Another 49 cyclists implicated in OP ! new 6000 page dossier released...

Poulidor I like your style.... which part of France are you from ?

In other news WADA now have the 6000 page dossier.... we may now see more action:

The World Anti-Doping Agency is prepared to take disciplinary action in the Operation Puerto cycling scandal now that it has gained access to the files in the Spanish doping investigation.
WADA has been accepted as a party to the legal proceedings in Spain and "will now be given access to the files with the ability to intervene in the case," the agency said in a statement late Sunday.

"WADA will review the documents for elements which may be used for sports disciplinary purposes and will work with UCI (the international cycling union)," it said. WADA had previously been rejected as a party in the case.

The agency, which discussed Operation Puerto at its weekend meetings in Montreal, said it would also file an appeal against a Spanish judge's decision to drop the case.

The scandal broke in May 2006 when sports physician Eufemiano Fuentes, coach Manolo Saiz and six other people were arrested in Madrid on suspicion of providing doping services to cyclists.

The investigation implicated more than 50 cyclists and led to nine riders being excluded from last year's Tour de France - including pre-race favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso.

Judge Antonio Serrano said in a ruling March 12 that he could not charge anyone in the case because, even though doping did take place, Spain's new anti-doping law was not in force at the time of the arrests. The law in place at the time penalized doping only if it harmed a person's health.

Spanish prosecutors appealed the decision two days later, calling for further investigation. Since then, 50 others riders have reportedly been implicated in documents totaling 6,000 pages.

 

I just got off the phone with Jan.

 

I dont' know if I have a style, I just see some clues very heavier than some conspiracies linked by straws a windy day.

WBT you have no chance with me , where I am we have beautiful girls, beautiful houses, good cheese, good vineyard, some beautiful mountains "similar " to scottish hill, and I am near the capital of something greater than France.

 

I'll bring the wine and you can bring the girls....

 

Ok this is your girl,
she is well- suited to vine of London


For Oz white vine, or something like Gewürtztraminer,

or a lot of local girls

 

Any news?

 

He seems in good spirits and tells me that he has been working hard remodeling his Alp house.
For what it is worth,my friend that is there with him, tells me that Jan is in very good shape.
I don't believe he is accustomed to my hillbilly accent, but I know they had a long conversation last night about who might be left to race this year after the smoke clears.
I need to find out if they are expecting a girl or boy in Sept.
I know more like a soap opera than a cycling discussion.

 

I take it from the "smoke clears" comment that Jan is expecting many more riders to be implicated?

 

I think so but he is just like most of us waiting to see what happens next.

 

You mean Jan can swing a hammer too? (okay probably a nail gun)

lw

 

"Swiss steam powered" nail gun. No electricity ,except for solar panels, where he is.

 

So does this mean WADA will be opening investigations into the other sports also caught up in OP? Tennis... Football... Athletics...??

Or just cycling?

What a joke.

I don't know why they bother picking on cycling - you think if they were going to focus all their attention on one sport they could at least do it properly.

 

Óscar Pereiro is now officially a Puerto suspect....


____________
They came out in their thousands to cheer the Giro d’Italia along the Amalfi coast yesterday, but the traditional enthusiasm of the Italian tifosi did little to conceal the worsening crisis in European cycling, with the London start of the Tour de France a little more than seven weeks away.
Yesterday, even as Floyd Landis continued to protest his innocence at an arbitration hearing in Malibu, California, Il Giornale, the Italian newspaper, claimed that Óscar Pereiro, the Spaniard who was runner-up to the American in last year’s Tour, was possibly implicated in the labyrinthine Operation Puerto doping investigation.

If Landis loses his case and is deemed to have taken synthetic testosterone during last year’s Tour de France, he will be stripped of his victory. In that event, the 2006 Tour title would normally be awarded to Pereiro, but in the present atmosphere of zero tolerance of any ethical doubt, the latest allegations may prevent that outcome. “At the moment there are only rumours,” a spokesman for Caisse d’Epargne, Pereiro’s sponsor, said yesterday. “If there is any proof, we will take action.”

The hearing of Landis’s case is expected to take about ten days and will focus on the technical complexities of the French laboratory procedures that produced two allegedly positive tests for synthetic testosterone. The case has divided cycling’s tight-knit milieu, a polarisation manifested by the appearance of Greg LeMond and Eddy Merckx, the former Tour winners, as witnesses in support of the US AntiDoping Agency (USADA) and in defence of Landis respectively.

A year after it began, the Puerto investigation appears to have gathered momentum. The World AntiDoping Agency (Wada) has joined forces with Coni, the Italian Olympic committee, and the International Cycling Union (UCI). Even Fifa, the world governing body of football, has expressed an interest in the police report. Rumour and speculation are rife within the peloton as to how many other high-profile athletes may be implicated.

Yet the law of silence that has long reigned over cycling has been cited by Ettore Torri, the Coni prosecutor, as blocking progress in the investigation of Ivan Basso, the 2006 Giro winner. Torri believes that the Italian has been under pressure from sponsors and fellow professionals not to reveal any further details of his and others’ involvement with Eufemiano Fuentes, the Spanish sports doctor at the centre of the Puerto investigation.

Basso’s initial admission of contact with Fuentes, after 11 months of denials, subsequently became an acknowledgement only of “attempted doping”. “What we have is concrete, but not as exhaustive as we hoped for,” Torri said.

Further evidence, emerging from a joint Italian-German investigation, links Basso to Jan Ullrich, the former Tour de France winner who has retired from racing, and Fuentes. Basso and Ullrich are said to have met Fuentes in Freiburg, Germany, before last year’s Giro.

The University of Freiburg is also leading an investigation revolving around the T-Mobile team. Lothar Heinrich and Andreas Schmid, the present T-Mobile doctors, have been suspended by the team after allegations against them of doping practices during the 1996 Tour. Both men have rejected the claims, which are to be investigated by an independent panel at the university. “As a doctor, it is my duty to maintain the health of my patients and to handle illnesses,” Heinrich said. “For me to inject EPO, or to provide it to masseurs to pass on, does not come into question for me.”

 

I am in shock! NOT!

 

Really? Jan is off the grid in Switzerland. Good for him.

 

That's at the Alp house.

 

Hey look whaddya know !
________
Cyclist Oscar Pereiro will quit the sport if he has to prove his innocence in a Spanish doping scheme through a DNA test, Spanish news reports said on Friday.

"I will quit if I have to prove my innocence through a DNA test. Cycling makes no sense any more if this happens," the Spaniard Pereiro was quoted as saying.

The reports also said that Pereiro, who came second at last year's Tour de France, is set to sue Italian newspaper Il Giornale which linked him with the doping probe surrounding doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.

"I don't know Fuentes and have never seen him," Pereiro was quoted as saying.

Pereiro could be declared 2006 Tour winner if the original top finisher Floyd Landis is disqualified over a positive doping test for testosterone at the famous French race. A hearing is currently being held by the United States Anti-Doping Agency and if found guilty Landis will have to serve the mandatory two-year ban.

 

Sounds like the usual mealy mouthed whine of a suspected doper.
If any genuinely innocent individual was suspected of a major misdemeanour and if his future employment and his past achievements depended on establishing his innocence, then I've a sneaking feeling that the individual would be more than willing to do just about anything to establish that innocence. To deny himself the opportunity to do this would be foolish in the extreme and would inevitably lead to his guilt being assumed. Even if that might be unfair, it is simply the way the world works. It is not as though these suspected cheats are being invited to do anything particularly intrusive-it's hardly a bone marrow test that they are being asked to submit to.
Go on Oscar, if you can't make a tiny concession in the interest of yourself and your blighted sport then fcuk off and join the other phonies and frauds who have plunged your chosen sport into public ridicule.
Cue the usual protests about ensuring due process and not having to prove your innocense. Wake up, fools. It's gone way beyond that.

 

Refusing a DNA test, Oscar would probably win the TDF because of no proof against him! He would take (or keep) the money, the title, and unglorious victory !
Similar to Basso's confession.

 

What a fool. Anyone know his dog's name?