A Missed Warning

[Erik Timmerman]

Great article in Velonews today.

The Outer Line: A missed warning signal

During the Tour de France 25 years ago, pro cycling missed an important early warning signal about the escalating impact of EPO on the peloton.

www.velonews.com

One of the things that really stands out for me in the last race is how the teams especially Once and Gewiss-Ballan are stacked up. Manolo Saiz was the dirtiest of the dirty.

 

[scott43]

Look at that top 10 from 1995. How many haven't subsequently confessed or been banned for doping?? It was obvious back then..Indurain..6'1"? 180lbs?? 5 wins and then drops off? Come on. I think for Saiz and the rest, they believe that not getting caught is the same as not being guilty. Look at the Alpe d'Huez times..nearly all the top 25 times are from 1995 onward.. It took the Festina thing to finally make people start saying it out loud..and still it continues.. I dunno what to say..I certainly don't care that much for pro cycling anymore. Money makes people do stuff..

 

[skibob]

Look at that top 10 from 1995. How many haven't subsequently confessed or been banned for doping?? It was obvious back then..Indurain..6'1"? 180lbs?? 5 wins and then drops off? Come on. I think for Saiz and the rest, they believe that not getting caught is the same as not being guilty. Look at the Alpe d'Huez times..nearly all the top 25 times are from 1995 onward.. It took the Festina thing to finally make people start saying it out loud..and still it continues.. I dunno what to say..I certainly don't care that much for pro cycling anymore. Money makes people do stuff..

Started before that. I have a good friend that was a professional cyclist in the early 80s. Rode for a couple of major French teams., in their top tier. He quit because, in his own words, he knew he would never be as good as his top teammates w/o juicing, which he wasn't willing to do. Fast forward, and he is a very, very health guy in his late 50s. Have no idea where the teammates who were juicing are, but he is doing great.

 

[scott43]

Oh for sure. Tom Simpson springs to mind. But EPO was a whole new level. It's a terrible sport at a high level..

 

[Tom K.]

..Indurain..6'1"? 180lbs?? 5 wins and then drops off? Come on.

Agree, filthy sport, though recent out of competition testing is showing positives having dropped off 90%, so maybe some hope?

Anti-doping body confirms 90-percent drop in out-of-competition testing

CADF prepares 'priority list' of athletes to be tested and is ready for return to in-competition controls.

www.velonews.com

And, in the case of Indurain, let's remember he was a true genetic anomoly, with a resting heart rate of something like 24.

 

[KevinF]

I watched the "Pantani" documentary on Amazon last night about Pantani's rise, fall and eventual suicide.

There was some famous mountain stage in the '99 Giro where he went from "six minutes back" in the general classification to "four minutes in the lead" before failing some test that evening and getting kicked out. i.e,. he put TEN MINUTES on the leader (Jan Ullrich who has confessed to doping) on one climb. His defenders claim that the "authorities" wanted Pantani to lose and faked the test, etc. Right. The "authorities" wanted an Italian cyclist to lose the Giro d'Italia.

Anyway, the documentary marked that day as the start of Pantani's tailspin, etc.

Back in 99, some friends and I were doing a two-day ride on Virginia's Skyline Drive -- south bound, spent the night, go back the next day. Coincidentally we did it on the final weekend of the Tour de France that year, which was Armstrong's first victory. I remember at all the various scenic overlooks that somebody would come up to us and just want to chat cycling, Armstrong, Le Tour, cancer, etc. The energy and excitement of it all was insane. Hearing everybody's cancer stories was touching. However, as Lance's various team-mates went to new teams and got busted for doping I became convinced that he was dirty. :-( I remember feeling awful for all the cancer survivors I got to chat with that weekend and how they were betrayed... I haven't really paid any attention to pro-cycling since then. I felt betrayed.

 

[cantunamunch]

All this late to the party handwringing kinda makes me giggle.

Sure, I get it, peloton games and team tactics and variable courses make the data hard to analyze.

If only there was a cycling type sport where individuals raced against the clock without drafting on remarkably similar courses, year after year. If only.

Except if they had applied this level of data analysis to triathlon back between '98 and Lance's admission in 2013, no one would have cared. Since they still don't. There so much less hype in tri - and hype is what masks warnings, not difficulties in data analysis.

 

[tch]

I gotta say I'm cynical about PED's. They are everywhere, in every sport at many levels -- especially the highest levels (MLB, NFL, UCI events, etc.). Most of the time, the athletes -- or more precisely, the athlete's teams -- are ahead of the testing. Unfortunately, it's come down to "drug and be in the game, or don't drug and lose any opportunity". I can't think of a major sport where some kind of drugging isn't going on. Even sports like riflery have scandals related to the use of beta-blockers. I think it's so omnipresent it's hard to even know what constitutes a "fair" competition. If everyone in the Tour de France is doping, was Lance merely the best bike racer among a bunch of dopers?

What p*sses me off is how the individual athletes become the scapegoats for an entire system built on their need to drug in order to achieve. You don't think MLB officials knew Barry Bonds was juicing? Or that UCI didn't know Lance was doing EPO or more? Or that the NFL doesn't understand that 6'4", 360lb linemen aren't using steroids or HGH????? C'mon!

I'm not excusing Lance or Barry Bonds or Roger Clemons or any others, but who among management or administration of sports has ever suffered from their tacit approval of the "dirty" practices? Meanwhile, those guys get rich off the backs of the athletes.