It's a Nile Perch, FP. An animal that lives in the Nile.

QUOTE:
Bryan - if you won't actually read where I've explained what the evidence is, then you probably will have to "just assume" whatever point of view you adopt. But don't ask me for it again, Christ. HGH doesn't have much use for cyclists, sprinters aside. But longitudinal testing will pick it up, yes. And given that my whole argument has related to the historical progression of doping in the sport, to wave your hands and invoke "40 years of history" without specifics as a rebuttal shows (again) that you haven't taken the trouble to read what you're taking issue with.

I've seen the Tour proclaimed clean by fellow cycling fans every year since 1999, based on the same evidence each time. It always turns out to be bullshit in the end. Even Lance's refrigerated 1999 pee samples eventually got rumbled in 2006. The cyclists have always been a step ahead of the testers. The proclaimed efforts to clean up the tour always turn out to be hollow and baseless.

Cycling fans can be like Liverpool fans. I'm sure the Liverpool fans are convinced they'll win the PL at the start of every season, but nobody else ever is.

In denial?

Oh dear.

Bugger. I saw this and thought "Oh wow, 2 whole new pages of Tour De France discussion"".

But all it is is drugs drugs drugs. I know it's a problem, but I can't help feeling Anglo Saxons love tearing down things they don't quite understand while ignoring the plank in their own eyes.

But have Athletics or above all, Football put in half the effort to stop it, or recognise the problem even, that cycling has?

All I know is, the Tour mustn't be allowed to die or even be undermined. France is currently searching for it's soul. All it's traditions and things that make it unique are under threat.

It's got to hold onto what makes it different, and non conformist, and the Tour is one of them.

All very dramatic, but then I'm drunk (on wine).

Anglo-Saxons. Love it. Funny, but you may be right. None of us apologists are Anglo-Saxons as far as I'm aware.

QUOTE:
I've seen the Tour proclaimed clean by fellow cycling fans every year since 1999, based on the same evidence each time.

People have been pointing to longitudinal testing since 1999? Or did you just not read what I wrote?

QUOTE:
Even Lance's refrigerated 1999 pee samples eventually got rumbled in 2006.

This refutes anything anybody has said how? Or did you just not read what I wrote?

QUOTE:
The cyclists have always been a step ahead of the testers.

So Ricco outwitted the testers by being one step ahead when he used cutting-edge doping technology to evade the longitudinal tests, did he? Or did you just not read what I wrote?

Andy - well, if you're going to argue with fish pictures, remember you're dealing with the Daddy...

QUOTE:
People have been pointing to longitudinal testing since 1999? Or did you just not read what I wrote?

Pointing out new testing methods in general, which turn out to be no good because the cyclists just find a way around them.

Some people (including Ricco) have and will always get caught, that doesn't mean that the testers are catching everybody. Just the people who they happen to be catching. That's really the only point I was trying to make.

Yeah, there's new methods like longitudinal testing, but like I said, the more resourceful and financially well off riders can find a way around that if they want to:

Now, he says, athletes are skirting such longitudinal testing by using "microdoses" of EPO to subtly manipulate test results. "Because they know we're looking for these sudden, large fluctuations, he says. "They've become more clever in the way they take their drugs."

QUOTE:
Bugger. I saw this and thought "Oh wow, 2 whole new pages of Tour De France discussion"".

But all it is is drugs drugs drugs. I know it's a problem, but I can't help feeling Anglo Saxons love tearing down things they don't quite understand while ignoring the plank in their own eyes.

Heh, everbody in Holland knows it's drug riddled and will admit it up front. I've never heard a Dutch person try to claim otherwise anyway...

Well, this feels like banging my face against a wall, for all that you're actually prepared to engage with anything I've written.



To the one "microdose" of substance, well, microdosing has been going on for quite a few years now - it's one of the chief ways to get the effects of EPO use without testing positive under normal regimes but... will be picked up by a sufficiently fine-grained longitudinal testing regime. Indeed, that's exactly what Rasmus Damsgaard, also quoted in the article, offers to the increasing numbers of teams who've hired him to administer independent testing regimes. Cycling goes far beyond WADA in anti-doping measures, which is one of the reasons Dick Pound was so hostile to it.

Ashenden's critique boils down to "the system doesn't work if done on its own (he ignores targeted testing of the sort that has worked so well under Anne Gripper), on the cheap (ie with insufficient regularity or fine-grainedness), and by people who have vested interrests in contradicting each other." Well, [i]duh[i/].

I believe I'm the only anglo-saxon involved in this argument.

And my criticism of cycling as drug riddled should not be taken to imply anything about whether I think other sports are clean or not.

Bryantop wrote:

QUOTE:
Some people (including Ricco) have and will always get caught, that doesn't mean that the testers are catching everybody. Just the people who they happen to be catching. That's really the only point I was trying to make.

Do you consider it just coincidental that every rider who's had a genuinely astonishing performance in the last 3 tours (Landis, Rasmussen, Ricco) has tested positive? And all the others who've had good performances have looked completely fucked the next day or two? Sastre had the common sense to time his one attack on the very last hill of the Tour so that him being knackered would have far less impact as nobody would be able to attack him on the next flatter couple of stages. Not that I'd be sure Sastre was clean.

Ricco has admitted his EPO use, will not challenge his suspension, and appears to be prepared to name names when it comes to how and where he got the stuff.

This morning's Corriere della Sera* reports that his conversion was the result of being woodshedded by his parents for three days, but whatever the real reasons are, it is a refreshing instance of a guy putting his hands up and admitting it was a fair cop.

* yes, it is a bit strange that Italy's largest morning paper is called the Evening Courier, but things can travel slowly down here.

"woodshedded"?

Being shown something nasty...

I was wondering if that one had made it to the other side of the Atlantic.

It means "chastised", and comes from "being taken behind the woodshed", that being allegedly the favourite location for rural parents to beat their children.

QUOTE:
Well, this feels like banging my face against a wall, for all that you're actually prepared to engage with anything I've written.

The feeling is very much mutual.

I don't believe the testers are on top of the drug taking, you think they are.

There is no cast iron evidence to support either claim, so I don't see the point in discussing it any further.

Erm, I've been meaning to apologise about the tone of that.

Still, you're using the absence of "cast-iron" evidence to overlook the overwhelming weight of evidence. You've cited virtually no evidence in support of your case, and just reiterated over and again that they are all on drugs, they must be. You're asking, in effect, that I "prove" that cycling is generally clean, which is of course impossible. All I can do, which I have done, is lay out why all the available signs point to it finally being - generally - clean.

Surely you can see that?