Ulrich has blown the chance he's been waiting for for 7 years!

Nothing new on the Tour. They've been doping in one form or another since the Tours inception in the early 1900's

Anyone read French Revolutions by Tim Moore? Very funny book with some interesting facts along the way.

Drugs or no drugs. It's an amazing feat!

JG

And they are cycling past the grave of that English guy who died on the Tour from amphetamine abuse this year.

Plus ca change eh? :lol:

Tom "Put me back on the bike" Simpson!

anything proven yet?

or just lots of smoke?

btw. Armstrong was the most tested athlete in history.

I reckon he was clean. won on guts alone.

Someone should teach them that if they want to go that far and fast on a bike, they need an engine. :roll: :D

Ok, to be fair, he wasnt really caught doping. He was out, on a bender, hammered drunk and on E, and he crashed his car into a shop. They tested him, and suprise suprise, he was positive for speed. He wasnt on E to make him ride his bike faster, that's for sure. He got caught though, and was suspended.

This thing though, well, all that say Jan or Basso have been directly implicated in is intention to blood dope.
Blood doping is basically drawing off blood, spinning it down to get rid of some of the plasma, and freezing it. You do this a load of times, you keep training away, and then you have a nice bank of blood i nyour freezer. Then every night during the tour, you run the new blood into yourself, and your bloods abilty to carry O2 is upped.

There were drugs also found... but, no one tested +ve, so you cannot say they were doping. Very very suspect though.

Yeah. I mean, the whole thing is horrible beyond belief. I am not even going to go into it. I used to be a (crap) amatuer rider, i knew/ know some good ones now. I am mates with Lance Armstrongs Ex soigneur's brother, http://velonews.com/race/int/articles/6257.0.html and there are things that I have been told that really shock me.
The thing is, its not the riders you need to look at. Its the people who run the team. I still feel that to a large extent the riders are victoms a lot of the time with this doping business.

Oh yeah. Cycling is hard. Unbelievably hard. Seriously, you cannot believe how hard it is until you get flogged in a few races. Even then you just get a sniff of an idea. What pro riders go through is plain stupid. You suffer, you sleep eat and suffer. There are plenty of memorable quotes etc, one was something like, "I knew i had to slow down when the snow went black". Thats where they go, you go until you cant see properly anymore. Riders will have to be flown away from the end of a stage, breathing oxygen, to spend the night in a hospital, and then arrive back the next morning to race.
And, then you are told, here is something to make the pain a little more bearable. Everyone else is on it. You will be fine...

Tour de France riders in doping scandal?I really can't believe that.Whatever next? :roll:

Why is putting your own, clean blood in your own body illegal?

I seem to remember a team of pursuit cyclists at the olympics doing it and it was fine.

No dope, no problem. surely

Its illegal for the same reason that EPO is illegal. The powers that be have decided that it is. I was doping when I was riding, technically, since when I was young I had asthma, and the meds for that were considered dope.

The UCI has decided that it gives you an unfair advantage, and banned it. It can be dangerous if you spin the blood down so much it becomes thick to the point that it can give you a heart attack.

Well as a normal fan of cycling the doping scandals are depressing.

Cycling needs to clean up its act.

I have so much respect for professional cyclists - they have to be soooo tough.

I hope that the upshot of all this is a cleaner sport.