2009 Tour a sham? - Page 2

hear hear! Lemond's a legend. And genuinely nice man. His treatment by Armstrongand Landis was disgusting (especially the child abuse stuff). Those cheats ride dirty, talk dirty and live dirty

Don't worry, the blood passports have made this the cleanest tour ever, unlike last year where half the field were on CERA. You can rest at ease that Lance and Contador are certainly not doping. They would get caught pretty quickly if they were. So you can stop this bullsh1t smear stuff now and accept what you are seeing. You can do a lot better than make stuff up about successful people that have more talent than you could ever dream of.

i thought this post was tongue in cheek for a moment, but u seem to believe this drivel. whens the last big rifer to fail a test? Landis? he never had a profile. big riders dont fail, its simply too easy to avoid. michael rasmussen, bjarne riis, ivan basso, david miller....they never failed. but they're confirmed cheats. rasmussen has doped for years, never even came close to failing. i beleive contador will fail. he's made some big big enemies in armstrong and bruynel. so he's going down within the next 12 months. armstrong? the UCI, already struggling for money and sponsors, would never let it happen. they caught him 7 times already, but he wrangled his way out of it through lawyers and a complete reluctance from UCI to bring him down. he IS cycling, everyone knows he cant and wont fail. Tour de France would be dead

I disagree with you on so many levels. Lets start with Astana being barred from the 2008 Tour de France. Astana was barred as punishment to the sponsors (who also hold the team license). With nearly a complete turnover in the staff and riders from the disgraced period, it was unfair punishment to the new team of riders. Its looks like the ASO will get a chance to banish Astana again as Vino comes back to his old team. Hopefully they will banish Vino again in 2010.

So, if someone wins a race (other than Sastre) then they're doping? Is it possible that Sastre had a bad race? maybe his form peaked early or late. Perhaps his team was too focused on getting the green jersey locked up? There are a million other reason's why its possible for Sastre to fail, yet you immediately assume that the rest of the riders are doping.

Maybe they should test Lance Armstrong and see if he is using drugs? Oh - they have already done that some 30+ times this year alone. Well, Lance with his public high-school level education must have figured out a way to beat all those PhD's and Doctors who design all these tests. Wow, that says alot about the quality of public education in Texas, thanks!

I'm sorry, your ranting about drugged riders and your "evidence" just don't hold up. How do you know that 95% of riders at the Tour de France use drugs? Please, if you can prove it please do...

Why can't you simply accept what the facts show - Contrador was stronger than everyone else this year. I'm sure he was tested many times during the race and yet there are no positive results (so far, I read that all results are not back as of today). I grow tired of every "fan" making excuses for their favorite riders by claiming that everyone else cheated.

I'm not an Armstrong fanatic, only a guy that has to believe the frequent drug tests that shows most riders are clean in this sport. And I'm also so tired of fans (and never-has-beens like Kimmage) insisting that everyone but their guy is dirty. This consistent spouting only makes our sport look worse than it is and leads even more people to assume that anyone riding well is dirty.

Lemond doped. He hasn't provided any proof he has. In fact, he's denied doping which is, in itself, proof that he did dope.

Lemond fanboys play that double standard like virtuosos.

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aso did not ban the sponsors. they banned a team long associated with doping practices whether it went by the name of astana, or liberty seguros or once. and for all of bruyneel's arm-twisting and public pouting, his huffing and puffing could not sway aso from their position that the team needed to stay clean and out of the doping news for a while to be considered for participation. true to their word, when astana stayed clean for a year, aso extended the invitation.

lance, by his own hagiography, points out how much effort he put out learning about drugs and therapies when he was undergoing cancer treatment. as much learning as to be considered a lay pharmacist. his director sportif during those glory years has some skeletons in his closet, as well. additionally, most critics around here point out that lance has a sticky little association with one michele ferrari. put simply, no one maintains he did it alone.

umm, kohl has intimated this. oddly, given recent events (last year's Tour de France, the olympics, di luca in this year's giro, the fact that the giro will not allow 2008's samples to be retested), he probably underestimated.

you are making the very mistake in logic armstrong and all the other dopers want you to make. because they don't test positive does not mean they are not doping, just that they haven't breached the standard which "indicates" the abnormality (landis popped 11:1 on t/e ratio. gave afld something to home in on. subsequent retesting showed the same synthetic in previous samples which had not set off the alarm.). not testing positive and riding "clean" are two different animals. it is the crux of armstrong's statement that he has "never tested positve" and having never claimed to riding without help of any and all performance enhancing drugs.

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There are so many holes in this argument I dont know where to start. It's so dripping full of naiviety it's almost sweet. SlovakGuy provides an excellent deconstruction of your points.
I'll just say this: Armstrong has never failed, nor has any teammate ever to ride alongside him (most of them have failed before or after being on lance's team), nor did michael rasmussen, nor did biarne riis, nor did david miller, nor did ivan basso, nor did marion jones, nor did michelle smith, nor did carl lewis......the list is endless. not many people fail doping tests this year, its far too easy. in fact, when's the last high profile athlete to fail? Ben Johnson's my guess. Of course Contador doped, its incredibly silly to think toherwise. The only difference between himself and Basso was that Basso admitted to dope use. Contador stayed quiet and got away with it.
174 riders - i would guess 170 are on something - no failures. Its a terrible indeictment of the tour, UCI, anti-doping and Pat McQuaid(a man despised at home here in Ireland, nobody can believe somebody made him head of UCI)

Stricktly speaking the 2009 Tour de France must be classified as a sham.

Unless you think the sport is clean.

In which case you are an idiot.