Yesterday, after I did my post, I decided to play hooky for the next fray and get some stuff done, plus do my daily 65 mile gravel ride to Lawrence. I’ve only done it 4 out of the last 5 days, so it isn’t actually daily yet. It isn’t like I didn’t want to participate in the discussion, it was that I figured it was going to be so overwhelming and tiring that it would be okay just sit it out.
I had about 16,000 hits on this website, so I can’t imagine what Cyclingnews and Velonews did. I don’t think it is over. The information is probably going to just keep on coming. Maybe for months.
One thing that I was wondering about is why the USADA case is only about American riders. And I have to do a disclaimer here, I have not read a word of the filing. I’ve only read the confessions of most of the riders named. I have wondered, and maybe they are all named here, but where are Viatecheslav Eskimov, Janez Brajkovič, Yaroslav Popovych, Gusev, and even Contador names? And a ton more. Plus, some other Americans that surely had to be invovled. I would think that everyone taking part was named. Maybe someone out there that has delved into the 200 to 1000 pages has the answers?
Anyway, I skipped the media frenzy and exhausted myself other ways. I’ve been pretty much running out of juice riding at just about the 3 hour mark. I’m not sure if it is because it is gravel, so lots of resistance, plus it has been windy and I’ve been riding by myself. Whatever the reason I’ve been dragging the last 45 minutes or so.
Plus, our sewer backed up yesterday, so I spent until 1 am unclogging it. I don’t think I did a very good job. I’ve rented sewer augers lots and lots of times. But, I didn’t have very good luck yesterday. The first one was really junky and broken. So much so, that I took it back to Home Depot and got another one. He gave me an ungraded, self-feed model that turned out to be nearly as bad. The line was clogged about 90 feet out. It has been so dry that the tree roots have no where to go to look for water. Anyway, the auger had a bad kink in the cable about 80 feet out and it kept getting all wound up in the basket. It took hours, upon hours. I can usually have it done in less than 30 minutes.
So, right now my arms are toast from the sewer snake ordeal and I’m way under slept. It might be hard getting on my bike today heading to Lawrence. It is supposed to rain, so maybe I’ll get lucky and get “saved” by the weather.
If it rains, I’ll get to all the comments from yesterday’s post. I saw there were over 50. That is a lot I guess. I’m kind of kicking around maybe racing a local cross race on Sunday in Kansas City. I can’t really see doing 3 in a row next weekend without any cross, if you don’t count a clinic and watching two, under my belt. Nationals and Worlds are still over 3 1/2 months away. I’m trying to start slow and finish hard. We’ll see how that works out. So far, it seems like I’m a little tired for having rested for two weeks. But, as I said before, the experiment isn’t over yet.
I saw this guy in the woods on the way to Lawrence. He seemed enchanted.
This is my favorite tree in my area. It’s at a t-intersection on my gravel ride. It reminds me of the tree in the Shawshank Redemption.
POS rental auger. It never seems to fail that when I rent a machine, I have to fix it before I use it.
It seemed to be working fine, self-feeding, for the first 5 minutes. Then it went completely south on me.
Pretty destroyed at 1 am. My back and hamstrings are toast.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/van-den-broeck-and-devolder-didnt-notice-anything-at-us-postal I have questions about this,, how they saw nothing..
Ekimov, Popo, Jani, Contador, etc… won’t be called in because it will be turned over to their respective countries’ ADA to handle it. We all know how passive the Spanish and Ukraine federations are on doping violations.
100+ pages in so far. Willing to bet that since USADA has jurisdiction over US riders, they had the leverage to get them to testify. Simeoni’s name as well as a few others have come up. I think they did a fine job proving that the witch floats.
Burn the witches!! What else do we burn?
More witches!!
Stevo, that’s some awesome memorabilia on your garage/basement wall. But from the looks of things, it’s not smelling very good this AM. And speaking of funky smells, how about Sean Yates’s “I dunno whatcha talkin’ ’bout” comment on cyclingblues?: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/yates-denies-seeing-anything-dodgy-at-discovery-channel-in-2005
Professional Cycling is a complete and utter joke. If the USADA really cared about doping, all of the co-conspirator cyclists would have received two year suspensions. JV walks totally away without a penalty, LOL. The six month suspensions are after the regular season and will have no practical effect. The lifetime ban for LA is a joke. Why doesn’t he get a two year ban for a first offense ? The reason is that he is incredibly rich, famous, successful etc. and therefore is hated by the cycling establishment, LOL. The USADA argues that he was a leader of the big, bad conspiracy. All of this doping is a conspiracy, so what is so different ? Other professional cycling teams did the same thing, can you say Festina ? I wonder what the USADA will do ? I wouldn’t be surprised if they uphold the LA lifetime ban, but appeal the six month “sweet heart” suspensions given to the others, and the complete amnesty given to JV. I suspect that national cycling federations are not going to be real happy with these “sweet heart deals.” If they (other national cycling federations) have to give out stiff penalties to dopers why should they let these American Riders get away with six month meaningless suspensions. The plot thickens.
Oh, and there’s THIS quote from cyclingblues: “In a separate video interview on Sky, Wiggins denies having ever raced against Armstrong at the Tour de France, clearly forgetting being 37 seconds off the podium behind the third placed Armstrong in 2009 – a position which he now stands to inherit.” Aren’t we now reading Dr. Ashenden’s statements that Armstrong’s samples show clear evidence of blood manipulation in ’09? Ball’s back in your court, Bradley . . . When does the light get shone on the Brit cockroaches, hmmmm?
Steve, hey mate you forgot to mention me as well……but that may because I never did a drug in my life!
Dennis, Lance was offered the sweetheart deal too to, but to get one you had to provide information. Lance decided not to. The easy treatment of those who testified is certainly something people will debate, but if that had not been on offer, they may have gotten no evidence, and nobody would have been sanctioned at all.
Steve, no wonder you’ve always been a clean rider. as evidence of you garage pic, you have an anti-doping test center in you house. theres no way you could get away with it!
How about some Friday fun in the midst of all of this doping garbage.
Is there a cosmic/spiritual/serendipitous connection between Mr. Tilford’s “…auguring out the sewer”, and calls for same at the UCI?
Yeah, that certainly looks like the Shawshank Redemption. Starting right from when Andy breaks into the sewer pipe!
I’ve read the entire collection of documents save for the Tailwind vs. SCA stuff. There are a lot of people named in the affidavits- both USA and other countries- and many names are also redacted. Some of the redacted names are pretty easy to sort out- including some of the former Postal riders you mentioned and people like René Wenzel and Max Testa. Interestingly I haven’t seen much flap yet over some of the people named in Leipheimer’s affidavit: Popovych, Kashechkin, Vinokurov, Michael Rogers, Savoldelli, and Mazzoleni (Leipheimer claims they were all present at ‘training camps’ on Tenerife where he received EPO and transfusions from Ferrari, and while the affidavit doesn’t explicitly say that the others participated in the doping, the inference is clear). Dr. Allen Lim’s name comes up as providing doping support (remember he prominently helped Lance in his 2009-10 comeback and transition into triathlon). I’m also confused as to why Leipheimer’s 1996 sanction for ephedrine never comes up in his affidavit and why he wouldn’t be banned for life because of this– is his 1996 sanction not a factor in the current ruling? My guess is that once everyone has had a chance to digest the documents, there will continue to be a lot of fallout. Already Yates, Devolder and Van Den Broeck are claiming they didn’t see anything while they were with Postal/Discovery which is very, very hard to believe.
I been wondering about the drug scandal involving Jeannie Longo’s husband this past year. Little press or follow up on this story. Of course any woman cyclist can win and be competitive in her 40’s….. NOT ! Guess she gets a free pass form scrutiny. As for the male cyclist implicated in the era of doping, lifetime ban should send the right message.24K3
Olbiketech: No woman cyclist can win and be competitive in her 40s? Not only are you offensive, you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Witness Clara Hughes, Laura Van Gilder, Sue Butler, Marti Shea, Linda Davidson, Kanako Nishi… and on and on. All of these women are ranked, elite UCI competitors.
“Dr. Allen Lim’s name comes up as providing doping support (remember he prominently helped Lance in his 2009-10 comeback and transition into triathlon).”
AND Lim has a column in the current VeloSnooze on how “what to believe” or some other nonsense…Yikes!!
Tom Knox knows his S6^&*T and the same crew will be back before you in July unable to even explain a bike race correctly, doing more hero worship and never using well worn data that says natural aspiration boys, that was natural! Instead we hear dancing on the pedal S&*^t instead of a decent explanation of the actual tactic. Dancing on the pedals is apt for sure, LA and buds could do that no doubt. To look back and understand what was going on is mindblowing. I remember attending a press conference for the Tour Du Pont with Trump, Governors, Mayors, Jim O, and Alexi……we looked down the lineup towards the other racers and noticed visible needle track on several of the arms of the continental pros and laughed out load. I thought That CTS was LA coach? Where did this Ferrari asshhojle come from I thought CTS trained at least a few of them. Is CTS implicated? Was CTS aware? Should we support CTS? Do other CTS high profile athletes get special recovery vitamin injections as well?
Would you do the same if in their shoes? Would you take the recovery injection with out ?? Could you win more $, then spend more on a better program?
I wish for a clean sport, government, and neighbors that want the same. If we can’t have clean sports or nearly so, then we are lost because the real criminals that pull the strings of the World will realize that the populace is just asleep waiting for the 4th of July and the next miracle workers to hit the bottom of the climb, a climb that I will not watch or participate in and encourage others to do the same.
Rishi Grewal aka ronald g. Gerard
I seem to remember an interview the Lim did about Floyd where he said he had been watching all of Floyd’s power numbers and levels and he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary . He goes on to say he thought he had his great come back on the day he took the TDF because he was dumping cold water on himself all day. I had actually started to wonder about Lim a couple weeks ago, how he could have not seen what was going on, especially when you take into account what it seems was going on back then.
Lim is specifically called out as having provided doping support to Leipheimer and Landis.