winning his maiden GT, Cadel's other good GT performances were more about the lack of ability from the other contenders (and winner in Sastre's case ... he won via a 45 minute ride up 1 mountain) ... None of the other guys have shown themselves to be consistently good and so someone like Cadel who is in that mix will have his day (well, 3 weeks) at some point ...
  • sherer
    sherer Posts: 2,460
    the trouble with Evans being clean is you have the same arguement that as you do with LA. All the guys LA beat have been caught or linked to doping so surely to beat them LA must have doped too.

    Evans beat a field of known dopers and are people really saying he is that much better that he can beat other dopers by being clean ? I'm not 100% sure. Maybe he is more clean than others.
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 40,218
    sherer wrote:
    the trouble with Evans being clean is you have the same arguement that as you do with LA. All the guys LA beat have been caught or linked to doping so surely to beat them LA must have doped too.

    Evans beat a field of known dopers and are people really saying he is that much better that he can beat other dopers by being clean ? I'm not 100% sure. Maybe he is more clean than others.

    Out of last year's TdF field who do you think was actively doping or still benefitting from oast doping? Possibly Bertie in the latter category but he was knackered from the Giro. Arguably he won because his rivals were no longer doping and he has always been as or more talented as they are?
  • sherer
    sherer Posts: 2,460
    In the top ten from last year you have Frank Schleck, Cunego and Basso noneof whom have the cleanest names on record
  • cycling5280
    cycling5280 Posts: 279
    Name me a grand tour winner you know is clean in the last 100 years.
    Tried this in a pub a while ago and failed

    Ryder Hesjedal
  • dougzz
    dougzz Posts: 1,833
    Pross wrote:
    Out of last year's TdF field who do you think was actively doping or still benefitting from oast doping? Possibly Bertie in the latter category but he was knackered from the Giro. Arguably he won because his rivals were no longer doping and he has always been as or more talented as they are?
    But as endlessly explained doping is not equal, you don't all get a similar improvement. Something I don't think has been properly studied and evaluated is the long term benefit of doping. Is Betie a better rider now than he would have been because of past behaviour, even if that was 2 or 3 years ago, ( or 2 or 3 days ago depending on your view). How do we know how talented he really is/would have been without the juice? As for Evans it's popular to believe he's clean, and I really hope he is, but as said on this thread or a similar one you can't prove a negative.
  • squired
    squired Posts: 1,153
    It could be meaningless, but I remember a brief snippet with Tom Boonen in the TDF. They specifically asked him about which GC riders he believed were clean. His response was that Cadel was the one rider he could believe in.
  • cycling5280
    cycling5280 Posts: 279
    Does it matter..?

    dead right it does not matter. I'm just sick of the comments on a certain american who has never been caught.

    Hiesedal ? Brunyeel and then Phonak? Food for thought

    And Garmin have a habit of hiring former dopers who seem to be just as good if not better when racing "clean"

    Armstrong was considered clean all 7 years. If UCI, WADA and ASO want to bust everyone in that era but Armstrong...well bitch at those guys.

    Have a little faith with Hesjedal. The connection with Bruyneel and Phonak 5 years ago has nothing to do with he efforts to win the Giro last week. Nice try.

    Garmin? David Millar is no good without EPO.
  • cycling5280
    cycling5280 Posts: 279
    inseine wrote:
    Thing is, you've worded the question wrongly. You mean 'believe' not 'know'. We don't know if anybody was clean, or ever will, because you simply cannot prove it. You can only prove someone was doping.
    Basically if you're asking who never got popped or admitted it then there are quite a few, if you're asking who you have suspicions about then.....................
    You cannot add stuff that wasn't outlawed at the time or that you find unacceptable. Rules are rules, eh?

    agree
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 40,218
    @ Dougzz Sure and I tried to elude to that but it is unlikely that he was beating riders who are currently actively doping and enjoying the full benefit. Perhaps they are only able to contend with Evans because past doping allowed them to reach his trained level but that is no reason to assume he has to have been juiced to beat them. In Armstrong's case he was hammering cyclists who were proved to be or have since admitted to be on heavy duty EPO programmes at the time of the race so the comparison is dubious.
  • knedlicky
    knedlicky Posts: 3,097
    How are we defining clean? If it's doing nothing remotely performance enhancing regardless of what the rules of the sport say at the time, I'd say "none".

    If it's complying with the doping rules as they stand at the time, but possibly doing things that were later decalared illegal I'd go with everyone up until about 1965 and after that Cadel Evans, Greg Lemond and Ryder Hesjedal in my "as certain as I can be" column with Carlos Sastre, 2010's Ivan Basso, Hinault and Kelly in my "A decent feeling" column.
    After 1965, I’d tend to also include (for the TdF) Van Impe as 'clean', and (for the Giro) Hampsten, and maybe Savoldelli. I'd also include Simoni because I feel cocaine is only on the doping list because it's generally banned, not because useful to cycling performances (thus why I'd also excuse Boonen if he ever won a grand tour).

    The defining of ‘clean’ also needs to include whether one means a grand tour winner who was always clean, or one who was clean at least the year he won a grand tour.
    If it’s the latter, I’d suspect Merckx was perhaps clean in his less dominant victories, Fignon maybe in his first TdF win (unless he said anything different in his book), and at the Giro, Cunego (the year he won).
  • mididoctors
    mididoctors Posts: 16,646
    Kelly?!?

    +1 PDM!!!!!!!!!!!
    "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 pm
  • dougzz
    dougzz Posts: 1,833
    Pross wrote:
    @ Dougzz Sure and I tried to elude to that but it is unlikely that he was beating riders who are currently actively doping and enjoying the full benefit. Perhaps they are only able to contend with Evans because past doping allowed them to reach his trained level but that is no reason to assume he has to have been juiced to beat them. In Armstrong's case he was hammering cyclists who were proved to be or have since admitted to be on heavy duty EPO programmes at the time of the race so the comparison is dubious.
    I think we're basically agreeing. I hope Evans is clean, Brad too. I sincerely hope that Sky and JV with Garmin really do make every effort to ensure their guys do it right, it's not like they can be 100% sure, but hopefully it's not just PR. Nibali seems to have no links to doping, that I'm aware of, I'm sure others can correct this, so you hope he's OK. But of all the other TdF favourites and recent GT winners, I have no faith at all, whether they won on the road or subsequently. I have special contempt for Valverde and Bertie simply through failure to man up and admit it, and extensive use of appeals and delaying tactics to avoid the inevitable, that ultimately tarnished cycling and the whole process following a +ive, the UCI have to carry the can for some of this too.
  • disgruntledgoat
    disgruntledgoat Posts: 8,957
    knedlicky wrote:
    How are we defining clean? If it's doing nothing remotely performance enhancing regardless of what the rules of the sport say at the time, I'd say "none".

    If it's complying with the doping rules as they stand at the time, but possibly doing things that were later decalared illegal I'd go with everyone up until about 1965 and after that Cadel Evans, Greg Lemond and Ryder Hesjedal in my "as certain as I can be" column with Carlos Sastre, 2010's Ivan Basso, Hinault and Kelly in my "A decent feeling" column.
    After 1965, I’d tend to also include (for the TdF) Van Impe as 'clean', and (for the Giro) Hampsten, and maybe Savoldelli. I'd also include Simoni because I feel cocaine is only on the doping list because it's generally banned, not because useful to cycling performances (thus why I'd also excuse Boonen if he ever won a grand tour).

    The defining of ‘clean’ also needs to include whether one means a grand tour winner who was always clean, or one who was clean at least the year he won a grand tour.
    If it’s the latter, I’d suspect Merckx was perhaps clean in his less dominant victories, Fignon maybe in his first TdF win (unless he said anything different in his book), and at the Giro, Cunego (the year he won).

    I knew I liked you.

    But seriously, Cunego has made a few little hints that he was doped when he won explaining he's "not the same rider" etc. The buzz was that his kid being born shortly afterwards scared him straight.

    Gibo is an interesting one (and you know my views on the man). His name doesn't appear in any of the multiple sporting fraud investigations in Italy, it isn't mentioned in any of the files referenced in Rendell's Pantani book, which are important and comprehensive evidence.

    However, he rode on Saeco, Lampre, Saunier Duval and then for Savio, there were reports of some of his tests showing some medically unfeasable levels of certain hormones and he won 2 Giri and a clutch of GT stages in what we'll call the Transfusion era. That and he was assigned as Ricco's "mentor" at SD and always got extremely defensive and agressive when anybody asked him about dope in an interview.

    On the other hand, the amount of time he spent at Lampre you'd expect his name to be all over the Mantua stuff, as you say his only brush with the authorities was for a recreational drug and he was able to provide the lozenges he cited for analysis.

    Realistically, he must have been up to something, but I've talked to Italians who reckon he was always a quiet opponent of EPO and blood doping due to fear of what it may do to him.

    I'd love to write a book about Gibo.
    "In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"

    @gietvangent
  • Ron Stuart
    Ron Stuart Posts: 1,242
    Send them all to the Leveson Inquiry. Jeremy Hunt is there now and he is/was part of the (Sky Team) :P
  • knedlicky
    knedlicky Posts: 3,097
    Gibo is an interesting one ...
    Realistically, he must have been up to something, but I've talked to Italians who reckon he was always a quiet opponent of EPO and blood doping due to fear of what it may do to him.

    I'd love to write a book about Gibo.
    I think Italian cycling fans have mixed opinions about Simoni. Often they saw his remarks and hints about other riders (of Basso, he’s like “an insurance company in a bank") as jealousy.
    Simoni once said his manager at Saunier Duval told the team members never to try and go beyond their limits and that he personally always trained hard and would rather have an honourable defeat than mess with doping,.
    Maybe Simoni was negative about other riders because he didn’t feel their victories, and thus his defeats, were honourable.

    On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine the SD manager (Mauro Gianetti, not the ‘cleanest’ person in his career) ever saying his riders should never try and go beyond their limits.

    Simoni also once said, "If you don't ask an athlete for the impossible, he remains limited. And certain performances are linked to characters who circulate around the teams”, thus implying doping and pushers. But he never got into detail, and I think that didn’t help his popularity – you either say nothing, or tell all.

    Wasn't Simoni once tested in Spain and found to have a hematocrit level over 50%? If so, that would also put a question mark on his criticism of other riders and what they got up to.



    When you write your book don’t forget to include Simoni’s suggestion that the UCI prohibit the use of foil to wrap the food put in the musettes, and that ordinary paper be used instead, because unlike foil, paper is biodegradable!
    Yes he did but I was never sure whether he was just being ironic (it was about the time of the discussions about water bottles being chucked away on to roadside verges)
  • disgruntledgoat
    disgruntledgoat Posts: 8,957
    knedlicky wrote:
    Maybe Simoni was negative about other riders because he didn’t feel their victories, and thus his defeats, were honourable.

    From my perspective as a deranged fanboy wanting to believe the best of his hero, that's how I saw his public hurling of abuse at Cunego on the Giro podium and his long running spat with Basso following Aprica in 2006. You just never saw a performance like that from Simoni after the 2003 Giro (which given his major opposition was an aging Casagrande, Dario Frigo and a broken Pantani, the performances were less jaw dropping than they might have been), where he rode everyone off his wheel at will.

    Oh, except on the Zoncolan in the 2008 Giro, which given what happened to his climbing lieutenant and the teams young star a couple of months later kind of throws everything back in the pot.
    "In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"

    @gietvangent
  • Spiny_Norman
    Spiny_Norman Posts: 128
    Pross wrote:
    sherer wrote:
    the trouble with Evans being clean is you have the same arguement that as you do with LA. All the guys LA beat have been caught or linked to doping so surely to beat them LA must have doped too.

    Evans beat a field of known dopers and are people really saying he is that much better that he can beat other dopers by being clean ? I'm not 100% sure. Maybe he is more clean than others.

    Out of last year's TdF field who do you think was actively doping or still benefitting from oast doping? Possibly Bertie in the latter category but he was knackered from the Giro. Arguably he won because his rivals were no longer doping and he has always been as or more talented as they are?
    The Science of Sport blog has suggested that what doping there is in the peloton is now at a much lower level than in the Pharmstrong era, which would be consistent with clean guys having more of a chance to compete.

    Wasn't there also some evidence from the last TdF that ascent times were generally much slower than in previous years? Can't find that one, but there seemed to be a significant difference. It paints a picture which is consistent with the field steadily returning towards a normal, legal level. I always try to remind myself of this, because it's natural to be suspicious of anyone who suddenly starts winning, but there's evidence to suggest that a good clean rider could look suspicious on that basis as others stop doping or get more careful in response to tighter testing criteria.
    N00b commuter with delusions of competence

    FCN 11 - If you scalp me, do I not bleed?
  • dennisn
    dennisn Posts: 10,601
    inseine wrote:
    Thing is, you've worded the question wrongly. You mean 'believe' not 'know'. We don't know if anybody was clean, or ever will, because you simply cannot prove it. You can only prove someone was doping.
    +1.... I don't believe in bigfoot, aliens, or levitation but sitting here I DO know that I don't know for sure. Believe and know are two very different things.
    "Believe the man seeking the truth. Be very wary of the one who claims to have found it". (Can't put a name to that quote)
  • Ron Stuart
    Ron Stuart Posts: 1,242
    dennisn wrote:
    inseine wrote:
    Thing is, you've worded the question wrongly. You mean 'believe' not 'know'. We don't know if anybody was clean, or ever will, because you simply cannot prove it. You can only prove someone was doping.
    +1.... I don't believe in bigfoot, aliens, or levitation but sitting here I DO know that I don't know for sure. Believe and know are two very different things.
    "Believe the man seeking the truth. Be very wary of the one who claims to have found it". (Can't put a name to that quote)

    You guys are thinking just like Richard Dawkins and exposing mankind’s love affair with the almost instinctive desire, need almost, to believe, rather than any need for proof. It's a theme that is prominent throughout these forums regards doping orientated posts in particular. This bigotry isn’t just confined to these pages of course and seems to manifest itself more in times of hardship.
  • tailwindhome
    tailwindhome Posts: 18,879
    My wife knows the kids are her's. I believe they're mine.
    “New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!
  • Ron Stuart
    Ron Stuart Posts: 1,242
    My wife knows the kids are her's. I believe they're mine.

    I'm sure she felt that to be true and you could prove your fatherhood if you felt the need. :wink:
  • jimmythecuckoo
    jimmythecuckoo Posts: 4,712
    After years of being let down by riders I have thought were clean I have come to the conclusion I don't really care what they get up to.

    I love the sport for the roads and the excitement.

    Yeah I would love them all to be clean, and I would accept a lesser spectacle to achieve that but...
  • dennisn
    dennisn Posts: 10,601
    Ron Stuart wrote:
    dennisn wrote:
    inseine wrote:
    Thing is, you've worded the question wrongly. You mean 'believe' not 'know'. We don't know if anybody was clean, or ever will, because you simply cannot prove it. You can only prove someone was doping.
    +1.... I don't believe in bigfoot, aliens, or levitation but sitting here I DO know that I don't know for sure. Believe and know are two very different things.
    "Believe the man seeking the truth. Be very wary of the one who claims to have found it". (Can't put a name to that quote)

    You guys are thinking just like Richard Dawkins and exposing mankind’s love affair with the almost instinctive desire, need almost, to believe, rather than any need for proof.

    I'm not so sure about that. I have a tremendous desire for proof of just about everything. As it stands right now I don't believe in a Bigfoot type creature. However, if someone can show me proof, that satisfies me, then I'll change my tune. Just trying to make it clear that I don't know.
  • dennisn
    dennisn Posts: 10,601
    iainf72 wrote:
    Name me a grand tour winner you know is clean in the last 100 years.
    Tried this in a pub a while ago and failed

    Cadel Evans
    Greg Lemond

    Just out of curiousity which of the following statements best describes what you think?
    I believe both men rode clean.
    I know both men rode clean.
  • iainf72
    iainf72 Posts: 15,784
    dennisn wrote:

    Just out of curiousity which of the following statements best describes what you think?
    I believe both men rode clean.
    I know both men rode clean.

    I know you live in America where changing your mind is considered a weakness. So the statement I would use is

    I believe both men rode clean (based on the evidence.)

    If someone presented me with different evidence, I would evaluate it and change my mind.
    Fckin' Quintana … that creep can roll, man.
  • dennisn wrote:
    iainf72 wrote:
    Name me a grand tour winner you know is clean in the last 100 years.
    Tried this in a pub a while ago and failed

    Cadel Evans
    Greg Lemond

    Just out of curiousity which of the following statements best describes what you think?
    I believe both men rode clean.
    I know both men rode clean.

    Isn't this a pointless question though, who honestly thinks that anyone on this forum would say that they know absolutely that a rider definitely hasn't doped? I know that there are quite a few that would go the other way and say they think a rider definitely did, but no one is silly enough given the history of the sport to say they "know" a rider hasn't?.
    Take care of the luxuries and the necessites will take care of themselves.