Professional Cycling For the Fans - Now Vino's positive?

as i understand it, they're aren't testing urin and blood for everything everytime.
talk about gambling.

interestingly kloeden, who got tested the same day as well, didn't test positive. did they simply mix up vino's blood bags (and kloeden got his own one), which seems rather unlikely, or did he receive blood from one of his parents who visited him at the weekend.

The do, however, test the winner of each stage. So the doofus theory comes back into play.

I like the baseball reference. Is the mere possibility of hitting a home run brought into question because home run hitters have been accused of doping? Do we watch ARod hit a homer and then immediately question whether he was on dope? If we see a national league pitcher hit a homer, do we demand he be tested before the next inning? Nope. Because we know through experience it's possible to hit a homer and great players have done it clean. Our experience and knowledge tell us it's possible. Baseball fans still enjoy home runs, and demand more. Somehow they enjoy it without it all being overshadowed by the constant thought that the home run was a fake.

I think cycling has gain a lot of "viewers" (I'll not rush to judgment and call them "fans") in the last ten years. Many of these people know little about the sport, tactics, history, etc. These people are willing to give up on it, and arrogantly assume others will do the same. They had their little decade-long diversion, and now that Lance ain't winning it, they've lost interest in the competition, but still have an appetite for scandal. Their limited interest can easily be replaced with giddy excitement at seeing riders with abilities far beyond their own being brought down. With only two major test failures out of hundreds of tests, they'd rather believe the hundreds of negative tests are lies, while having absolute faith in the positive tests. It's part of the much easier "black and white" mentality that serves as their guide. The truth is, we as fans can't tell for sure who's clean and who's not. We have three choices:
1. It's all black, every rider who has ever ridden the Tour is a doping liar, blindly loyal to the testing and engage in speculation that does nothing help the sport.
2. Blindly believe all are innocent. The tests are all faulty.
3. Assess rider's/teams character on an individual basis. Be disappointed with the proven cheats, and root
for those you believe in.

If a rider disappoints me, I don't take it personally. I don't act like some first love loser who labels all women as Jezebels. I know watching one guy try to ride a bike faster than another guy is the basis for a great sport. It's worth the investment even if occasionally I'm forced to see a human commit an error.

Good post!

Just some comments on eariler posts:

EPO is readily available at the local Krogers, Walgreens etc. My gf had Leukemia and that's were she got her scripts filled. It is also expensive.

Young kids taking peds to look good aren't the only ones. Aging clinics/ dr's are filled with baby boomers paying full price for hgh and testosterone just to get rid of a few wrinkles, be able to ditch the reading glasses and have some more energy. I have no doubt there are people on club weekend rides that have taken ped's ... maybe not epo, but hgh and testosterone for sure.

Edit: If you don't think these help and doubt how easy they are to obtain check out this Outside article from a few years ago where a cyclist took ped's and documented the effect on his performance. Linky (http://outside.away.com/outside/bodywork/200311/200311_drug_test_1.html)

The do, however, test the winner of each stage. So the doofus theory comes back into play.
that wasn't my point.
yes, they're testing the winner. but not for all kinds of doping everytime. so chances are, even if you doped, that you get away with it because they didn't test you for certain substances, or because there is still no way to detect it.

i think astana knew pretty well that he would be tested and were simply gambling 'cause the chances of not getting caught are still there since they're not checking for everything all the time

Vino has just been found positive for Monday's stage as well
The latest news this morning is that Alexandre Vinokourov's A sample following his stage win on Monday was also positive for homologous blood transfusion. Given that the test can pick up this type of tranfusion for four months, this is not that surprising.

george

Vino has just been found positive for Monday's stage as well
The latest news this morning is that Alexandre Vinokourov's A sample following his stage win on Monday was also positive for homologous blood transfusion. Given that the test can pick up this type of tranfusion for four months, this is not that surprising.

george

This might be the dumbest incident of doping in a very, very long time.

What a wanderful world......

I remember the lyric.....

Best idea ever. Second only to me deciding to buy a lotto ticket and winning the lottery (which hasn't happened yet, but when it does..)

Oh, and Astana should of stayed in. Maybe they are afraid Kloden has the same "problem".

Kloden was third that stage and they test the top 3 each stage.

I loved watching Vino's attacks. I missed him last year.

But he cheated and is gone so this is the last I'll think of him. Theres always someone else to root for.

Best idea ever. Second only to me deciding to buy a lotto ticket and winning the lottery (which hasn't happened yet, but when it does..)

Oh, and Astana should of stayed in. Maybe they are afraid Kloden has the same "problem".

Hypodermically speaking, ooops, I mean hypothetically, if Astana was facilitating or providing blood doping to Vino and his teammates, you have to wonder if they intended to reinfuse each rider's own blood, but the blood bags were mixed up. If so, it wouldn't be surprising to see a teammate test positive as well. I always thought it was interesting that up until now Hamilton and Perez were the only two pro cyclists to test positive for homologous blood transfusion - and they were teammates on Phonak.

Man, this is upsetting. I was really pulling for him....
lesson finally learned by me last year (after landis): i no longer admire, root for, support, or get emotionally attached in any way to individuals in this or any other sport (or try not to when i catch it happening)

keep it about the sport or the event, not the individuals... great feats and accomplishments and gritty courage and fire-in-the-belly competitiveness by individuals make for compelling stories, but they do not make the contestants better people outside of their athletic ability...

we should save our admiration and support and emotional attachment for people who work hard (and most often out of the limelight) to make this a better world in some way....

i think the best story to come out of the last winter olympics was the kid who donated his winnings to a darfur relief program and used his brief moment of fame to bring attention to that issue... i don't remember his name and i can't even remember what event he medaled in, but his action probably will do more good on this earth than all the other fame and fortune-seekers combined....

<end of rant>

Yeah it's too bad, Vino was one of my favorites.

It would really help if one certain a-hole in Texas would finally fess up to help clear this mess.


While I agree completely, I don't see what the president of the United States has to do with the Tour de France.

And in Kazakhstan, denial is the order of the day...from BBC Sport (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6915221.stm):

It seems that Kazakhstan is in denial, after the cyclist Alexandre Vinokourov was forced to withdraw from the Tour de France for failing a blood test.

There has been no word in the Kazakh media that Mr Vinokourov has tested positive for blood doping.

Neither is there any mention of the fact that his team, Astana, has withdrawn from the race.

This statement was on ESPN today:

"It's a mistake. I never doped, that's not the way I see my profession," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "I think it's a mistake in part due to my crash. I have spoken to the team doctors who had a hypothesis that there was an enormous amount of blood in my thighs, which could have led to my positive test."


---could there be any truth to that?

The issue here is that it is all a joke now. Tests come back positive. Then the guys doing it all claim foul play, inaccurate test results, mistakes, people out to get them, etc. Then fans of THAT guy believe him and fans of other guys all believe in the guilt of the guy they do not like. It gets tied up forever. Then things get leaked that should not. Then counter leaks happen. All of which makes people essentially believe that everyone is doing it and that few of them have the balls to admit it.

Creatine? Glutamine? Protein? HGH? Where would you draw the line?
EXACTLY...... we all take stuff to get an edge. I've seen guys hit an inhaler (illegal) suck down a Monster energy drink right before a crit.

EXACTLY...... we all take stuff to get an edge. I've seen guys hit an inhaler (illegal) suck down a Monster energy drink right before a crit.

I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this drug, but a teammate of mine on my high school soccer and lacrosse teams used to snort Ritalin (the ADHD drug, a lot like cocaine only easier to get) before games to give him an energy boost. If he didn't get a chance to get some more in for the second half, he played like crap. If he did, you wondered where all his energy came from. He wasn't that great of a player but the stuff sure did help him and he found it worth his while. Everyone else I knew who took Ritalin did it for fun. In high school, what could be better than a drug that your parents paid for you to take after a short meeting with a doctor?

I so want to believe that anyone at that level wouldn't be so stupid to dope knowing that they will be tested. I am not defending Vino, but... would the amount of damage he suffered durring his falls require a transfusion. If so would thay have some of his blood? If I went to hospital and needed blood I would be given whatever they had of my type not mine. I would then fail that test.
Have these methods been tested in other labs? In my world if there is a question about test results the specimens are split between a number of labs! I am still questioning the lab.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

My $0.02
John

This might have been said before, but I was wondering how stupid you would have to be to blood dope with homologus blood (not yours but the same type) during a race in 2007?!?! Certainly Vino knew that this doping practice is easily detectible, almost impossible to mask and can be detected for MONTHS.

I don't buy that he was trying to make an autologus (his own blood) transfusion and accidentally recieved the wrong blood since such an occurence could have been FATAL, if this was the case my doctor would be fired for letting me play russian roulette without knowing it.

On a side note, does anyone know how many major cycling drug positives have come from a lab other than Châtenay-Malabry, which is "obviously" ;) owned by the same company as L'equipe.

I do however agree with a previous poster that what we have in our hands now is a farce of cosmic proportions, regardless of where the truth may lie.

As to the homologous vs. autologous transfusion question: blood can safely be drawn every few weeks, and will stay usable for a bit over a month, according to some quick googling. He might have been transfusing his own blood until it ran out, and then switched to a source with the same blood type.

As to cat 5 doping, it doesn't stand to reason that anyone would bother. No matter what you do, you can get to cat 4 just by entering a certain number of races. Whether you finish or not makes NO difference. If you were sufficiently obsessive, I can gather the reason for a cat 4 doping, but never a cat 5. I suppose it would be possibly that people are cheating, but there seems to be so little point...

EXACTLY...... we all take stuff to get an edge. I've seen guys hit an inhaler (illegal) suck down a Monster energy drink right before a crit.

good point. perhaps deregulation is in order. Lift all restrictions on droping and publicize the results. Drope column and a "clean" column. The ambiguity would be gone. The fan base would then chose how to route their support. This of course is the catch.

After some time, years perhaps, the consequence of droping would be horrifyingly public. Over time the results and athletes would have a bank account that would reflect the public satisfaction with the athlete and their "training methods" and perhaps the inevitable deaths would serve as a greater deterrent.

Clarity ought to be the objective of UCI policy, not "cleanliness" as the latter is unattainable.

It took a search by the French police of the hotel to find the stuff. With all the history of doping scandals the tour organisers should not have relied on a signature before the tour, but should have watched everything that goes in and out of the riders rooms.

While I agree completely, I don't see what the president of the United States has to do with the Tour de France.

Touche!

:roflmao:

The problem with the two classes is that there is no reason to believe that the 'clean' or 'non doper' group would be clean.