For Astana Read Disco

[romeo]

No I meant Astana have had 3 riders in trouble in trouble this year- mazzoleni , vino and kash (who is doing his best to destroy sport as we speak). Im pretty sure that in the ProTour rules that counts for a throwing out penalty for a team, even if they do some heavy transfers in the off season. I'd love to think ASO wont invitate them but I cant help thinking there will be another team (Caisse D'Epargne probably) that will take the heat off them by being embroiled in another systematic doping storm


If we are splitting hairs and pitchforks Basso was sanctioned whilst a Discovery rider.
;-)

 

[andy_wrx]

Basso having been signed by Bruyneel whilst under investigation, in contravention to what the teams all agreed to.

 

[Dave_1]

"It seems very strange to me that so many Discovery riders are in the new Astana team for 2008. Or have I just a cynical and nasty mind?"

I would say girofan, that you may have a very negative and anti opinion of Discovery and the people that were in it.

Discovery folded due to a lack of sponsorship and that meant quite a few riders and support staff were out of work. In addition to that ASO forced Unibet to fold and so even more were on the dole. The result was that many people were looking for employment and when Bruyneel took over the helm at Astana it is fairly natural, IMO, that many of the riders and staff would try to follow him. This happens in many work places, in fact something similar has just happened in the company where I work.

It's bad enough having to deal with the many people in cycling that have been proven to be involved in doping, let's not try to make it worse than it is by insinuating that any successful team is also automatically doing the same.

That is true Keith...Astana have it seems signed up to a very tough dope testing regime along the lines of CSC with the same Dr that monitors CSC..Ramsus Daamsgard..basically the team have no control whatsoever over the in team testing...so I would reckon Astana are going to be a team to perhaps give the benefit of the doubt to...surely the riders care enough about each other not to dope and lose the whole team their income and employment in the future

 

[romeo]

Don't bank on it being exactly how you think...
Is Damsgaard definitely *overseeing* it with authority or are they adopting his testing protocols? I suspect it will be more like the latter meaning that there is no independent verification of the results. Infact Disco said they had an in house system this year, a secret one, that had no need to publish results from. Er yeah that helps!

If Astana were really hot on the AD front why wouldnt they adopt T-Mobiles protocol which not only measures hct and hgbl but also has aditional mechanisms in place to check for autologous transfusions? What, maybe because thats what everyones alledging is what Disco were using...No, say it aint so!!!!