In the current Tour de France three riders have already been caught using 3rd Generation Epo, a kind of doping the riders believed was untraceable. It especially sucks when one of the time is double stage winner Ricco, though he's hated amongst all the other riders because he's an asshole. He was fired from his team of course, despite him denying using the stuff. Though if he and another stage winner and teammate Piepoli gets fired for breaking team rules it suggest that they're both guilty as hell, the other one just hasn't been caught yet. But after the whole Floyd Landis thing it's not exactly a thing the Tour de France can use right now.

Of course it's not just cycling, looking at all the current stuff going on in American athletics. Athletes dying very young apparently isn't a clue to these people that this could be dangerous, makes you wonder how intelligent these people are. Winning is more important than health (a drug like Epo can cause brain aneurisms and heart attacks because of thickening of the blood). Just a sad thing that it will never stop, cheating has always existed and always will.

Just sad really, the athletes complain about checks being too strict, random and frequent and in some cases they are. You have to fight it somehow though.

As long as they keep finding cheaters, they will need to keep doing very rigorous testing. Last year's Tour was a fiasco that was almost as bad as 1998 (remember Festina?). I am very disappointed in Ricco, because (despite being an asshole) he was one of the up-and-comers on the Tour and I really love good climbers. Tour cycling is the toughest athletic event, so cheating will make the most difference- and it is why they need to continue testing until everyone is clean. I was hoping that with the new generation of riders coming up they would realize cheating is not worth it, but the Ricco incident is not a good sign.....

The Landis thing I still don't understand- testosterone is not a performance enhancing drug (well, not athletic performance), unless it is used consistently for many months. Testing positive for it once does not make any sense. The only thing I can think of is that he may have been taking it for a long time, but on the day in question forgot to take whatever substance was necessary to cover it from testing. This one is really too bad because what was once one of the most incredible single-day performances in the history of the Tour is now relegated to the trash bin.

EPO thickens the blood by increasing the number of RBCs, but you can also do that by heavy aerobic training and training at high altitude. I am not exactly a world-class athlete (I run and cycle, and I live somewhat above sea level) and my hematocrit is usually in the high 40's; 50 is the cutoff point for testing- I can't believe an athlete would think there is that much difference in performance with a couple of point of hematocrit.

But hey, how about that Cavendish- was that last sprint finish (stage 13) just freaking amazing????

A slightly higher hematocrit level can make the difference between getting up that mountain and running out of air just before the summit. If you're evenly matched every little thing makes a difference, that's also why there's that much investment in the bikes they use, you have to realise that every Tour cyclist has three normal bikes that cost about 10.000 euros each and two time trial bikes that cost twice that.

One of the guys that got caught, Moises Dueñas, blames a team doctor for his positive test. Because he was the one that sold it to him. Just shows what kind of moron he is; he used it, the doctor just sold him the stuff. Doesn't make him less guilty but Dueñas made the decision to use it.

Testosterone isn't a performance enhancing substance no but it does accelerate recovery. So if you take testosterone when you're exhausted you simply recover quicker. So it's not exactly that shocking that Landis was crap one day and he flew up the mountain the next day (which was the day he tested positive).

It's not just cycling though, people are caught in other sports all the time. Bulgaria decided to withdraw their entire weight lifting team from the Olympics when it turned out about half of them were doped. Though there are examples where it shows how strict those tests actually are, double Olympic champion in swimming Pieter van den Hoogenband had a case where he was tested three times within a week by three different agencies. These athletes have to submit a list of where they are months in advance to the anti-doping agencies, you try and tell someone where you'll be today in three months on a Wednesday at 3PM.

I would actually say the single most tough athletic event that exists is the Iron Man, which is a triathlon which consists of 30km swimming, 180km cycling and a marathon run at the end for good measure.

Cavendish didn't come up the mountain today though . Freire was the best of the rest.

In regards to the Ricco thing I also loved the comment from a Dutch rider, Bram Tankink. He said that he hoped his teammates would beat him up and that he was glad he punched the guy during the stage the day before (he was pushing Tankink off the road in one of the descents). He also added that the guy is just an asshole.

This is why I have not cared about this since Lance left. Every year the story is the same. Some guy wins, and then gets caught for doping.

This post has been edited by gregair13: Jul 28 2008, 05:06 AM

Another example how all this doping [censored] causes problems. One of the biggest Dutch cycling talents, Thomas Dekker (not the actor), is probably going to leave his current team. Rabobank apparently doesn't trust him completely, the guy is a bit of a loner and lives in Italy and trains with an Italian well known trainer. Problem just is that this guy has also been rumoured to be involved with doping in the past. That combined with strange blood values for Dekker apparently is enough for Rabobank to stop trusting him.

So this guy hasn't even been proven to use doping but still his team wants to get rid of him, he's also mad that he was left out of the Tour de France squad. He also pulled out of the Olympics because of bad form he says, the national coach wasn't exactly happy about that. Not really a big problem for Rabobank though, they also have Robert Geesink (1.92 and about 65kg, I didn't even know physical stats like that were possible) who's seen as the biggest climbing talent in the world. That for someone who was born in the Netherlands .

Thomas Dekker doesn't really need to worry either though, Garmin-Chipotle, Team Columbia, Astana and CSC-Saxo Bank already stated in interest in him.