Section head text.
Puerto – What the Hell?
So after a multi-month dry hump, the Operación Puerto case is dismissed? Are they kidding? Perhaps Puerto was doomed from the start as the investigation was spearheaded by um, newspapers, and they were prosecuting the riders for something that wasn’t really illegal according to Spanish law. So they tried to forge ahead with some dodgy “endangering public health” charges that didn’t really have a chance of sticking.
To sum things up, big riders get booted from the Tour, dozens of people lose their jobs, cycling gets the hydrant treatment from the dogs of the world, and the case gets tossed, nice work everyone.
Or where there’s smoke, there’s a team of highly paid lawyers to say that "seeing smelling or choking" on smoke doesn’t prove there’s a fire.
100 bottles of blood in the fridge, 100 bottles of blood, if one of those bottles should happen to fall, 99 bottles of highly HGH ‘d EPO’d bottles of blood in the fridge!
Technicalities be damned wake up and smell the pharmaceuticals Norma Jean!
We must believe the European media. We make all of our decisions off the leaks in the media. We even own a newspaper so we can leak things to ourselves. Leak, leak leak.
Abso-fricken-lutely!! The 1st tour without Lance – which should’ve been the highest drama in cycling turned out to be less so.
To me the biggest injustice isn’t to who race clean vs. those who race tainted, it’s to the 2006 Tour. I think it’s pretty clear that nearly everyone dopes–quite a claim I know, but when we talk to each other out on the road versus in a forum like this the opinion is more than somewhat consistent. In any case, ejecting the likes of Ullrich and Basso, the two pre-race favorites who I would really have enjoyed watching duke it out (sorry Floyd–you’ll always have a special place in my heart though) made for a less exciting–albeit not less eventful–Tour. Would the results of Landis’ victory have stood? Possibly, but truly the ’06 Tour seems a waste given the now seemingly frivolous removal of more than two of the world’s best riders.
So sad that we will never really know who cheated and who didn’t. It really seems so odd to me that there is obvious evidence of systematic blood doping but no testing will be done to confirm it. Totally bogus.
Ive noticed in the past that they make circles in orange paint around the holes before they are patched – I guess because its a really good use of time for the "scouts" and city money well spent to point out that a hole actually does exist there and should be patched. Of course, the months immediately following the patch dont help safety much since the new patch with rough raised asphalt seems nearly as hazardous to cyclists as the depressed hole – and racers often swerve around these too!
they probably forgot to bring the tar…
I have naav-ah heard of Judges getting paid off.
I wanna go to Boca now.
i don’t know all the players nearly enough to write anything. i’m on a new team, in a new cat – i don’t know who anyone is yet.
That pothole crew didn’t do jack. Maybe it was scouting?
agreed…..the uci is a large chunk of the problem. Someone in their camp has got to step up and "grow a pair" instead of just standing on the sidelines while a runaway fire (puerto) is just burnin down the barn. The Protour concept is good but meaningless when run by an incompetant organization with 0 focus on the big picture. The organizers would respect a well run business of cycling if it were just that "well run". I’m not totally letting them off the hook though. The cyclists that spend years establishing themselves as the cream of the crop garnering respect from thier peers and THE FANS all of a sudden becomes meaningless? I dont want to see the tour being raced by scabs, yet thats what the organizers were prepared to do. Both camps are responsible for that fiasco, yet I cant help but think that if the UCI had good leadership we wouldnt be having this UNIBET conversation.
It kills me to see groups like WADA drag the system through the mud in the media unchecked. There’s no trust within the testing protocols that should establish a foundation for fairness in the sport. A public relations wing would be a good start for the UCI and yea….USCF look like harvard grads compared to them.
and Contador – and Botero – and Floyd – and Nozal……
yea Eugene…I was looking so forward to the Tour without Lance last year that when that crap exploded – I couldnt vent it out.
imagine if the NFL was as vigilant… what NFL?
C’mon Lee, the UCI is a good chunk of the crap and the ASO another chunk. The USCF almost looks good next to these guys. Then again there is no cookie jar for them to go after.
"The UCI should have staff only dedicated to the sports relations with the media, a PR machine if you will; and everytime something flares up, they should be on it – pronto. Separating the crap from the facts."
Go lee3!
You’ve been a little quite lately– I think stuff has been bottled up inside of you and your cork popped under the pressure! Good stuff.
The season preview went away with Justin Reid. Anyone ready to give it a try, Chris?
Lee3 announced today that the Sid’s Cannodale Cycling Team has signed J
i drink it.
journey always makes me happy
I cant think of any other sport that is so catastophically affected by a doping athlete or an alleged doping athlete. When you think of all of the support staff and equipment affected, its hard to believe that a CRIMINAL OFFENSE wasnt perpetrated either by athlete or the media. As complicated as it may be to bring criminal charges against this situation, it seems very appropriate when entire mult-million dollar teams can be brought to thier knees on a whisper in the ear. In this particular case the media really should take most of the blame for reporting on issues with little or no facts. Cmon.."son of rudicio, the buffalo, and basso’s dog? complete sensationlism not worth of even jerry springer. The Grand Tour organizers have little choice in the matter when the credibility of thier race is being attacked, however, the over-reaction on part of the team directors and organizers sorta fueled the flames of an already out of control media frenzy. I hope a lesson was learned. Doping athletes should get tossed for jeopardizing the livelihood of working support staff and the media should be more responsible with what they feed the masses for the same reason. The UCI seem to lack the leadership needed to take on this problem. The UCI could have simply held a several conferences on the Puerto thing to inform the public on the realities of the case instead of letting scoop the beat writer put thier take on what people read about it. After all the truth isnt thier interest its selling papers and getting web hits. The UCI should have staff only dedicated to the sports relations with the media, a PR machine if you will; and everytime something flares up, they should be on it – pronto. Separating the crap from the facts. Its an embarrassment to the cycling powers in charge when they manage to lose so many teams and riders like this. J
Shaw: happiness is the journey, not the destination.
Amen por el conspiracion de futbol. Los galacticos no pueden soportar una investigaci
Shaw, stop inhaling all that ethanol :))
Pothole crew working on the West Drive in CP this morning.
– Jon Orcutt
Very poorly handled but there is a big difference between being kicked out of cycling for doping and being charged with criminal offense. eg. Millar,Hamilton etc. served suspensions but did not face any criminal charges.
Puerto got it all confused but that doesn’t mean that riders implicated are clean or anything like that. Judges in Puerto case could only go ahead with criminal charges.
i don’t really know what to believe anymore. i feel so far removed from what’s going on. i’m sure they found some evidence, got excited, things were published, and the whole thing snowballed from there.
what bothers me are when officials jump on the bandwagon and participate in the witch hunt. guys like dickie pound should act like professionals and not say everything that pops into their head.
Don’t forget, there were close to 200 names implicated in Puerto, only 50 or so were cyclists (even though that’s where our attention lies). To go ahead would have destroyed the Real Madrid soccer team, and the Spanish would not have wanted to do that!
I’m nt really surprised. If the case was as solid as they made it out to be, riders would have been doing jail time by now.
what happened to the crankies and the season previews. i’m not complaining, just wondering.
Basso and Ullrich feel like they got their hands slammed in the puerto. Its ok though – other countries are going to use the collected evidence to prosecute where possible, according to VeloNews articles. It aint over…
the whole thing was probably started by the french to keep their 10th place locked up in the tour
Isn’t there a European constitution or something?
I want my puerto back