Bloody hell, I go for a weekend of biking (in the Alps) and look what I’ve missed.

After doing over 90km (almost entirely on single track) this weekend I might be a bit biased… But there is certainly a lot of pretty good all day riding available in them there Alps.

That 90km weekend included about 700m of on the bike altitude gain and about 6000-7000m of descending. At a rough guess I would say around 80km of that was on single track.

@Cupid Stunt.
I bet they put a smile on your face. :-)

Not photos… but moving pictures. ;-)

Last Friday in Switzerland
http://www.vimeo.com/25676839

A few weeks ago in Switzerland
http://www.vimeo.com/25017674

A Saturday back in May in Switzerland
http://www.vimeo.com/24131070

Quite a lot of single track on the go over here. :-)

I’ve only ridden it once a few years back, but at that point I reckon you could have ridden it on a road bike. Or at the very least a CX bike.

freeridenick – Member

I have been looking on the Zermatt website. There seems to be various small print about having to display a riding number and also fines of 75chf for straying off the marked trails – is this enforced?

very keen to go but just concerned will not be able to get on the really good trails and left to ride the double track..
As I understand that it is for downhillers. If you turn up with body armour, full face and a DH bike then you will most likely be expected to take the number. I can only see them issueing the fine if you make a nuisance of yourself. i.e. Blast full speed through a group of hikers on one of the unofficial bike trail or chase animals etc.

Last year I rode a good number of different trails in the area on two separate trips, one of them in the busiest season and I had no troubles at all.

I’d be interested to hear if things have changed this year. I’ll be up there again in a few weeks.

The lift passes are expensive, especially as a tourist. But the riding is phenomenal. There is one proper DH course which was supposed to be used for the European championships this year until the event got cancelled, but there is a whole host of natural trails to be ridden there.

It’s not somewhere to ride with reckless abandon as you can come around a corner on the natural trails and see a group of hikers standing like a rabbit in headlights but you’ll be hard pushed to find a more stunning backdrop for a bike ride.

There are trail possibilities to ride from 3100m down to about 1400m, lower if you don’t mind a bit of effort.

There are also a load of other areas with lift access within easy access on the Swiss railway network.

The trails are a bit like this one.

scu98rkr – Member

Uplift companies need to invent uphill riding. Its like Downhill but the opposite.
Already been done, it’s quite popular in Austria, they even have special uphill bikes that weigh nothing and only have one brake. Personally I can’t see the point. Mountain biking without the fun.

As for what to call Sicktastic Enduro All Alpine Mountain technoflow downhill uphill with left and right turns… you guys can call it what you want. I just call it going for a ride.

I run the Swiss Alpine Adventure site mentioned above. Get in touch and let me know exactly what you are looking for.

info (at) swissalpineadventure.com

I’m based just outside Zurich and can point you in the direction of some great trail riding not too far outside the city centre or further out into the mountains if that’s what takes your fancy.

Switzerland, because I live there, and there are SOOOOOOOOOOOO many trails with barely anyone on them. :-)

It also helps that it’s 25deg outside and I’m going to get to ride some of those awesome trails after work.

I live in Switzerland, ride the Alps and have been even known to show a few people around. I use the train at least once a week with my bike. I regularly have lunch in mountain restaurants too… and I never use a bike lock. What the bike shop told you is what everyone over here does. I don’t know anybody that goes mountain biking over here and carries a lock with them… and I know a lot of people, some of them with VERY expensive bikes. Here in CH there are more bikes than you can imagine worth in the region of 10,000CHF left outside mountain restaurants every weekend. It was a bit shocking when I got here first, but you get used to it.

A bit of common sense goes a long way. Don’t leave your bike unattended somewhere that it’s asking to get stolen, When on the train hang the bike and sit near it so you can keep an eye on it during the journey. When in the mountains sit outside at the restaurants and lean the bike against a wall near your table.

This is Switzerland, not central London. I carry a lot in my back pack, but not a lock.

Ignore my advice if you plan on leaving your bike in down town Zurich/Geneva/Bern etc. But when going for a day ride I never bring a lock.

I’d say around Zermatt or Bettmeralp in Switzerland. As seen in Vast.

To be honest if you are not that huge into climbing I don’t know why you want all the adjustment. In some ways it’s just another thing to go wrong. I’ve blown a Talas twice and a number of people have had troubles with Rock Shox U-Turn system. I’ve dumped the Talas on one of my bikes for a non-adjustable Rock Shox Revelation and always had a non adjustable Totem on the other and I’m not exactly adverse to climbing. (I’m not good at it, but I don’t mind doing it if there is a good trail when I get to the top).

In some cases dropping the forks totally messes the geometry of the bike and makes it feel like it’s riding into the hill rather than up it.

Finally, all the bikes your talking about are good. The only way you’ll know if one suits you better than another is to ride it. If you can’t do that then it’s all theoretical anyway so just get one with about 160mm of travel 67-68ish degree head angle and reasonable components. Otherwise you’ll spend all your time figuring out what bike to buy rather than be out in the mountains enjoying what Switzerland’s got to offer. and believe me, it’s got a lot to offer.

just to fuel the fire, I know somewhere not far from where you’re based that might be able to do a 2011 Specialized Enduro Comp for similar money.

Lets face it you get a bike to ride it not make love to it. Looks are secondary to how it functions.

At least similar money to the prices on the links you’ve posted.

RHSno2 – Member

aditude: if you wanna mail me for a completely biased opinion on riding in the swiss alps and other large mtn’s then feel free to do so.
robert dot hamiltonsmith at gmail dot com
Take up this offer. RHS’s bias is the best kind. :D

I’ve scanned through this thread and if you live in CH I have no idea why you are even considering the Zesty. If you want one bike for everything that Switzerland can throw at you it’s the Spicy. I’ve ridden a trail or two in Switzerland so have a reasonable idea what the riding is like here.

By the sounds of it you are living somewhere like Zug or Zurich. You’re not by any chance mates with a bloke in the chemistry dept of the ETH Zurich? A bloke I know asked me the exact same question as the OP last week for a friend of his.

Maybe see you out for a ride sometime.

I’ll support what Ash said. I rode there with him about this time last year and the trails were pretty damn good. Some really fast and flowy stuff down there. I’ve got the 1:25000 map of the area and can concur that the trails are on it and a wee bit of exploring should get you some really natural trail riding.

ash – Member

It’s in Fr..

I mean Desti…

Erm.

Mne.

You’re still making people guess? :o
You should make a competition out of it. First person to figure it out gets a free TA holiday. :wink:

It’s been pretty good around the pre-Alps too. Quite a lot of rather dry and dusty stuff at the weekend.

Looking forward to a week in Sud-Tirol next week. Got to love spring.

Don’t worry about fitness. Racing uphill is heavily frowned upon by me. My philosophy is save as much energy as possible on the climbs to use it on the descents.

flamejob – Member

Super sad to leave, we’ll probably be living in a shoebox in Switzerland.

I would say post yours, but it kinda insights someone to rob you eh?

Images are GoPro – I took loads more with an iPhone to construct a PhotoSynth
But that box comes with a pretty wicked back yard! ;-)

Get in touch when you get here. I’ll show you some stuff to put a smile on your face.

A mate of mine was talking about buying one when we were riding last Sunday. He seemed quite taken with it, but I’m not sure if that was due to some Jekyll and Hyde notion he had about the bike.

IGMC. :-/

The epic hike a bike I experienced last Saturday was the Lindenburg ridge. It’s marked as a red single track on the map and I figured it would be a 40min hike a bike up and then ridable. Turned into a 2hr hike-a-bike and a descent on fire road. :-( It looks very similar to your photos though.

We hoped to make it from Delemont to Basle but had to bail out at Grellingen (sp?) due to making too slow progress.

That trail might be rideable the other way but it’s quite techy. I’ve ridden a few other ridgelines in the area that were more rideable but all have similar terrain, narrow rooty roky trail. If you have momentum it’s doable going uphill requires alot of effort. It;s easier to hike.

Zurioberland this weekend and the weather is going to be smashing. :-)

From Gempen down to Basle is quite fun. Flowy and not very tech but deffinitely puts a smile on your face. Across the border in Vosges is ace. I had the pleasure of riding there with Ash last year and it was top. I think he posted some photos of that weekend here somewhere.

Found them:
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/vosges-endless-buff-singletrack-photos

I think there are a few other trails in and around the city and the Jura is also pretty close. Most of what I’ve discovered in the Jura so far though might involve a wee bit of a hike-a-bike.

It’s called “adventure”. It’s quite liberating in my experience.

I’ve no problem with adventure. I’m quite partial to it myself. But being prepared does not take away from the adventure. Going into avalanche territory alone (or taking others in there), without any safety equipment, no way of alerting emergency services and no way of searching for those who may get buried is not adventure. It’s stupid. There are many incidents in the book where I have no problem with what he did, it’s how he did it with total disregard for basic safety that makes him a muppet.

I’ve read the book and my overwhelming thought the whole way through was… What a muppet. He consistently puts himself into dangerous situations alone without ever letting anyone know where he is going or when he is going to be back. He pretty much ignores most common sense safety guidelines for anyone doing any type of outdoor activities and was lucky to escape with his life on more than one occasion before the chopping off his hand incident.

I think they should rename the book/film. “What not to do.”

I agree with Big Scott Nanny about things being understated here. For the most part the places that you hear spoken about on a regular basis are overstated, expensive and don’t offer too much over the less well known (internationally) more local places.

Regarding housing with space at a bit of a premium you do get a lot of concrete block style building that are not particularly pleasing to the eye but in general they are very comfortable on the inside. A few things to look out for (especially if you live in a city) is that in many buildings there is a communal washing area where you get a day to do your laundry and can’t wash after 10pm or on Sundays. This becomes a bit frustrating if you ride a lot and regularly have dirty gear that needs washing. I’d be sure to look for an apartment that is at least plumbed to have a washing machine in the apartment. Our previous place didn’t have this, but our new one does. Makes life way handier.

Regarding storing bikes. Most apartments come with a small cellar area that is partitioned off by slatted wood. I personally wouldn’t store my bikes in this but I have friends who do. It;s usually quite small (maybe 4spm or so) and is really meant more as box storage than bike storage. Most building do have a bike storage room, but this is communal and again I’d not keep expensive bikes here. In out previous apartment we used one of the spare rooms as a bike room/workshop which worked fine until I had to clean the room when we moved out. :-/ My advice would be to get an apartment where you can also rent a “Bastelraum” in the basement. This is basically a hobby room which will be a bare concrete room with a light and power supply, some have running water too. They will range in size from about 12-20spm and work perfectly for bike storage and workshop but not every apartment building will have them to rent.

Check out this website to see what you’ll pay for rents for various sized apartments in different areas. You’ll quite often get pictures too to let you know what you can expect.
http://www.homegate.ch/en

Regarding cars, You’ll find yourself in good company over here with the Yeti. Skoda is hugely popular. I drive an Octavia Scout and find it spot on… except on occasion walking to the wrong one in a shopping centre car park because there are so many of the f**king things. :-) You’ll want to budget for a second set of wheels with winter tyres. It’s not law, but 100% normal to have winter tyres from November to April here and if you have an accident without them your insurance might decide not to pay out. They really are worth it. It’s night and day driving on snow/ice with winter tyres.

You’ll find costs for cars with various age/mileage on the following sites.
http://www.autoscout24.ch
http://www.car4you.ch

Most flats don’t come with a parking space. In the citys you can get a parking permit for a yearly fee for the area where you live and outside the rental company will rent you a space infront of your apartment. Usually for about 40CHF/month for an outside space or 90CHF/month for a covered over but unsecured space.

BTW… BSN wasn’t kidding about the Nuclear bunker! ;-)

Too much tension on the barrel adjuster on the remote release. Screw it in a turn or so.

I’m not familiar with Verbier, I keep meaning to head down that direction but, there are LK maps which are the equivalent of OS maps for Switzerland. You can get them for the whole country at a scale of 1:25000. They have a pretty good resolution and if you know where the trails are they will work for self guiding. This will require someone telling you where the trails are first though or doing a bit of hit and miss exploring.

If you really have no idea where the trails are and don’t want to get lost or spend time hiking your bike down something unrideable then get a guide. I don’t know the Bike Verbier people but I’ve only ever heard good things about them.

For the German speaking part of Switzerland there are 1:50000 Singletrail maps available which show trails graded as Blue, Red or Black. Of course not all trails are marked up on the map, but you can still try other trails that are not marked as bike routes if you fancy a bit of exploring. While these maps do have their flaws they do serve as a good start point to getting some good riding in when visiting Switzerland and as you learn your way around an area more exploration of the beaten track becomes a possibility. Unfortunately I’m not aware of anything like this for the French speaking part.

Hoping to spend a few days in Verbier myself this summer.

Thats fantastic Dave. In fact you can see I found your site earlier on in the thread, which made me a lot cheerier about the prospect of moving there. I hope we can hook up one day and you can show a NooB the ropes

The next question is, where the hell do we live? I weirdly met a Swiss couple who live in Winterthur when I was guiding the other weekend. They say live there and work in Zurich to save on costs! Its hard to know where, hopefully the company will help out a bit.

The where to live thing is personal preferance. You get a lot more for your money if you live outside of the city and with public transport the way it is it’s often quicker to get into Zurich from the suburbs by train than to cross the city by tram! Winterthur has a very regular train connection to Zurich and has the advantage of being a decent size town in it’s own right too. It’s a bit further away from the mountains though.

I’ve lived in Uster which is about 15mins by train from the city centre for 5 years. Regular train connections (every 15mins) and a decent enough town to be able to do your weekly shopping and go out for a meal in without any problems. It’s not the prettiest place in the world but we enjoyed it.

Right now we live near a place called Hinwil. It’s 25mins from the city centre by train but only has a connection every 30minutes. The nearby train station of Wetzikon does have 15min connections to Zurich though. The advantage of Hinwil is it’s at the foot of a hill called Bachtel (1100m) which has a top to bottom vertical distance of 600m and more trails on it than you can shake a quite large stick at. The town is a bit industrial but it’s got everything you’d need. The closes ski/bike resorts are only 45mins away and within two hours you’ve got over half of Switzerland plus surrounding countries.

Other places worth considering if you want to live out of town are Rapperswil which is about 10mins from Hinwil. It’s a decent sized town right on the lake with a really nice old town section and some nice cafe’s, bars and restaurants right on the lake. Train connections are better than every 15mins to Zurich and it will take between 25 and 35mins to the city centre depending on which route you use. Rents might be a bit more expensive here but it is quite a nice town.

Pfaffikon SZ (Not to be confused with Pfaffikon ZH) is right accross the lake at one of it’s only crossing points from Rapperswil. It has it’s own train hub too so there are also very regular connections to Zurich by train the town itself doesn’t have the charm that Rapperswil has but is in a lower tax area as it’s actually in Kanton Schwyz rather than Kanton Zurich. Pfaffikon is directly on the A3 which will get you to Graubunden for biking/skiing in no time. It’s also got regular train services to Landquart and Chur which will get you to any ski resorts in Graubunden quick and painfree.

Essentially there are hundreds of small towns all on railway lines and with easy access to motorways too. I’ve chosen to live on the eastern side of the city because it’s pretty easy to get in if I need to and I’ve got some great biking on my doorstep and really easy access to some incredible riding if I want. If you are a bit further west or north of the city riding is a bit more XCish and it can take longer to get to the mouontains (longer is relative in Switzerland, the country is small!). Having said that there is a guy who posts on here occasionally who lives in Aargau and he gets a lot of riding in, in his neck of the woods. He might be along shortly too.

Basically if you like to enjoy yourself and are willing to go look for it you’ll find plenty to do here. It’s a great place to live. I’ll be organising rides again on a fairly regular basis probably starting next month (snow dependent) and continuing into the summer and autumn.

Sorry for the hijack Flamejob but there’s some sweeping generalist rubbish right there in that statement above, which I can’t let lie

Beanum, are you implying that German-Speaking Switzerland voted to keep guns, whereas the French-Speaking voted to give them back? If yes then… you’re not really right.

If you look in detail at the commune by commune stuff, it’s generally the cities that voted to give them back (more leftists) and the countryside peeps that voted to keep them (more rightists). Hence why Basel-Stadt (where I live) was a clear “yes” to the initiative, even though it’s in the German part.

In fact, Basel-Stadt “beat” e.g. Vaud quite considerably. There were parts of Vaud which were as low as 30-odd percent “yes” (e.g. la Broye), and it was only the weight of Lausanne city which brought the overall cantonal vote to just over 50% for VD.

In fact, IIRC, Basel was only “beaten” by Geneva (Geneva had about 60% “yes” but I’m not sure what to make of that because only about 10 Swiss people live there ;-))

Ash, that really did make me giggle. Hit the nail on the head.

I live in the Alps does that mean I’m not allowed to post?

I’ve lived just outside Zurich for the best part of 7 years and been regularly visiting for 10 years. I second what Ash says about anyone dissing the locals has never lived here and taken the chance to integrate. In the time I’ve lived here I’ve met some of the most genuine people I’ve met anywhere in the world. It does take a little time to figure out how the place ticks but if you make the effort to get through the cool exterior you’ll find the Swiss to be a whole lot of fun.

The country itself is an outdoor playground. There is something to do outdoors every weekend. Nowhere is really more than about 3 hours away and even when the weather is bad in one place there is nearly always a valley with dry and dusty trails that can be found not too far away.

The biking close to Zurich is quite good. There are municipal trails on the hills on both sides of the city. The city also maintains a pumptrack (with another one on the way and some dirt jump lines if you are into that). If you head a little off the beaten track there are literally hundreds of really great trails within easy access of the city centre. I organised regular rides once a week last year and between June and September we never repeated a single ride and spent the vast majority of each ride on single track. You’ll see some photos if you go to the facebook group linked to from the http://www.swissalpineadventure.com website.

In summer you have lifts that allow for 1500m to 2000m of descending which are really easily accessible from Zurich. A lot of the resorts close by are possible to link up into a kind of a passports du soleil type thing, but without the crowds and on better trails (in my opinion anyway).

In case you haven’t guessed I love it here.

I’m kicking around most weekends. I live on the other side of Zurich but will probably be heading over towards Jura as soon as the snow disappears off the top of Chasseral. There looks to be a trail worth checking out over there. I’m generally open to travelling to almost any corner of CH if I reckon I’ll find something fun there.

Ah ok, I thought the landscape looked a little familiar. We rode from Olten to Basel via Belchenfluh last weekend and had a similar look down to a valley as in one of your photos at one point. Not exactly the same area but close and similar landscape.

If I’m not mistaken though it is part of the Swiss Jura. The route we did is described as a Trans-Jura in one of the local magazines and is further away from where I would consider to be Jura than your route.

Those pics taken somewhere in the Jura?

2.4 Nobby Nics and 2.4 Big Betties with snake skin running 25psi. Maybe 30 in the back if it’s particularly rocky.

There will be a lot of lift accessible single track available around Brig and Visp in Switzerland at that time. If you like to suffer up long climbs you can also do plenty of that too.

gravitysucks – Member

So he played the game within the rules at that time?
Actually no. EPO was still against the rules, they just couldn’t test for it. There are things they can’t test for now but they are still against the rules. Think about Basso’s ban. He never tested positive for anything.

The problem is that retrospective testing has only been allowed in the last few years. He still broke the rules but because retrospective testing is not actually allowed for tests taken back then he can’t be officially sanctioned for it. Even if it was allowed, the UCI would still find a way of protecting their golden boy cash cow.

If Armstrong admits to naughtiness with PEDs he will be in trouble for perjury in the SCA trial, spending government money on PEDs etc.

Ironically this may be his means to somehow striking a deal with the prosecutors. i.e. Come clean for a reduced sentence.

TBH: I don’t think he’ll get his just deserts. As someone said it will be like Al Capone, he’ll get done for something they can make stick rather than for what he actually did. Probably get some sort of monetary fine and a reduced suspended sentence and be allowed to keep his name at least a little intact.

This is what happened to Ulrich in Germany. The cases were settled out of court with no “official” admission of guilt. He paid a fine and is now getting on with his life out of the spotlight.

The thing is that with legal PED’s or with a total ban and no PED’s being used at all things may well have played out exactly as they did anyway. It would just have been more transparent. Right now its stupid, everyone claims to be clean and it’s a race to find the next product no-one knows about.

I just can’t believe the amount of naivety that exists about what is going on in cycling. The UCI is complicit and until they get the doping apologists like McQuaid out of the UCI nothing will change.

Incidentally, this has bigger repercussions for sport in General. The man who apparently took the bribe to cover up Lances positive for EPO in the 2002 Tour of Switzerland is now serving on the IOC Committee. BTW: It’s also a matter of public record that Lance and this gentleman are business partners. Conflict of Interests?

Fixed that for you on the grounds that nothing has ever been proved against Lance.

Back dated TUE for cortisone? Is well documented. Any other cyclist would have gone through a hearing for that no question asked.

On top of that there is the whole issue of paying Hein Verbruggen off to make a positive in the 2002 tour to go away.

Mechanic finding doping products in his apartment in Spain.

Being involved in a US Olympic team that it seems has been involved with some sort of systematic doping.

I presume you did read this article.
http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ArmstrongThe-Case-Against-LASI-Jan-2011.pdf

Nearly all of the stories in this article I have heard from different sources in the past. The one about Caitlin being involved in covering up positive testosterone results makes me sick. He runs the drug testing programme for the supposedly clean Garmin team.

With the level of curroption at the moment maybe it will take “bringing cycling down” and starting fresh with a no tolerance attitude to doping… or totally legal doping. None of this in between rubbish where you scratch my back and we’ll let it slide politics.

Some good points (not sure Ullrich ever got caught or admitted doping other than there was proof that he visted Fuentes an awful lot of times….either way he has been ruined as a result of that anyway).

Serious question then…. how many of the following do you think arent clean:

cavendish , hushovd , millar , evans , dan martin , ben swift , van de velde, farrer

I would like to think all of them but now wondering whether I am naive. Surely the htc / garmin / sky lads must be racing clean.

Didnt like Wiggo’s recent comments but is it simply a case where he has hit the upper echelons of teh sport and doesnt want to ostracise himself
Ulrich settled out of court in a few civil and a criminal case in Germany. He has been reported as saying “Anyone who can’t put 1 and 1 together about what happened in cycling is beyond my help.” I’ve heard rumours that he is going to write a book but I don’t know if he does if it will ever be published in English. Kohls manager has just released a book in German about the human plasma lab in Austria. It would be interesting to read that.

As far as the riders who you listed and questioned their cleanliness. I’m not sure about a lot. I think if Hushovd and Cavendish are it’s possibly different programmes to the likes of Armstrong/Schleck/Contador. They don’t have to power up a mountain at mach 10. They possibly still use GH or anabolics but I’d have an easier time believing they might be clean than some others.

Evans, I’m not sure. There is a lot of talk about Aldo Sassi wanting to have clean athletes and Evans has never really matched the best in the mountains. Again I’d have an easier time believing he’s clean but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was questions raised either.

Millar… Mr. Poster boy for clean cycling who was happy enough to cheat until he got caught. Maybe he’s clean now. But I don’t believe his excuse of only having taken EPO the once at the world champs which he lost.

The others who knows?

It’s not the doping that gets me. It’s the lies and corruption at all levels of the sport. I wouldn’t mind if doping was legal and everyone was tanked. What I hate is people like Lance being holier than though and then being so jacked up the ride Alpine passes like their bikes have a motor.

Ir12 no drug would give you the performance playing field that you describe. There would be a lot more heart attacks etc if that was true across the board

There have been quite a few cases of sudden cardiac death in cycling. Usually amongst athletes that may not have been able to support the same medical support as the likes of the tour top 10. I presume you’ve heard the stories of athletes waking up at night and pedalling stationary bikes to prevent clots or using infusions to maintain hematocrits under 50. Many riders have personal hematocrit testing machines to monitor their own levels to avoid being pulled out for a Ht over 50 and to reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death. Remember Riis being Mr. 60% he wasn’t the only one. The riders are one step ahead of the Dr.s and the Doctors get paid a pretty penny to dope them and keep them alive.

Heck in teams like T-Mobile and Postal/Discovery it was a full team mandated doping policy being controlled by team doctors. This stuff was known by people who did a little looking into it for a long time. What Landis said just confirmed what people suspected all along.

Lets say you are competing in a sport. You know everyone around you is doping but you yourself are clean. Then questions start getting raised in the media as to the methods of people that are beating you who you know are on the sauce. If you are truly innocent of doping you can be damn sure that you would want to blow things out of the water and clean up the sport. The only reason to keep your mouth shut is if you are doing the same thing and don’t want to get too much attention.

The vast majority of the to 10 of the Tour for the last 15 years or more have all had serious questions raised against them. The testing procedure is a joke. You only need to hear from people like Kohl, Landis etc to know that the system doesn’t work. Even today with quite a few positive tests it’s quite often police raids that end up ending dopers careers or getting them banned (Basso, Ulrich etc.)

Anyone who thinks that more than a hand full of people in the current peleton are clean are being naive. The majority are juiced up more than the Tropicana factory. The methods with how they avoid tests are well documented. The average speeds haven’t dropped from the time when we know the tour was being ridden by dopers like Vino, Lance, Landis, Lance, Pantani etc.

The rot comes from the powers that be in the sport who protect certain riders like Lance and throw the likes of Rassmussen to the wolves. Why can some riders get away scott free with doping, some serve a ban and come back with everything being forgiven (Millar, Basso) and some have their careers effectivly ended (Ulrich, Rassmussen).

In short I think “Wiggo’s” silence speaks volumes. Him posting his blood tests doesn’t mean anything. Landis posted his (which were indecently very similar to “Wiggo’s”) and we know he’s a doper. So just because he says he’s clean he must be? In that case Lance is as pure as the driven snow and I’m father christmas.