Rest days during the Tour are usually times for the riders to talk about non-tour stuff. Like contract negotiations, new sponsors, off season plans, etc. But, in a Tour edition that already feels dirtier than last year's doping scandal ridden tour, with Pettacchi just cleared for using his asthma inhaler instead of receiving salbutamol orally or by injection, Rasmussen being unavailable for surprise testing in June (and now time-trialing better than Valverde!), and now Vinokourov testing positive for blood-doping and his entire team withdrawing. It's the same incompetent lab at Châtenay-Malabry, so I'll be waiting for the B sample results, but this Tour, in its last week, is now on worse footing than last year's Tour in its first week. Tour contenders are out (Kloden, Kashechkin), a whole team dismissed (Astana, who missed last year too because too many of its riders were implicated), an abandoned rider testing positive from a test over a month ago (Sinkewitz), and the overall leader with doping suspicions hanging over his head while he's still riding (Rasmussen) instead of last year's situation of the winner testing positive after the Tour was over (Landis). I'm a bit pissed off at the whole doping story, because it seems that the unions and organizers still don't know how to deal with this, since even the fine of a whole year's salary doesn't seem to be a deterrent, if the riders are actually guilty, which we can't be sure, since that stupid Paris lab has not been reformed, and is still leaking its positive results like a rusty bucket. The whole anti-doping movement seems to be broken, and those within its organizations don't know how to fix it, or even whether to address it.
Dude - man.
ReplyDeleteTour de Farce.
Homologous blood testing is pretty straightforward, though. Hard to see even this lab muck it. You'd have to have extreme contamination to get some other rider's red blood cells (or their markers) into a sample.