Tour de France 2007

Recreation Sports
1

Sure, the sport is plagued by doping, allegations of doping, suspicions of doping, and an absence of great names due to doping, etc, but it’s still the greatest sporting event on Earth and this year it’s off to a great start.

[quote]Everything was shaping up for a mass sprint to the finish today in the first full stage of the Tour de France when suddenly the race’s best sprinter was on the ground.

Robbie McEwen, the Australian rider for Predictor-Lotto who has won the Tour’s best sprinter title in three of the last five years, crashed some 15 miles from the finish of the 126-mile stage from London to Canterbury. In a flash, the main pack of riders was gone, apparently taking McEwen’s hopes of a stage win with them.

But instead of a tale of woe, McEwen managed to weave his own magical story, remounting his bike and clawing his way back to the group, then bursting through the front riders in the last tenth of a mile to win the stage by better than two bike lengths . . .

After the finish, McEwen said he was upended when riders in front of him slowed unexpectedly on a narrow stretch of road that was bordered by tall hedges. As he braked, McEwen said, a rider hit him from behind, sending McEwen tumbling over his handlebars and onto the ground.

“I thought I had broken my hand,” he said, because when he got back onto his bike he couldn’t move his right wrist. But three of McEwen’s teammates waited for him and helped to pace him back to the main pack of riders, known as the peloton. Then McEwen weaved his way through the pack until he found his teammate Freddy Rodriguez, the American sprinter whose job is to help being McEwen into position to contest the final dash.

Two other teams, meanwhile, were working hard at the front of the pack to set up their sprinters for the finish: Quick Step-Innergetic, working for the Belgian Tom Boonen, who finished third, and Milram, whose top sprinter at the Tour is Erik Zabel, a German who held the record for most Tour stage wins among active riders with 12. Zabel faded to finish 13th, while Thor Hushovd of Crédit Agricole finished second.

McEwen said he felt that because the last half-mile of the course was on a slight incline, he could use his ability to rapidly accelerate to pass other riders. And he did just that. With 200 meters to go, McEwen jumped out of his bike saddle and started his final sprint. At 150 meters, he said, he moved out from behind another rider and took a clear path to the finish.

It was McEwen’s 12th win of a Tour de France stage, tying him with Zabel, a feat that McEwen later shrugged off.

“It’s nice to have the statistics,” he said, “but the important thing was winning one stage this year. Hopefully, I won’t have too much trouble with the injuries I got and I can win again.” . . . [/quote]
link

2

Have they decided who won last year’'s event yet? Seriously: I remember it was being contested, but not the resolution.

No doubt these guys are tough: I’d be happy to be competitive (or even not ridiculous) in a single stage, never mind day in and out for the duration. But it’d be a far more spectator friendly sport if they carried hockey sticks to thump one another.

3

Jaboney, last year’s in still up in the air. I think the final decision will be made next month.

4

Watched the tour’s 1st etappe on TVU yesterday … maybe they’ll continue streaming it

5

Robbie! Robbie! Robbie!

He’s been my hero for years. Who says a small guy can’t sprint? Plus he uses his head well…

2005 tour, Robbie relegated for head butting (which he didn’t really do, just pushed his head on Stuey’s shoulder. Very common in Aussie track sprinting)

6

Is it?

Nope.

I mean, it’s a great race, and you have to respect the rider’s determination and willingness to suffer, but the “greatest sporting event on Earth”? Don’t think so.

It’s not a great spectator’s sport to begin with, there are too many meaningless stages where the only excitement lies in whether some no-name rider who tries to escape will get caught by the field or not. The few mountain stages are the only really good days, because there’s less team strategy and the best riders fight each other. After the mountains it’s just waiting until the end, cause the winner has most likely already been determined. There is no great finale.

After all those doping confessions, it’s quite obvious that most riders, probably including Lance Armstrong, have been doping and that doping continues. I don’t see any reason why riders should think differently now than in the past. As long as you can’t get caught, you do it. It’s as simple as that.

Best sporting event on Earth?

I think that title belongs to the FIFA World Cup hands down.

7

Well, the doping does detract from the sport for me (and I race too) but it doesn’t kill the excitement. TdF is WAY harder than football, BTW. Absolutely no comparison in the exertion stakes… almost every day for three weeks, race 200km…in four hours. And it has many different races within the event, and each stage is a race in its own right as well. Sure, football world cup is a big event, and its friendly for spectators, but that doesn’t make it any BETTER than TdF. It’s differently good. anyway, when was the alst time you went to watch a football match in the world cup? You watch it on TV, same as I watch TdF, and then I get four or five hours of TV enjoyment and you get 90 minutes…

there’s no doping in FIFA? as much as in TdF, I would think. just the doping control is much more lax.

8

Four hours? Since when? These guys are on the road every day for at least 6-7 hours … the first 100 km they go not faster than a 30-40 km/h meander through the landscape, after that they go up to around 45-50 km/h at times …

9

You said it. Live coverage here: www.channelsurfing.net (seems to work only with IE, not Firefox, unfortunately–when the video viewer says that coverage is “offline,” as it invariably will, simply close it and reopen it from the main page).

10

Aiyeaaaaa. Worse than baseball, it will take years to clean up the mess in cycling.

Today’s news:

[quote]After Positive Test, Team Quits Tour de France

July 25 – Alexander Vinokourov, the Kazakh cyclist who was considered a favorite to win the Tour de France, failed a drug test after the first of his two recent stage victories and, along with his entire Astana team, withdrew from the Tour on Tuesday, further plunging the sport into a doping crisis that has eroded the legitimacy of its most prestigious event. . . [/quote]

And just a few days ago they were reporting on this guy:

Fucking jerks. :fume:

11

Probably all riders who have a chance to win are taking drugs in one form or another. The best clean rider might be a no name currently in 30th place or something.

12

It appears that way, but I continue to hope it’s not true.

In that regard, I recall Lance being criticized on forumosa before for allegedly doping, but as far as I know that’s a completely unsubstantiated wild guess based on him being so totally dominant (and coming back from cancer to kick ass on his competitors), because I don’t recall ever reading any credible evidence supporting that claim. Was there any?

13

why do you have to bust my balls on this shit, :laughing:

14

I don’t recall who said that about Lance, but I was just curious. He’s the greatest champion the Tour has ever had. Did he ever have any suspect test results or ever refuse to comply with a required test? I honestly don’t know.

15

AFAIK, Lance tested clean every time, and never missed a required test. The only test that had some doubt to it was a retest of a stored sample done a few years after the sample was taken, but there were so many flaws in the lab’s procedure that it wasn’t credible.

16

I think i may have said that some people are claiming he doped. I am not sure he didn’t, at some point.

he has been linked to two big names in the doping scene, his trainer (i forget her name) after his initial cancer recovery period, and later Dr Michele Ferrari, well known as a dope-friendly medico, and whose name repeatedly pops up next to dopers. Guilt by association, perhaps, but many people would counter by saying that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

As forr the lab retesting his samples from previous tests, that is fairly standard practice therse days in attempts to develop new testing procedures, to calibrate backwards to standardise tests across labs, and to rescan for old doping incidents that were not testable at the time of the test (as techniques and knowledge of what to look for grows, only slightly behind the arms race of the dopers themselves).
but those tests are not legally enforceable, as you can only bust a doper on current tests.

Vino, you stupid bastard. blood bagging is doping too, according to the rules.

I am sure that many riders self blood dope, taking blood out and retransfusing before a big race. you can have serious clotting problems and blood pressure problems if you get dehydrated. that is almost permissible under some rules, and very hard to check. the haematocrit (percent ppacked red blood cell volume in blood sample,normally 45-48% for men) cut off is probably a bit high (over 52% i think), but the riders know their limit and don’t generally go past it. But Vino was caught by a new variety of the test that looks not just at the number of blood cells but whether they are your own or not. he had two different person’s red blood cells in him: clear evidence of transfusion. sorry, Vino: your claims that its just a blood anomaly after his stitches the other day are WRONG.

17

Looks like Mr. Clean just moved up a few spots and may be a contender.

[quote]2nd Team Withdraws From Tour After Doping Test

France, July 25 — A second team withdrew from the Tour de France on Wednesday after one of its riders tested positive for the use of a banned performance-enhancing drug, as a still-expanding specter of doping spread over the Tour, threatening the future of the race and the entire sport of cycling.

Cristian Moreni, an Italian rider for the French Cofidis team, was led away by police following the 16th stage after it was announced that he had tested positive for manufactured testosterone after the end of an earlier stage of the race. Moreni declined to request a follow-up, confirmatory test and was expelled from the Tour.

A few hours later, the Tour organizers announced that Cofidis had decided to withdraw its entire team from the remainder of the race. . .[/quote]


nytimes.com/2007/07/26/sport … ur.html?hp

18

And now it’s goodbye Rasmussen, the tour leader.

[quote]And Wednesday’s victory on the Col d’Aubisque seemed to tightened his grip on the yellow jersey.

I can only applaud - it’s a zero-tolerance policy and it’s a lesson for the future

UCI president Pat McQuiad’s verdict on Rabobank’s decision

But Rabobank have since discovered that Rasmussen lied to them over where and what he was up to during the month of June, when he was in fact in Italy and not in Mexico as he had told them.

“Michael Rasmussen has been sent home for violating the team’s internal rules,” confirmed a Rabobank spokesman. [/quote]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/cycling/6916698.stm

19

Predictor Lotto are talking of suing Astana and Vinokourov personally for lost earnings and for bringing their name into disrepute by association.

maybe they’ll drop that if Cadel wins.

How far can this go? Hopefully, all the way. As someone mentioned on another forum, perhaps the only way to ensure dope-free racing is to have ther entire echelon of pro riders live in one mega-security complex for the six months preceding Les Grandes Tours.

Notice I said ‘dope-free’, not drug free. The whole medically-assisted sports cheating thing has gone way beyond just using drugs. Now there’s the whole range of drugs, hormones, blood transfusion techniques either with other people’s blood or your own, etc, timed periods when you miss drug screening appointments to allow stuff you’ve taken to fall below detectable or flagged limits, and so on. The next trick on the horizon is genetic manipulation, whereby one alters the genetic codes hiding in muscles to make them develop in unusual ways… genetic screening is much more expensive, but has been mooted for Olympic sprinters, ice racers and other athletes. “Dope-free” could also mean getting rid of all the idiots, but that’d be a bit harsh, and hard to decide just who is and isn’t one, i guess.

20

Maybe the only thing that would prevent athletes from cheating is a life-long ban for first-time offenders. Cheat once and you are out of here. 2-year bans and fines don’t real cut it anymore. No excuses, not bullshit. You cheat, we don’t want to see you again, ever.