That is my point.

what – it's good for the motor to spin inside the tube ?

Admit to doping + say you're going to repent + write a book about it = probable minimum interest.

Admit to doping + say you're going to repent + write a book about it + implicate Armstrong = probable bestseller.

Kerrrr-ching Landi$.

XTR cranks on a road bike! What next?
Or is it intended for a MTB?

part of the problem here is that these atheletes diets are so far outside of what we would consider normal

if i was serious about an xc race id probably have some pasta the night before and try to only have a couple of beers

i may have some cereal bars for the race and some sis powder energy drink during it

at the top level sportspeople are monitoring their calorie intake, along with god knows what vitamins, pills, powders, recovery drinks etc etc as for oxygenated blood, hormones etc some of these are very very hard to detect
as the dopers develop new drugs the testers have to keep up with them, meaning that it might be very easy for dopers to get by for years as long as they have a good 'dietician/pusher' behind them

and i stand by my comment about roadies vs mtbers
look at interviews the roadies often come accros as arrogant ****ts more interested in rubbishing their opponents than riding their bikes

dhers just seem more fun, most supported the UCI skinsuit ban and have a gentlemens agreement on not going peakless
for that reason alone they seem less likely to cheat

and they dont shave their legs

go to a dh race and see how many times the tapes are moved/shifted etc. then see how many folks are trying to cut a little corner here, sneak a little line there.

if you think there aren't cheaters in every sport then you are a fool.

well didnt see anyone cutting corners at the last aston dh race i rode, though it wasnt a world cup, tho there were some world cup riders there

and trying to get a better line round a corner isnt the same as using banned substances to alter your body chemistry, for a start anyone can follow your line once youve moved a bit of tape

Working with an ex-GB cyclist jsut now. He's opened my eyes to doping; where once I was naiive and non-skeptical, I would now suspect any winner of doping. Its not if they dope, its if they get caught. That includes Wiggins.

"Other than an "our boy" bias, is there any reason for thinking Wiggins is any more likely to be clean than the rest of the peloton?"

He's been vary scathing of dopers in both his book and in the news. He's turn out to be one of the biggest hypocrites of all time should he ever test positive.

Not proof I know, but something to cling to.

Anyone see the story about the ex-premiership footballer dropping dead – mid 20's I think he was. They listed about 4 or 5 other early/mid 20 players across europe who'd died.

Sounds a bit like the early days of EPO abuse, doesn't it?

IMHO there are other sports that need to clean their acts up now, cycling is well ahead of some of the others.

Read all of Landis's claims and apparently Armstrong and the UCI had a "financial agreement" to pay the UCI to hush up positive doping tests. I mean who beleives this guy! I not saying that Armstrong didn't dope but Landis has no credibility.

The anti-doping folks certainly have got wiser. The CERA story (test developed in secret with drug company befor the drug was released) caught loads of Italian riders and not many else. This is a reasonable view of who is doping.

Oh and MTB dopers? There have been plenty. Chicken legs himeslf for one. Before the TdF he was a MTB world champ.

for a start anyone can follow your line once youve moved a bit of tape

Thats not the point really is it? At what point does it become unacceptable? I could go upto fort bill, remove the tape, ride down the fire road in 4 minutes, should I be world champ?

im really talking about dhers vs roadies

xc racers ,as someone else said, are just roadies who got lost

as for riding the fire road at fort bill, youd provbably still get beat by the big boys on the dh course 😀

If you think DHers are less likely to cheat because the image of the sport is "cooler" and they're more laid back you're living on cloud cuckoo land. It's a similar sport to sprinting where races are won and lost by fractions of a second, *any* advantage you can get, any fractional increase in power, reaction times etc is worth exploring to those who are prepared to cheat.

As for Wiggins, he's clean. I know what selection criteria Team Sky (and Team GB) applied to their riders, they wouldn't look at anyone who's biometric passport had even the slightest question mark against it.

He's been vary scathing of dopers in both his book and in the news. He's turn out to be one of the biggest hypocrites of all time should he ever test positive.

Much like Landis after his resultthen…

kimbers i think you are wrong.

If you think DHers are less likely to cheat because the image of the sport is "cooler" and they're more laid back you're living on cloud cuckoo land. It's a similar sport to sprinting where races are won and lost by fractions of a second, *any* advantage you can get, any fractional increase in power, reaction times etc is worth exploring to those who are prepared to cheat.

so why support the skinsuit ban and no bulletheads?

thats not to say some might not be doping – im not totally naive

i just get the impression that with roadies its endemic and wiggins probably just has a better endocrinoligist cooking up his junk than the UCI has on their books
and Team Sky are backed by rupert murdoch, so imho they would do anything upto and including child sacrifices if they thought it would help

While Rasmussen may have BEEN a mtber before his bout of wherabouts amnesia, don't forget that 2 XC World Champs have been busted while still competing in that discipline: Jerome Chiotti admitted doping to win the 1996 Worlds and Filip Meirhaeghe was popped for EPO use during the 2004 season. Not just a roadie problem, folks.

Not just a roadie problem, folks.

Exactly. Operation Puerto turned up all sorts of athletes particularly tennis players and swimmers with a few footballers thrown in for good measure yet you only ever heard about the cyclists…

Pretty much any sportsperson can benefit from doping, you only have to see how many golfers/snooker players apparently have high blood pressure and need to take beta-blockers – it's to help block out the stress and help concentration.

Football is undoubtedly full of dopers too – it's just big money and gets well hushed up… It's believed but never proven that Puerto caught plenty of footballers too…

A bit of out date but the dope testing regimes in football haven't been tightened significantly since
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/mar/31/football.sport

just make the consequences of taking performance enhancing drugs much more severe. Before you compete you sign a disclaimer to say I don;t use performance enhancing drugs and if I do you can –
legally strip me of all titles and wins I've ever had,
ban me for life in competitive cycling,
ban me from attending competitive cycling events,
all sponsorship to be revoked for life,
break my legs,
ok maybe the last one's a bit extreme 😈

Wouldn't stop people and they're already essentially signing something similar ( less the broken legs 😉 )

The chance of glory, the small risk of being caught (based on people getting caught saying that they'd cheated for years).

look at interviews the roadies STWers often come accros as arrogant ****ts more interested in rubbishing their opponents than riding their bikes

Hey up, I fixed it for you…

so why support the skinsuit ban and no bulletheads?

Why not? As long as the playing field's the same for all racers, and is this case a ban on skinsuits is perfectly aligned with sponsors' needs – realistically, could you imagine TV coverage of Peat in a skinsuit??? 😕

so why support the skinsuit ban and no bulletheads?

In the same way all the dopers support the ban on drugs in public.

The UCI constantly let dopers get away with it. 2 year bans are laughable. A cheat gets caught, goes and dopes for two years, gets superhuman, comes back and wins races. No way of being caught.

The UCI show their weakness by not following Olympic protocol and banning for life. Personally its hard to say who isn't doping. Why do people say Contadors clean?

It seems that to follow pro road cycling you have to know much more about drugs & testing than cycling. How tedious is that.

but its the history and evolving race tactics, riders form, specialities etc. that make a road race interesting to watch.

whereas i think we would all agree an xc race makes shite watching.

Don't forget too that DH is a minority branch of a minority branch of a minority sport; if there was a decent amount of money and prestige attached to it I suspect the rewards would be greater and so would the cheating..

It seems to me that there is just enough money in road racing to make doping worthwhile, but far too much money in, say, football or tennis for anyone ever to get caught in those sports.

Landis raced mtb's before road!

It seems to me that there is just enough money in road racing to make doping worthwhile, but far too much money in, say, football or tennis for anyone ever to get caught in those sports.

Correct, that's why the anti-doping agencies find it so difficult to pursue cases, the athletes have SO much money they can afford to fight it every step of the way and force a long, drawn-out, protracted battle which the agency simply can't afford.

Happens in the UCI as well although not to the same extent as in other sports (football for example is awash with more money than cycling could ever dream about). That's why Landis did that huge fight, it was an attempt to force the UCI and WADA to drop the case on the grounds that it would cost them too much, he just miscalculated.

There's plenty of circumstantial evidence surrounding some figures in road racing (Armstrong probably the best known example, there are others) but if the UCI/WADA/USADA ever tried to bring a conviction based on that it would bankrupt them.

There is also the balancing act required to actually have a sport to be clean in…
Given that external sponsorship is the lifeblood of pro cycling, you can't simply chuck the baby out with the bathwater. European attitudes towards doping are far more relaxed than those in the US and increasingly the UK. In Europe people know it goes on and shrug rather than faint and froth…

unless it's non european* riders doing it

*mainland**

**french

mogrim – Member
> so why support the skinsuit ban and no bulletheads?
Why not? As long as the playing field's the same for all racers, and is this case a ban on skinsuits is perfectly aligned with sponsors' needs – realistically, could you imagine TV coverage of Peat in a skinsuit???

I bet all the baggies they've agreed to wear will be pinned up tightly for the Fort William round

Maybe the consequence then is that we should trust and admire sportspeople as much as we admire politicians.

Dual-approach solution based on the fact that Italians and Spaniards are fed EPO in their bottles from birth whilst the Belgians are too smashed to ride much these days (apart from 'cross and you'd have to be out of your gourd to consider that)…

Self-elected 'Clean' and 'Enhanced' pools decided at start of season. Clean group tested on a weekly basis whilst training and daily during 1 day/stage races, all of them, no random selection. 'Enhanced' pool never tested but are given lively dose of randomly selected hallucinogen every three days (on the line on race days). Oh for the simple joys of watching Contador* or Boonen* talking to the trees…

*totally selected at random and in no way at all intended to imply that they have gorilla's piss blood transfusions

Floyd really is a tool. He dragged the sport through the US courts on the hope of a technicality in the testing procedure to allow him to keep his title. After over a million bucks wasted, hes still guilty.

So what does he do? Say 'everyone else was at it' and 'its what i had to do to win' (we all do this).

Why couldn't he come clean at the 2006 press conference and said this?

Why? Because like all cheats you can't trust them one bit. Anything he says is tainted by the above. Could you trust him?

Fling shit at Lance and it gets you alot of attention. Previous **** have done this then become all evangelical and born again AFTER They are caught.

Funny that.

Until Lance is proved guilty shut the **** up?

Floyd was caught 4yrs ago. Hes dragged it out be he was caught 4yrs ago huh.

Rant over.

HitchinBoro – Member

"Other than an "our boy" bias, is there any reason for thinking Wiggins is any more likely to be clean than the rest of the peloton?"

He's been vary scathing of dopers in both his book and in the news. He's turn out to be one of the biggest hypocrites of all time should he ever test positive.

Sounds like you are describing Bjarne Riis there, exept Bjarne didnt test positive, but after god know how many years admitted to having been doped……….

Armstrong is probably the most tested athlete in history, in any sport. No test has ever found him guilty. Occam's razor.