2006 T-Mob Tour Team... doped - Page 3

The excellent cyclismag gave us the power measurements at Plateau de Beille: Contador Rass,... were on the same level as Pantani , only 45s behind him with a lot of slowdown. So difficult to think they were clean, especially the top 10 !
http://www.cyclismag.com/article.php?sid=3466

I agree Ferrari was likely the brain's guy and not the muscle. Although I don't think his medical preparation was quite as secretive as you believe. I think other rider's in his inner circle knew what was going on with him as they were receiving similar treatments, although it wouldn't surprise me if they never actually saw Armstrong doing anything in the latter years. The couple of Floyd "leaks" which indicate likely team-wide blood doping would make some special US-based doctor simply redundant. I just assume it was some of the old ONCE docs Bruyneel brought along to the team. Who we can be fairly sure are dirty as dirty gets and yet haven't really been implicated in much of anything beyond the systematic team doping of old at ONCE.

If Floyd ever cracks, he could put the nail in the coffin for all but the most delusional believer's of the Armstrong/USPS/Disco/Bruyneel myth.

There is a detailed article on the T-mobile doc investigation in velonews:
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/13869.0.html

Excerpts:

"Eufemiano Fuentes used dog names like ‘Birillo' and ‘Piti' to archive the blood bags of his clients," Werner Franke observed wryly. "The Telekom- and T-Mobile doctors applied stickers of cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse to identify the blood they had in storage."

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Franke said he remains convinced that former T-Mobile rider Patrik Sinkewitz was not the only rider on the squad to be driven from Strasbourg to Freiburg after that year's first stage to re-infuse a pint of his own blood. Franke said that witness accounts vary as to the precise number of riders who arrived in Freiburg, but insists "at least five and possibly six or all seven riders from the reduced team went to Freiburg that night."

The distinction is critical for some, including Australian Michael Rogers and Germany's Andreas Klöden, both of whom have denied involvement with the two Freiburg doctors and say they remained in Strasbourg on the evening in question. Rogers continues to ride with the reorganized T-Mobile team, now Team High Road, and Klöden is a member of the Astana squad, reorganized under the management of former Discovery director Johan Bruyneel.

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The only remaining rider from the team now the object of the Freiburg investigations is Rogers. Stapleton is giving the former three-time world time trial champion the benefit of the doubt - at least for the moment.

"What we know is that Rogers was part of a very strictly controlled anti-doping program in 2007, and that he has complied entirely with our own anti-doping rules," Stapleton told Die Welt in November. "Michael has told us he was not involved in the doping practices which Sinkewitz has described. If the facts say otherwise, we will act and take our responsibilities."

As far as I'm concerned there are three conclusions to all of this :

1.That riders and teams systematically operated a doping scam
2.That the cycling authorities were aware of these scams but did nothing until the respective civil authorities stepped in.
3.That the riders are too bloody stupid to realise that by doping, not only are they cheating, but that they have helped to destroy the sport and have put their own post-race lives at serious health risk.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it" - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

Tragedy of the commons. No rider will ever stop doping to help the sport because he gains a benefit from doping. As the money in the sport shrinks and contracts are harder to get, having better results than those who rider clean(ish) increases the chance of keeping your job. It's a non-virtuous cycle.

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

On point number (3) - IMHO I don't think that most of the riders thought they were cheating as we probably perceive it. I think they thought it was a condoned neccessity... as everyone (in their eyes) was doing it to varying degrees. Not that on principle they weren't cheating. But when a sport has institutionalized doping to that extent...and when the cyclist understands that it has been done in varying ways for decades...and that your team's management is (or almost) pushing it...and that to not take it would probably be the same decision as retiring from the pro scene...it is understandable that they made that decision...though not ideal or right.

The worst thing is that the riders have been the primary scapegoat for fault in the supply chain. The problem has always been that the authorities and promoters didn't really care to police it because it only involved extra cost and potential for scandal. Then the gap between reality (doping) and public perception (that riders were mostly clean) got too great.

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Very perceptive weakness in the system that needs to be addressed or at least acknowledged going forward..

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