Landis admits doping, points finger at LA - Please read Mod Warning post 1

tunney wrote: »

I think Sastre was very very lucky.
It came at a time that there was no real (dirty) GC contender and he was allowed go from the base of climbs at the fast but steady pace that he likes, there was no one to disrupt his pace with AC or Schelck style attacks.

I'd like to think Sastre was/is clean.

Some day I'd love to read the inside story of Sastre's career. He intrigues me. On the one hand he rode for ONCE and CSC. On the other, he's said to be quite anti-doping, especially since Chaba Jimenez died, who was his brother in law. Also he never seemed to get on that well with Riis, who seemed exasperated at him at times.

Lumen wrote: »

That's defeatist.

Aside from the odd outlier (e.g. PFC abuse) it seems likely that the current level of doping, in terms both of physiological benefit and health risks, is much lower than it has been for several decades....

Tend to agree with Lumen here.

I think we've come a long way from where we were a few years ago. At this stage it's getting much harder to dope, but more importantly, it's now possible to ride clean.

We were at a point where, unless you were ridiculously talented, you had to dope. Not to win, just to survive. I remember Jorg Jaschke saying after he was done by Operation Puerto, that at one stage he tried riding clean and was being blown out the back of the bunch even on railway bridges. Now you've got guys we know to be clean (at least have every reason to believe they are) managing to stay competitive and people like Gilbert winning races.

That doesn't mean that I don't think people are still doping. But the advances in testing mean that nobody can load up like they did in the past. You don't even need to test positive anymore. If you're blood profile looks wrong, you'll get done, as we saw with Pellizotti. What this means is that the gap between the dopers and non-dopers is getting smaller.

That doesn't make it fair, but it does mean at least the clean guys are in with a shout now. That and the higher risk factor associated with doping adds to the incentive not to.

At the moment I think there are four groups of riders in the peloton:

1. Those who've always riden clean
2. Those who used to dope but stopped
3. Those who think doping is just part of the sport and will continue to do so as long as they can.
4. The guys who are afraid to stop.

I think there are a lot of the top guys in the fourth category. In a way it's like the nuclear arms race. Everyone spent years going one up on each other in terms of doping and the realisation has now set in that the sport has to change. But if you stop how can you be sure that your rivals are going to as well?