Is Cancellara Luigi???

[raindog]

I've always wondered why would footballers or tennis people dope.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...-would-do-almost-anything-to-get-an-edge.html

 

[raindog]

Jesus, this is gruesome stuff
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/report-cipollini-used-25-blood-bags-before-2003-giro-ditalia

 

[resal]

Does anyone else find it depressing that the drugs threads on here are more popular than the race threads?

It is the moment when the reality of Karl Marx strikes - religion is the opiate of the masses.

About 2005 or 2006 there was a thread on Veloriders in which all the protagonists were debating who would win the Tour and how. "Ooooo my favourite rider will do such and such". It was hilarious. As funny as watching some video of a religious nut telling his followers they would receive their reward in the next life. Just step back and take a look. Just where is this after-life located ? But hey, it is a free World and if somebody has a nice time believing that they are going to be reborn as a butterfly or that Lance could really beat a doped up peloton on quality training, that nobody else could work out how to do - go ahead. The Tour was a giant con as was all the media rubbish associated with it.

Cancellara clean ? Some people must have believed. After last year's MSR it seemed like one heck of a lot of people did.

Take two talents - Obree gets a contract with Le Groupemont and it all falls apart within weeks. He cries "foul" and the system takes the mikey. He ends up hanging from a tree. Boardman rides the Tour does his thing and then goes to Atlanata and is there mixing it with Olano and Big Mig. To believe Boardman was clean would be one massive leap of faith.

Very much more recently - Cooke comes out and gives us a very uncomfortable read, and I don't think we heard 10% of what might follow - rich, powerful, older males running teams, young girls, disempowered by the system, that want to get on - the last 2000 years of recorded history tells us that only leads down one path. Compare and contrast with Cav, (manager adviser is Rob Hayles - he of +50% Heamatocrit fame), later that week. Don't keep F****ng well asking me about Lance and drugs, you f*******ng t********r. Young kid, does not have what it takes to be a top cyclist. Abandons aspirations for being in the sport full time. Tries and then does not like the alternatives, comes back and whips everyone's a r s e, showing talent he previously did not display ?

I went and had a look on youtube, at the stage where Floyd dropped the bunch, caught the break, dropped the break and won by however long the incredible amount was that he won by, to take the Tour. In the post race conference he tells us exactly everything we needed to know. "I will do whatever it takes to win". We now all know it was the mantra that drove Lance and his apparatchiks. How many times did they justify their theft and crimes with those words ? Floyd told us there and then - just as much as Cav has just the other week - don't ask him because......

How easy in a murky, filthy World is it to say well if I don't, the rest will ?

Boardman. Now, if you believe he is clean, you can sleep well in your bed, and I bless you and I am envious. Maybe you will sleep as you did mourning brave Spartacus failing to win the MSR last year. If you take an alternative view then, just like with Lance, you will need to think about the next domino. For Boardman it is a certain Peter Keen. That is a thought which will keep you up at night.

 

[rich p]

Resal, I used to consider your posts thought out and reasonable but lately you have become something else. Witchfinders are fine as long as their some evidence, albeit circumstantial, but mud-slinging and condemning riders with no evidence is pointless. The only evidence that you seem to have against Wiggins, Boardman and Cav is that they were/are quite good and they spoke out against doping at various times.

 

[Crackle]

All the stuff wot Resal wrote.

Whilst I understand where you're coming from, I think you've taken a step beyond cynicism into conspiracy. Your evidence seems to be they were good, they must be doping and whilst I'd be foolhardy to say you are absolutely wrong, so far, there is nothing to indicate you might be right, unless you count the kind of babbling lickspittle that gets spewed out in The Clinic, which I don't.

 

[resal]

Do people believe the "reborn" Tyler now he has found Jesus ?
"Well yes all that stuff about Lance is true", might be a commonly held view. Anything else ? The link from Tyler to Fuentes to Luigi to Cancellara is there for us all to observe. Fundamentally it comes down to whether you believe Tyler in this aspect of what he is saying. Now it is entirely possible that he has told the truth about Lance but has some grudge with Cancellara and is lying about that in order to make life hell for him. I am deeply sceptical about anything coming from these guys but I can lay it against a backdrop of the whole con sold us for some many years. That inclines me to a different view. Might I be wrong ? Most certainly.

Brad - you just have no idea how much I want to believe he is clean. Sorry if you find my concerns worrying. I recognise I am bringing as much fire on my head as was suggested by another poster "try mentioning that Simpson was a drugs cheat and see what response you get!".

The clinic and twitter. That is genuinely bad news if I sound like them ! I will shut up and observe. I did not post on those 2005 and 2006 threads about the likely Tour winners.

 

[rich p]

I'd be happy to pursue Wiggins and Cavendish and Boardman if there was any evidence. Their nationality is irrelevant and you do us a disservice to imply that it does. I hold no brief for any drug user in sport - not Cancellara, Voigt or indeed Tommy Simpson for that matter.
Despite what the other poster says, nobody denies Simpson took drugs.

 

[Crackle]

The clinic and twitter. That is genuinely bad news if I sound like them ! I will shut up and observe. I did not post on those 2005 and 2006 threads about the likely Tour winners.

I wouldn't want you to stop posting and apologise for comparing your post to The Clinic. I just find The Clinic irredeemable in many ways and a lot of the good stuff is buried under dross which makes it quite soul destroying to sift through it.

 

[ColinJ]

Boardman. Now, if you believe he is clean, you can sleep well in your bed, and I bless you and I am envious. Maybe you will sleep as you did mourning brave Spartacus failing to win the MSR last year. If you take an alternative view then, just like with Lance, you will need to think about the next domino. For Boardman it is a certain Peter Keen. That is a thought which will keep you up at night.

When I think back to Boardman, I remember him being a great pursuit rider and time triallist but I also remember wondering at the time "How come he is that good but never wins any road races?" rather than "Wow, he is destroying everybody!"

 

[Andrew_P]

I must admit reading Wiggo's book about the tour read very much like Armstrongs books about the tour, only replace the French re-con with the altitude of Tenerife. I am not a sports scientist but it came across as a bit daft when Wiggins suggested in his book that he was given specifc Gym weight training to lose weight but gain strength in his upper body.

 

[ColinJ]

If you look at the numbers for what Armstrong, Pantani et al were doing up Alpe d'Huez (for example), they were about 10% higher than most experts thought the theoretical limit of human performance was.

Wiggins was producing under that theoretical limit in the Tour last year. It doesn't mean he wasn't cheating but it suggests that he shouldn't have had to.

Even if Armstrong hadn't been caught, his performances made it obvious that he was a cheat. (You don't mysteriously conjure up an extra 10% at the top end of elite sport where the maximum differences between gifted athletes would normally be, say, tenths of a percent.)

 

[Hont]

...his performances made it obvious that he was a cheat.

And I think, in the absence of other evidence, that's what drives most people's suspicions. Cancellara would not be a surprise to me for that reason. His performances in the cobbled classics have been truly unbelievable and he was virtually invincible in TTs despite have a bit of a rocking style and sub-optimal position. Being linked to Op. Puerto/Riis/Brunyeel just causes this view to be cemented in my head. Yet there is no real evidence of doping.

Wiggins, by contrast, has never done anything incredible on the road except in TTs. However his TT position is clearly very refined, he has surely the smoothest pedalling stroke in the peloton which combined with the Sky attention to detail (at its most effective in time trials where tactics and other riders do not impede) can explain how exceptional results are achieved from believable power outputs. The rumours about Sky during the last year and problems with Leinders have less weight than those surrounding CSC and Radioshack, so are not enough to alter my opinion that Wiggins is clean.

Two riders, on paper similar performances in time trials over the last two years, similar lack of evidence one way or the other, yet I draw different conclusions based on the evidence of my own eyes.

 

[beastie]

And I think, in the absence of other evidence, that's what drives most people's suspicions. Cancellara would not be a surprise to me for that reason. His performances in the cobbled classics have been truly unbelievable and he was virtually invincible in TTs despite have a bit of a rocking style and sub-optimal position. Being linked to Op. Puerto/Riis/Brunyeel just causes this view to be cemented in my head. Yet there is no real evidence of doping.

Wiggins, by contrast, has never done anything incredible on the road except in TTs. However his TT position is clearly very refined, he has surely the smoothest pedalling stroke in the peloton which combined with the Sky attention to detail (at its most effective in time trials where tactics and other riders do not impede) can explain how exceptional results are achieved from believable power outputs. The rumours about Sky during the last year and problems with Leinders have less weight than those surrounding CSC and Radioshack, so are not enough to alter my opinion that Wiggins is clean.

Two riders, on paper similar performances in time trials over the last two years, similar lack of evidence one way or the other, yet I draw different conclusions based on the evidence of my own eyes.

Despite his apparent lack of form Cancellara was good enough to be junior world TT champion(twice), and was described as being "head and shoulders" above the field. Wiggins rode in one of those and was well beaten. Cancellara has always been a great TT'er. I doubt he was doping at 17. I hope he never did, coz I really like his riding. Tom Boonen was just as dominant last year in the cobbled classics-what do you think of his performance?

 

[Monsieur Remings]

In my case, the shock value has almost gone. My reaction to the news about Cipo was: "But of course ..."

I'd be very surprised if Big Mig doesn't join the list in the next year or two, but I would still feel shocked and very upset if Evans, Lemond or Wiggins did.

How disillusioned am I with pro cycling? Let me put it this way - when the Tour came to Britain in 1994, I just had to see it live. I travelled from Yorkshire to Brighton to watch Chris Boardman*** in action. In fact, I paid a lot of money for a seat in the grandstand at the finish line. The Tour is coming to Yorkshire next year with one or two British Tour winners in the peloton and I may not even bother to go and watch the first stage. I will watch the riders pass through Hebden Bridge on the second stage but only because that's less than a 5 minute walk away.

I used to feel bereft at the end of July and that the summer was over almost as soon as it had started. These days, I sometimes forget to watch the odd Tour stage on TV.

I feel the same way about pro cycling now that I would if I caught a partner sleeping with my best friend. I'd remember what the attraction had been, but the relationship would never be the same again!


*** If Boardman turned out to have been a doper, then as far as I'm concerned the cycling decree nisi would become a decree absolute!

I think it's important to keep the faith, because I truly believe, beside from not being nationalistic in any kind of way, that the Sky riders of 2012 season were clean and that is such a great thing. I too, would be gutted if there were revelations about Big Mig, particularly, but for me Greg Lemond would be out of the question.

In fact, okay, if Greg Lemond was ever found to have doped that probably might be it for me actually. He's being touted as the saviour of the sport given his early suspicions of Armstrong and his subsequent vilification for such a stance, regarding his fellow countryman.

 

[oldroadman]

Greg, rode in the Hinault era, on a par with him, hmmm.....they must have both been superb clean athletes.