Rebellin positive !!



azdroptop said:
I don't like it much either, but we've supposedly tried to clean up sports here in the U.S. and we all know they're not clean. Normal humans don't run a 4.3 40 at 260 pounds. :) Just like normal humans can't race for 3 weeks straight across huge mountain passes and perform like our cycling heros do. I climb my local 26 mile high mountain and I'm toast for 3 or 4 days! :) granted I'm a 40 year old lowly cat 4 racer who only trains 12 to 16 hours a week.
I hear you :)
However, I do think that TDF is possible without the use of PEDs. If it was possible for guys to do it in the 1910s without PEDs (granted they were trying to cheat but they were doing themselves more harm than good with the stuff they were taking) it is definetely possible today. However it will make for a dramatic change in the way the Tour (and grand Tours in general) is raced and the times and speeds recorded.
 
Schumacher rode the Oly road race and time trial, so my money for the double positive would be on him.
 
(With that jab at the NFL, I gotta get one in on another professional league where mega-bucks are tossed out to athletes.)

Unfortunately, cyclists drop dead from using PEDs that benefit them. As such, that fact demands a system be in place to keep them from killing themselves to make an extra buck. Otherwise, the pro cyclists could enjoy the freedoms like the multi-millionaires in the NHL - where they only test for drugs during the regular season (none during the off-season or the playoffs)...imagine that. Drug problem? What drug problem? Only one player has tested positive since we instituted our program 4 years ago...:rolleyes:
 
With the amount of money involved in the NFL and the owners willing to do anything for a winning team I would be surprised if most of the players don't do peds. What does a player have to lose. Shawn merriman did peds got suspended for a minimal amount of games and signed a mega million dollar contract.
tonyzackery said:
Careful with that implication...you're speaking to someone with inside knowledge.

I personally know, with pretty good (not absolute, of course) certainty, there are normal humans (by your definition) that are 260 and run the 40 in 4.3. Just as I know many normal humans that are 250+ and have vertical leaps in the 40" range. These guys are not "normal" humans by any sense of the athletic definition, but are "normal" in every other sense...
 
The standard guff about spiked samples and procedural anomalies just makes the guilty party look even more duplicitous and he's too old to return from a ban, so I imagine that Rebellin will (partially) front up in an attempt to minimize the damage to the rest of his long career.

I imagine it will be something along the lines of.... ' end of my career/last shot at the O's/been suffering from (unspecified) virus/ didn't want to let Country down/moment of weakness/persuaded to take a nasty product for first time/didn't realize it was epo. Cue weeping.

Total bollocks and will fool only the truly deluded. Nevertheless, he will be able to construct a fiction in his own mind fiction that he has retained his self respect and remains the honourable sportsman that he has always, truly believed himself to be.

Though he will inevitably retain the respect of his equally culpable peers, for the rest of us his entire palmares is now tainted; though anyone who ever really believed in his famous triple must have been either a see-no-evil fanboi, willfully blind, or just a common or garden drooler of the type that occasionally haunts these threads.
 
Isn't Rebellin a notoriously religious fellow? That being the case, isn't doping (ie. cheating) against is faith? I reckon it just fell short of making it onto the Ten Commandments. Think of doping as the "0.5" commandment. Sunday confessions must be a long chat for Davide. Come to think of it, when was the last time personal faith and religion ever really stopped wrong-doing by anyone.....
 
Tech72 said:
Isn't Rebellin a notoriously religious fellow? That being the case, isn't doping (ie. cheating) against is faith? I reckon it just fell short of making it onto the Ten Commandments. Think of doping as the "0.5" commandment. Sunday confessions must be a long chat for Davide. Come to think of it, when was the last time personal faith and religion ever really stopped wrong-doing by anyone.....

He is a catholic, so gets the full sin and redemption package
 
I suspect that after some initial soul searching he would have experienced few problems reconciling his conscience - he's simply carrying out the standard requirements of his profession.

He would doubtless tell himself that it can hardly be categorised as cheating if everybody is doing the same. In fact, not looking after himself properly would be a complete abrogation of his responsibilities to both himself and his sponsors. Anything less would be genuinely cheating both his employers and his other teammates, who rely on his successes to pay the bills.

This kind of sophistry is easy when you have spent your whole adult life in a sport with a debased and warped value system.
 
limerickman said:
I hear what you're saying Tony.

But the entire, entire top echelon of the professional scene since 1998 has now been shown to have doped or have been found to have participated in a doping support mechanism.
Exceptions in the upper echelon being Cadel Evans, Carlos Sastre, perhaps.
Every other major winner/contender has been busted since 1998.

What do we do? Ban them all?
Could the sport survive with a wholesale ban of every rider?

If they test positive and the tests are done correctly, yes. But if you're going to go back on a retroactive witchhunt then you'll run into issues with sample storage etc

The sport would survive and doping would reappear.

I thought Evans had been getting his 'training plans' from Ferrari for a while or had done in the past. Guilt by association seems to have been the way off this board for a long time - why no longer?

1998? You mean the 1960's right, back when riders where chomping down on anphetamines like candy... PDM in 1991? The entire Carrara team from 86 to 93 (Conconi) Gewiss in the early 90's, East German and Russian track squads since... well, forever... the list is long and old.
 
swampy1970 said:
If they test positive and the tests are done correctly, yes. But if you're going to go back on a retroactive witchhunt then you'll run into issues with sample storage etc

.

Not suggesting a witch hunt at all swampy.

What I am suggesting is what needs to be done today (and which should have been done in 1998, I reckon).

And with regard to the testing/storage excuses : rEPO cannot metabolise of it's own volition in a urine sample.
In order for rEPO to be present in a sample, it has to have been ingested by the subject.
Ditto : increased testosterone levels found in samples. Testosterone cannot be added to a sample after the fact.


swampy1970 said:
1998? You mean the 1960's right, back when riders where chomping down on anphetamines like candy... PDM in 1991? The entire Carrara team from 86 to 93 (Conconi) Gewiss in the early 90's, East German and Russian track squads since... well, forever... the list is long and old.

Nope.

I suggested and I am suggesting that the amnesty offer be put to the current generation of active riders.

And anyway, seeing as you're so concerned about sample storage and testing, how do you propose applynig that to the 1960 samples or PDM or the Eastern Block countries or the 1984 US cycling squad?
 
Looks like Schumacher is the other cyclist who was caught. So that isn't news given that we all knew he was cheating.
 
but it gives a new understanding to his fight over the tdf positive. twice busted.
 
I agree, it was surprising at the time, that any rider much less a veteran rider could win Fleche Wallone, Amstel Gold, and LBL in the same year.



limerickman said:
Rebellin's reputation is gone as a result of this.

His superlative week at the Classics in 2004 must now be in doubt as a result of this scandal as is his silver at the Olympics.

Huge story.
 
slovakguy said:
but it gives a new understanding to his fight over the tdf positive. twice busted.
Yes. This pretty much takes out the possible "contaminated sample" defence :)
 
Tech72 said:
Isn't Rebellin a notoriously religious fellow? That being the case, isn't doping (ie. cheating) against is faith? I reckon it just fell short of making it onto the Ten Commandments. Think of doping as the "0.5" commandment. Sunday confessions must be a long chat for Davide. Come to think of it, when was the last time personal faith and religion ever really stopped wrong-doing by anyone.....
A hard question to answer hihi. I don't think people who stop from doing bad things ever make the news. As an aside, Catholics go to confession on Saturdays.
I agree to a degree with Gregers in saying that if the sport as a whole is doping how big of a sin do we make it? But interestingly Rebellin has a bit of mud on his face now, that is assuming that any counter analysis also shows positive, or better yet, that he did in fact dope, because when he was interviewed after the Gold medal at the Olympics he was recorded to say “For me this medal is a comeback win for clean cycling. I hope to be an example for all the young, I show that one can have successful results with sacrifice and hard work and not with doping.”
 
ilpirata said:
when he was interviewed after the Gold medal at the Olympics he was recorded to say “For me this medal is a comeback win for clean cycling. I hope to be an example for all the young, I show that one can have successful results with sacrifice and hard work and not with doping.”

By making that statement, Rebellin is taking the ****.
Entirely.
 
swampy1970 said:
If they test positive and the tests are done correctly, yes. But if you're going to go back on a retroactive witchhunt then you'll run into issues with sample storage etc

The sport would survive and doping would reappear.

I thought Evans had been getting his 'training plans' from Ferrari for a while or had done in the past. Guilt by association seems to have been the way off this board for a long time - why no longer?

1998? You mean the 1960's right, back when riders where chomping down on anphetamines like candy... PDM in 1991? The entire Carrara team from 86 to 93 (Conconi) Gewiss in the early 90's, East German and Russian track squads since... well, forever... the list is long and old.
What's your point?
 
tonyzackery said:
"An amnesty" from what? Dogged aggressiveness WRT ferreting out dopers? I say this is utterly brilliant! Pro cycling just may garner my interest again if this (popping the stars) continues.

Pro cycling needs an enema.
Then start fresh - I'm certain there are thousands of pro caliber clean racers that would love to take their rightful place in the peloton once the wheat is separated from the chaff...
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
 

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