Tour de France - Ricardo Ricco fails le Tour drugs test

The Saunier-Duval website (http://www.saunierduval-scott.com/cyclingteam/homeNew.jsp?language=EN) has no mention of the events this morning. I imagine that the webmaster quit in disgust.:(.

So Ricco's a doper. I guess really I'm not surprised.

But what does it say about Contador, who crushed him in the Giro after spending a week on the beach and gaining 5 pounds? Sure does stink.
Does make one wonder, that's for sure.

Basically the riders stuck it in the face of the organizers and doped themselves with something that could not be "officially" positive.

I am now 100% on the side of the organizers of the races. The riders have lost all credibility.

Why don't they make a rule that if one rider tests positive on the team then the whole team is out? Wouldn't that make the riders think a little more before doping or would it make any difference at all? I'm thinking that if you knew your whole team was going down you may not be so inclined to shoot up.

Why don't they make a rule that if one rider tests positive on the team then the whole team is out? Wouldn't that make the riders think a little more before doping or would it make any difference at all? I'm thinking that if you knew your whole team was going down you may not be so inclined to shoot up.

Can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.
But that was supposed to be the rule for ASO events like the Tour.
They enforce it how they want though.

And there's the biggest problem: According to some of you guys, nobody's innocent. And even if they are, you have no intention of accepting said innocence. You rather sit at your keyboards pounding out unprovable assertions. And you'll keep pounding and pounding in the hope of getting enough rumors going long enough to end up tainting a win that's been pronounced clean.

They do that because it's safe. Since you can't prove that someone wasn't doping, only that they were, the safe bet is to just say that everyone dopes, and then you can never be proven wrong. Then, when someone turns up positive, you can scream "I told you so!" and feel like you knew something all along when all you did was take the safe bet.

If you could prove innocence of doping, no one would be opening their mouths, because they would currently be correct 3 times and wrong 177 times. But since you can only prove guilt, the safe bet is to assume 100% guilt, then you can boast whenever anyone's caught.

For me personally, I just assume innocent until proven guilty, but that's just me.

it's a bummer for the tour, but this is great news for my fantasy team, since i didn't have him and a lot of people in the lead did :D

And that's the problem with Lance, sure there is plenty of speculation and
circumstantial evidence of doping but no positive tests, so by all rights he was clean.
can't prove a negative can you?
marty

it's a bummer for the tour, but this is great news for my fantasy team, since i didn't have him and a lot of people in the lead did :D

You're a glass half full kinda guy, aren't you? :D

Az

And there's the biggest problem: According to some of you guys, nobody's innocent. And even if they are, you have no intention of accepting said innocence. You rather sit at your keyboards pounding out unprovable assertions. And you'll keep pounding and pounding in the hope of getting enough rumors going long enough to end up tainting a win that's been pronounced clean.

Why do you even bother following cycling? If you've got a need to ***** about something, there certainly something more productive to wind up on than a bunch of professional atheletes on bicycles - after all, they're only entertainment.

If a cyclist has a really good day, that's proof he's doping. If he's had a bad day, that proof that he's burned out from the previous day's doping. If he's just in the middle of the peloton, well obviously the drugs haven't kicked in you.

You're starting to sound like the global warming acolytes.

Huh,

And then there's the other side.

Guy gets caught doping, writes a book and says he didn't do it, blames the french and you all cry conspiracy.

I follow cycling with the hope that the clean guys win. I actually believe a clean one will win the tour this year, I don't believe that someone who has less than one week's notice to ride a grand tour and who has had links to Fuentes shows up and crushes the second place guy who happens to be a doper, is clean.

That's not blind faith, that's reason.

They do that because it's safe. Since you can't prove that someone wasn't doping, only that they were, the safe bet is to just say that everyone dopes, and then you can never be proven wrong. Then, when someone turns up positive, you can scream "I told you so!" and feel like you knew something all along when all you did was take the safe bet.

If you could prove innocence of doping, no one would be opening their mouths, because they would currently be correct 3 times and wrong 177 times. But since you can only prove guilt, the safe bet is to assume 100% guilt, then you can boast whenever anyone's caught.

For me personally, I just assume innocent until proven guilty, but that's just me.

Just use common sense. Last year when a pure climber who had NEVER performed well in any TT crushed dedicated, proven time trialists it raised questions for me. Some jackasses on BF claimed that past performance was in no way a predictor. 'tards. Ricco's claimed to have a "natural condition" that keeps his hematocrit level over 50%. Basic literacy combined with google is enough for one to quickly learn that this claim is dubious at best. And who could not miss the irony when when Ricco stated that he wanted to emulate Pantani?

They do that because it's safe. Since you can't prove that someone wasn't doping, only that they were, the safe bet is to just say that everyone dopes, and then you can never be proven wrong. Then, when someone turns up positive, you can scream "I told you so!" and feel like you knew something all along when all you did was take the safe bet.

If you could prove innocence of doping, no one would be opening their mouths, because they would currently be correct 3 times and wrong 177 times. But since you can only prove guilt, the safe bet is to assume 100% guilt, then you can boast whenever anyone's caught.

For me personally, I just assume innocent until proven guilty, but that's just me.

The problem with your assertion is that your assuming its easy to prove guilt. Lance is the perfect example, only one thing will prove his guilt, a positive test and even then people don't believe because its either the french out to get him, or a doctor's note that he just happens to forget to give to the doping authorities before the tour. Despite the fact that he brags about his mythical attention to detail.

The bottom line is, I hardly believe that everyone's doping, I do refuse to invest any emotion into people who have shown any signs of links to doping, either through wierd blood values or relationships with MD's that are known to aid doping.

I'll agree that he doped, but there's still no approved test for this generation of EPO.
That, my friends drives me crazy.

Yeah,that is really disturbing. So who won the two stages that Rico won now that he is out?

The problem with your assertion is that your assuming its easy to prove guilt. Lance is the perfect example, only one thing will prove his guilt, a positive test and even then people don't believe because its either the french out to get him, or a doctor's note that he just happens to forget to give to the doping authorities before the tour. Despite the fact that he brags about his mythical attention to detail.

At this point in time, I'm more worried about proving innocence. Yes, Lance is the perfect example:

Either show a positive test or shut the **** up!

I'm not going to worry about excuses, mitigating factors, doctor's note or whatever since, as of this writing, there's only one factor: Seven years of testing, all negative. That's not someone's opinion, that's lab tested fact. And if we have no problem accepting the positive tests, we should have equally no problem accepting the negatives.

The alternative? Well, whaddya say we just go back to, say, the 1968 Tour and disqualify everybody who won anything from that Tour to the present - on the possibility that they may have snuck a negative or two through the lab. After all, if we're going to pick on a few noted individuals who we're "sure" that were doping and got away with it, it's only one more step to accuse everybody who raced. And it's probably fairer - in a negative sense.

Kick out the cheats and ban them for life!

I saw this one coming. Too bad, I liked watching him ride.

Also, I wonder why the entire Saunier Duval team quit? They were obviously ready to ride the tour without Ricco. .


Trying to curry ASO favor for a bid next year. Don't want to be the 2009 Astana

Where's the doubt in the test that was afforded Landis?
I smell hypocrisy

Ricco's claimed to have a "natural condition" that keeps his hematocrit level over 50%. Basic literacy combined with google is enough for one to quickly learn that this claim is dubious at best. And who could not miss the irony when when Ricco stated that he wanted to emulate Pantani?

Well said.

I was also very suspicious when it appeared that several times on Hautacam his team had to discourage him from attacking...The day after his solo breakaway win!

Either show a positive test or shut the **** up!

I'm not going to worry about excuses, mitigating factors, doctor's note or whatever since, as of this writing, there's only one factor: Seven years of testing, all negative. That's not someone's opinion, that's lab tested fact.

DF: What exactly is CERA, or Micera to give it its commercial name?

MA:It's a delayed-action EPO, which has a different molecular mass from EPO. It's only been commercially available since the start of the year. We can tell when someone's used it but we can't declare them positive. In that respect it's like Dynepo, another EPO-like product. We know that Micera was being used on the Giro, so I'm not surprised that it's also turned up at the Tour. But I would be very surprised if they AFLD had declared Riccò positive for Micera, for the reasons I've just mentioned.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2008/tour08/?id=/features/2008/tour08_micera_st12

Funny things, those tests.

Huh,
(snip) I follow cycling with the hope that the clean guys win. I actually believe a clean one will win the tour this year, I don't believe that someone who has less than one week's notice to ride a grand tour and who has had links to Fuentes shows up and crushes the second place guy who happens to be a doper, is clean.

That's not blind faith, that's reason.

To be accurate, Contador didn't exactly "crush" Ricco in the Giro. Ricco beat him handily in the mountains, but tactics and time trials negated that. Not saying Contador isn't suspicious, but he certainly wasn't riding at the level he was in the Tour last year.

At this point in time, I'm more worried about proving innocence. Yes, Lance is the perfect example:

Either show a positive test or shut the **** up!

I'm not going to worry about excuses, mitigating factors, doctor's note or whatever since, as of this writing, there's only one factor: Seven years of testing, all negative. That's not someone's opinion, that's lab tested fact. And if we have no problem accepting the positive tests, we should have equally no problem accepting the negatives.

The alternative? Well, whaddya say we just go back to, say, the 1968 Tour and disqualify everybody who won anything from that Tour to the present - on the possibility that they may have snuck a negative or two through the lab. After all, if we're going to pick on a few noted individuals who we're "sure" that were doping and got away with it, it's only one more step to accuse everybody who raced. And it's probably fairer - in a negative sense.


I did just show you a positive test, cortizone. And for the record, there was no EPO test for his first two tours, so you can hardly count those. So I won't shut the **** up. Good debate tactics by the way.

To be accurate, Contador didn't exactly "crush" Ricco in the Giro. Ricco beat him handily in the mountains, but tactics and time trials negated that. Not saying Contador isn't suspicious, but he certainly wasn't riding at the level he was in the Tour last year.

Good point.

pretty interesting.

It looks as though the French just threw Ricco out for an elevated hematocrit level since there is NO RECOGNISED TEST for the substance mentioned. Unless the gendarmes actually tossed the team bus and found something?

. . .and what ever happened to the concept of a B-sample so that a rider was anonymous until the test was confirmed?

I believe that as long as the euro sport press loves dope scandals there will continue to be dope scandals.

Huh,

And then there's the other side.

Guy gets caught doping, writes a book and says he didn't do it, blames the french and you all cry conspiracy.

I follow cycling with the hope that the clean guys win. I actually believe a clean one will win the tour this year, I don't believe that someone who has less than one week's notice to ride a grand tour and who has had links to Fuentes shows up and crushes the second place guy who happens to be a doper, is clean.

That's not blind faith, that's reason.

IF contador were to test positive it would be pretty easy to look at his results and tell when he started doping. From nobody to 2 time grand tour winner in 16 months

Well, this is what you get when you want to see guys ride fast over mountains for 3 weeks.
The human body is not built like that. Without all the chemicals, the 3rd week would be like a local Cat 4 event.
Also, I think Ricco is suspected to be on a gen 3 EPO product. So how many other riders are already on gen 4 or gen 5 that we have no tests for at all.
I do think that cycling is getting very bad exposure, and it is unfairly judged compared to any other sport.
I'd love to see thorough testing results for soccer, tennis, track and field, swimming and everything else.
There is no way that training alone made all these atheletes that much better than their counterparts from the 40s, 50s or 60s. I guess the chemical revolution must have started somewhere around the late 70s.

Just use common sense. Last year when a pure climber who had NEVER performed well in any TT crushed dedicated, proven time trialists it raised questions for me. Some jackasses on BF claimed that past performance was in no way a predictor. 'tards. Ricco's claimed to have a "natural condition" that keeps his hematocrit level over 50%. Basic literacy combined with google is enough for one to quickly learn that this claim is dubious at best. And who could not miss the irony when when Ricco stated that he wanted to emulate Pantani?

Didn't the UCI certify his elevated hemacrit levels?

From Cyclingnews.com:

MA: It's more convenient for clinical patients. They might only have to take Micera once a fortnight or once a month. EPO has to be administered much more often. The effect for an athlete is the same: raised haematocrit, raised haemoglobin, more oxygen to the muscles. It's funny, because Riccò has UCI certification for his high haematocrit already.

The most popular thread in the TdF forum always gotta be about the dope! Back to cycling anyone?

And if we have no problem accepting the positive tests, we should have equally no problem accepting the negatives.


uhhh no the tests are strongly biased towards false negatives. Therefore negatives are much more suspect than positives. Then there are the doping methods which no test can detect and the FACT that lance did test positive.

The stuff about passports preventing ricco from racing sounds like self serving bs to me. The UCI accepted ricco's abnormally high hematocrit as natural. If he was able to keep it high long enough while being sequestered for testing to get an ok how would a passport have helped. Likewise if he started with it high but normal how would the passport have prevented ****.

The number of people amazed that there are doping methods for which no tests exist are baffling. This has always been the case and as soon as new tests are developed new methods will be too.

The most popular thread in the TdF forum always gotta be about the dope! Back to cycling anyone?

If you don't want to talk about doping, WHY ARE YOU POSTING ON A DOPING THREAD?

Just use common sense. Last year when a pure climber who had NEVER performed well in any TT crushed dedicated, proven time trialists it raised questions for me.
But then if I use common sense, every excellent performance is then suspect, and watching the tour becomes an exercise in negative energy. I find the tour much more enjoyable to just watch it as it unfolds and not try to predict who dopes. If they get caught, they get caught, and out they go.

I'm not saying your wrong, or that you shouldn't think the way you do. But this is just how I choose to enjoy the tour.


The problem with your assertion is that your assuming its easy to prove guilt.
That's not a problem with the assertion at all, because even if you can't prove them guilty, it's still safer to assume they probably dope. Since you can't prove innocence, you can just consider them "dopers who haven't been caught yet". This is the standard most often applied to Lance, and it's still safer than saying he's innocent.

If you say someone's guilty, and they haven't been caught, you still aren't "wrong", so that fits perfectly into the assertion.

Well, this is what you get when you want to see guys ride fast over mountains for 3 weeks.
The human body is not built like that. Without all the chemicals, the 3rd week would be like a local Cat 4 event.


Local cat4 event? You've can't be serious. Still a third week with more people cracking would be preferable for most of us I think.

That's not a problem with the assertion at all, because even if you can't prove them guilty, it's still safer to assume they probably dope. Since you can't prove innocence, you can just consider them "dopers who haven't been caught yet". This is the standard most often applied to Lance, and it's still safer than saying he's innocent.

If you say someone's guilty, and they haven't been caught, you still aren't "wrong", so that fits perfectly into the assertion.

There is a huge difference from assuming everyone is dirty to assuming lance was. There is a mountain of incriminating evidence against lance. To ignore all that because he was never sanctioned is ridiculous.

As far as those who don't have such evidence against them you can still doubt their cleanliness without becoming obsessed with it. I'm sure there are some clean riders but I see no reason to assume I know who they are when such assumptions gain me nothing.

The most popular thread in the TdF forum always gotta be about the dope! Back to cycling anyone?


Other than the shooting, how was the play Mrs Lincoln?

When a multiple stage winner, high on GC gets popped for a new for of EPO, in the new supposedly clean Tour, you can just ignore it.

Other than the shooting, how was the play Mrs Lincoln?

When a multiple stage winner, high on GC gets popped for a new for of EPO, in the new supposedly clean Tour, you can just ignore it.

Just pointing out an annual trend.

Also, I wonder why the entire Saunier Duval team quit? They were obviously ready to ride the tour without Ricco. Unless the entire team was on the same program, and they knew the gig was up.

My guess.

I'll bet others turn up as well...

:(

Last week, I posted to say Ricco was drugged up...using a "fake" medical exemption to explain his bizarre blood test results. His fans seemed to think "Hey, maybe God just gave Ricco blood that is thicker than 20-50 motor oil".

Who will win in Paris? The last guy to avoid failing a drug test...

Just pointing out an annual trend.

Uhhhhh... thanks?:rolleyes:

Why do they think they won't get caught?


because most don't :eek:?

ed rader

Sram needs to revise their web pages. They credit Ricco's wins to his use of Sram Red. Are they in the rEPO business now?

pretty interesting.

It looks as though the French just threw Ricco out for an elevated hematocrit level since there is NO RECOGNISED TEST for the substance metioned. Unless the gendarmes actually tossed the team bus and found something?.

Personally I'm fine w/ that. WADA standards are insanely generous. Targeting people w/ screamingly high blood levels of whatever that are still just barely legal seems like an excellent idea to me.

Where's the doubt in the test that was afforded Landis?
I smell hypocrisyYou can't be seen giving the benefit of the doubt because you get attacked by the same people chanting "everyone dopes".

I give benefit of the doubt on an AAF on an A sample. I don't give benefit of the doubt when the rider admits guilt or they find drugs in his room. I'm with cycling being sieve-like in it's controlling of leaks we'll know in a day or so whether he gets the benefit of the doubt.

Since it was well known that he showed signs of CERA for a while now, being hit with an AAF with a urine test that seems to be able to detect the CERA metabolites (inferred from the velonews article), I imagine there was an admission, but we'll see when we know more.

It's not like you can defend yourself, with the leaks there is a lot of pressure to tweak results on a B sample until they match the A sample.

It's not like you get a fair shot in arbitration, either.

Well this is just dandy... Here I was loving the fact that our top three were within a minute apart for GC now this. I guess it should be expected as we haven't finished cleaning house yet. Garmin and Columbia have a chance still. lol
I like the idea of what the newer teams are doing. They are performing reguler blood tests on all their riders outside of competition. This will provide any governing agency with a profile for each rider. In the case of Ricco it would have been used to prove or not prove his claim as to it being normal.
I don't agree with doping but even more I don't agree with kicking out Ricco with out first confirming the b sample, and also having a certified test. I know this is being critical and I think it is safe to assume it will be posative and he probably did dope, but lets put it this way.
You get fired from a job for suposadly failing a drug test. They ask you for a second sample but you have already bee fired and lost all your benifits. Oh and the test they are administering isn't officially sanctioned by the goverment for use to detect the type of drug they say you are using. Oh and BTW you had a cold last week and were taking nyquil. ;)
It is depresesing, but if the organizers want to kick someone out then they need to have their ducks in a row.
As far as Lance is concerned I want to beleive he was just a freek of nature. With all the high altitude training he did having lots of red blood cells would have been the norm. If anything I think we should let sleeping dogs lie and keep Lance as our hero. At least to get us motivated to get out of bed in the morning and ride hard...

There is a huge difference from assuming everyone is dirty to assuming lance was.
I'm not meaning to cite individual cases. My point was only that it's "safer" to assume someone dopes than to assume they're innocent, because you can never be proven wrong if you assume they dope.

hahaha so lets assume everyone is dirty, then what do we do?

You can't be seen giving the benefit of the doubt because you get attacked by the same people chanting "everyone dopes".

I give benefit of the doubt on an AAF on an A sample. I don't give benefit of the doubt when the rider admits guilt or they find drugs in his room. I'm with cycling being sieve-like in it's controlling of leaks we'll know in a day or so whether he gets the benefit of the doubt.

Since it was well known that he showed signs of CERA for a while now, being hit with an AAF with a urine test that seems to be able to detect the CERA metabolites (inferred from the velonews article), I imagine there was an admission, but we'll see when we know more.

It's not like you can defend yourself, with the leaks there is a lot of pressure to tweak results on a B sample until they match the A sample.

It's not like you get a fair shot in arbitration, either.


Unfortunately, here's the other side of the coin:

Iban Mayo. A sample tested positive last year, but his B sample does not on the first try. The spanish federation then clears him. WADA then takes the test somewhere else and finds B sample positive. Some would say this is an example of the tweaking your talking about. Problem is, the EPO test sucks, it can barely catch the cheats as is.

At first I thought, "well rules are rules" and his B sample came back negative so he should be cleared, but now the French Police are planning on charging Mayo with possesion of banned substances due to the fact that they found stuff when they raided his hotel room after his A sample.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/12072008/3/vino-mayo-moreni-face-criminal-charges-report.html

So, it really goes to show that as far as EPO is concerned, the A and B process isn't working, because its really hard to detect, but without the leaking of the A sample results, the police would never have raided Mayo's hotel room and found the other stuff (of course, assuming that the stuff is Mayo's and is indeed a banned substance, but I digress).

Well a and b tests asside if they found the stuff in his room then that might be pretty good evidence. Then again was it planted? If there was how could he be that stupid to keep it in his room. All of this stinks, and the tests are questionable at best. Do we even not the false posative rate if any? What about time degridation, i.e. if a sample sits on a shelf for a week what happens. There is a lot that hasn't been made clear in testing and it is just bad in general. If we get solid tests with solid results and we know the false posative rate, and can prove the samples were handeld within protocols then we can stand by the results. The process and test procedures have come under fire and they need to be adressed. It needs to happen so that the organizers and spectators can beleive when and A sample is posative that it is just that....

As far as Lance is concerned I want to beleive he was just a freek of nature. With all the high altitude training he did having lots of red blood cells would have been the norm. If anything I think we should let sleeping dogs lie and keep Lance as our hero. At least to get us motivated to get out of bed in the morning and ride hard...

I'm not going to get into the Lance doped/didn't dope fight, but if your motivation to get up and ride hard is some guy you've never met who won an extremely high-level professional sporting event a bunch of times... maybe you need to come up with a better reason to ride. It reminds me of the dope who posted last year saying "I am ashamed to ride my bike today." WTF? Screw the dopers, screw the pros, ride your damn bike.

grolby I do beleive me... Someties having a hero or person who did something amazing helps. Especially when it is cold and dark and you want to keep right on sleeping in. lol
I am just depressed that it seems like riders are just using different methodes to do the thing that we don't want them to do. It is upsetting. I would rather have a CAT 4 race after three weeks and see them overcoming the odds just to finish.
My hope if we are going that direction..

hahaha so lets assume everyone is dirty, then what do we do?

2 cycling bodies one clean and pure with all riders taking regular blood test from day of registration and one open where no one cares.

then public opinion can decide which one they want to watch.

as far as lance being guilty, his performance was extraordinary, but arnt they backwards testing? I read somewhere they had dug out old samples and retested with newer screens and busted a couple of guys. if this is true wouldnt he be busted now? I would for one be so disappointed, I really liked the competition between him and jan ulrick. I was so let down when he was busted. He didnt look shifty like rassmouson and ricco so you just cant tell.