dewey dicketh is soler

Super Rookie?

i said celeb, not wanker.
guess again.

but, it’s pretty freekin obvious.

Sigh.

Super Rookie?

soler looks like the spittin’ image of a certian local cycling celeb.

(gotta beat kruse in comment war).

I thought they were on another brand of bike.

No, but if said rider breaks a record that has been held by one who is a known cheater, what might that tell you?

Sounds like the perfect tour will be a real snoozer because no one will want to do too good for fear of being labeled a cheat.

Kloden has already said as much. I doubt this would actually ever be a problem however. I am convinced that clean riders have nothing to worry about. The testing works. Just don’t fail, or miss, the test.

Do you mean the one that let breakaways win? (ala stages won by Bennati and Casar)

I would disagree with the perceived “strength” of the Q.S train in the final week. I realize, at that point, it’s a lot of effort to bring those stages down to bunch sprints, for the win – but if they were strong, they would have done it. A fair number of those lower-placings sprints looked fairly chaotic and it didn’t seem like Boom Boom and the Flemish TGV, et al, were really “killing” anyone. (particularly with big names like McEwen and Freire out of the mix, along with Hushovd continuing to be off-form).

Letting Bennati go, in particular, was a real questionable manuever.

I’m pretty convinced that Q.S and a lot of the other sprinter teams fried themselves in that frenetic first week. A lot of the stages ended in genuine breakaways (add Vasseur’s win to that list).

Boonen did good, albeit against a field of rediuced sprint competition, but there was quite a bit of room for improvement.

I’ll echo Tuffy’s sentiments… or cynicism… take your pick. If the new controls aren’t just singling out riders at random to make examples of them, and really are a shade better at catching cheats than the Keystone Kops, then it’s just a matter of time until the dopers get better at it.

Despite the scandals, I think this year’s tour was great, especially in the mountains. The if-not-always perfect riding of Soler and Contador was great, and I loved how Astana, even if they did not finish, rode with a lot of pain and flashes of anger.

So — have we passed the point in the sport that from now on any good performance will be questioned?

I’m not saying that given the climate today that the speculation is not warranted… but let’s say the sport was hypothetically cleaned up. Going forward — does it mean that that anytime someone has a great day, breaks a record, or has a stage or race that is memorable that it will immediately be assumed that they guy is a cheat?

Sounds like the perfect tour will be a real snoozer because no one will want to do too good for fear of being labeled a cheat. I realize they are a ways away from cleaning up the sport but it sounds like if/when they get there – it could be pretty boring.

Contador’s being accused of doping. Apparently, his name was listed among the Puerto docs. No new evidence.