6/30/2006

Tour predictions

OK, looks like Vino is out due to his team being unable to field enough riders. At this point I would not be suprised if T-Mobile hired him tonight to ride in place of Jan Ulrich. It is somewhat shocking that Vinokorov was not named in the affair when the manager, 5 current riders and at least 2 recent riders on the Liberty-seguros/Astancia-Wurth team are caught up in the investigation. I think there is no possible way for me to keep up with the events as they happen, so please go see the excellent coverage at velonews, cyclingnews or Joe Lindsey's blog at mountainbike.com, among others.

Looks like Mancebo is retiring, I predict Ulrich retires. I predict americans take 1-4 in the prologue tomorrow (zabraski, hicapie, floyd, levi), with David Gimp Millar in 5th and Julich in 6th. I predict a mass of retirements at the end of the season for the veterans of this doping era, if they have not been caught yet, they certainly want to go out a-la Armstrong, rather than Ulrich.

Will hamilton race again? he has done the time, but it will be difficult for him to have any plausable deniability, so I say he either admits it and races again, or maintains innocence and never suits up as a pro roadie.

As a commenter pointed out, Menchov is a very good candidate for the overall. Maybe Discovery will figure out how to get Popovich, Hincapie AND Salvodelli in the top 5. It will be a free for all with the exception of Discovery which is still all teflon and lost nobody to the operacion puerto scandal, Discovery may be the only team that has not lost their leader and is strong enough to control the race, again.

I am not exactly sure what to make of all this, but I would like to reiterate that this expose is not due to drug testing, but due to police investigations. I think the WADA is bordering on reactionary irrelevance at this point and the UCI drug control is similarly blessed with negligable effect. Dick Pound of the WADA has spent an immense amount of public energy on a bordering on unethical crusade against Lance Armstrong, who is retired. He has spent no time in the press explaining how the WADA will move forward and improve the ability of testing agencies to catch cheats now and in the future. Dick Pound deserves to lose his job as his agency has been absolutely inept in cleaning up the sport. Wholesale changes should be in store for the UCI and the WADA doping procedure or cycling will lapse back into using the next untestable drug and staying 2 steps ahead of the dinosaur testing agencies.

OK then, let the race begin...

More Doping musings:
  • best tour ever
  • Liberty Seguros Quits cycling
  • dopingpalooza on the beginning of the Saiz/Seguros scandal
  • Tyler, Doping and baseball
  • On the IGF-1
  • Tyler riding in a race
  • Huge post on Tyler getting suspended with lots of doping links
  • Early post on the dealy
  • No comments: