Prodigy4299

It seems awfully hard to come across breaking news in English when it comes to cycling. I am not good enough in Norske to understand it all, but it seems like some mudslinging by "anonymous sources"...

https://tv2sporten.no/sykkel/article2092488.ece

As a huge fan of CSC-Saxo Bank and the Schlecks in particular, I would be hard broken if this were true... :'(

Prodigy4299

Here's the original text:


- Schleck på dopliste

Fränk Schleck settes i forbindelse med dopinglegen Eufemiano Fuentes.

CSC-Saxo Bank-rytteren Fränk Schleck skal vært en av klientene på den beryktete dopinglegen Eufemiano Fuentes.

Det melder Süddeutsche Zeitung fredag kveld.

- Bassos venn
Fuentes er mannen som sto midt i det mange mener er sykkelsportens største dopingskandale: Operasjon Puerto.

Schleck skal ha gått under kodenavnet «Amigo de Birillo», direkte oversatt som «Birillos venn».

Den allerede dopingdømte og utestengte rytteren Ivan Basso - tidligere lagkamerat med Schleck i CSC - har innrømmet at han gikk under navnet «Birillo».

Den tyske avisen hevder i tillegg at Schleck og CSC-sjef Bjarne Riis skal ha hatt et møte med Fuentes i Madrid i 2006. Opplysningene skal angivelig stamme fra tyske myndigheter og anonyme kilder.

Riis avviser alt
Overfor dansk TV 2 blånekter Riis alle dopinganklagene.

- Det er noen alvorlige anklager. Først og fremst vil jeg si at jeg blankt avviser at de anklagene har noe for seg, sier han.

Se hele intervjuet med Bjarne Riis i videovinduet øverst!

På spørsmål om det angivelige møtet i Madrid, svarer Riis:

- Selvfølgelig har jeg ikke vært der. Det ville jeg aldri noensinne finne på, understreker dansken.

To år siden
Operasjon Puerto smalt ned som en bombe rett før starten av Tour de France i 2005.

Opprullingen tvang storryttere som Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich, Oscar Sevilla, Santiago Botero og José Enrique Gutiérrez ut av Touren.

I tillegg ble Liberty Seguros-laget tvunget til å trekke seg fordi de hadde for få ryttere igjen etter alle avsløringene.

acorn_user

It's on the front of the Sueduetsche Zeitung.
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/,tt2m1/sp...7/303552/text/
Summary:
Schleck connected to Eufemiano Fuentes (past tense). Riis may have accompanied his riders to the clinic. Birillo's friend was thought to be Giovanni Lombardi, who manages the Gebrueder Schleck. Innsinuation against Sastre (he lives in Madrid). Basso and Hamilton doped, and they were strongly connected to Riis, so perhaps doping was not an isolated case.

I dunno. Not a lot in it. Some muck raking, with no real evidence imho. German press trying to be Tour party poopers yet again.

yellowjeep

I didnt think Basso actually doped but planned to and gave himself up. He served his 2 years and is signed with Liquigas for 09

USAZorro

That's what he said, but his Giro performance was disturbingly dominating.

yellowjeep

true enough

maddyfish

Riis was a doper. The riders he works with are dopers. It is all he knows.

bac

I have some land in Florida for sale. Call me for details.

... Brad

bac

You are somewhat correct. However, I would state it a bit differently:

Riis ADMITTED to doping while the others of his era continue to lie.

... Brad

Pedaleur

From: https://nyhederne.tv2.dk/article.php/....html?forside:

UCI afviser Riis-forbindelse
-------------------------
Ifølge den internationale cykelunion (UCI), så er der ikke meget som tyder på, at Team CSC Saxo Banks holdejer Bjarne Riis eller holdets luxembourgske stjerne, Fränk Schleck, har været involveret i dopingsagen Operation Puerto, som avisen Süddeutsche Zeitung hævdede sent fredag. Det oplyser UCI's antidopingchef Anne Gripper.

Hun har læst de 6000 dokumenter, UCI har fået udleveret fra de spanske myndigheder om sagen mod dopinglægen Eufemiano Fuentes, og her optræder hverken Bjarne Riis eller Fränk Schleck.

"Nej. Det gør de ikke. Vi har taget alle de videre skridt, som papirerne gav belæg for at tage. Og det er derfor, vi har fået genåbnet sagen mod Alejandro Valverde," siger Anne Gripper til Ritzaus Bureau.

De 6000 sider, UCI har fået adgang til, er angiveligt ikke alle sagsakterne. Men selvom artiklen baserer sig på anonyme "internationale efterforskere", så tror Anne Gripper ikke, at Riis og Schlecks navne dukker op, hvis der pludselig bliver givet adgang til nye oplysninger.

"Det tvivler jeg meget på. Lige nu er der ikke noget, som peger i den retning," siger Anne Gripper.
.....................

The headline translates to "UCI rejects Riis-connection". The rest goes on to say the unless there is any new information (beyond the 6000 pages of material they have now), the UCI has no reason to believe they are involved.

bac

Come on ............... I'll buy a little "vi har fået genåbnet sagen", but never "Og det er derfor"!

... Brad

Pedaleur

You should here it when they speak it. Talk about laughing out loud...

interested

I read the original article in Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). The have had some interesting Puerto articles before where they could point to particular documental evidence in the Puerto files, but this article is totally without substance.

First, the allegation that Frank are "Amigo de Brillo". There aren't the slightest reason to believe that Frank should be labelled "friend of Basso". Just the language barrier between them (Basso didn't speak anything else than Italian before he came to CSC) makes it unlikely.
As far as I can trace the original rumor it goes like this (As I recall from memory); at the 2006 TdF Basso had asked for Frank to be his room mate (they hadn't been room mates before). Some Luxemburg journalist remembered this and made the connection: room mate -> friend -> "Friend of Birillo (Basso)", and made an article. But the journalist seemed to forget that it is highly likely for Basso's Fuentes involvement to predate the 2006 TdF with quite some time and therefore before Basso asked Frank to be his room mate.

All that that SZ does is to repeat this allegation, but since SZ realise there isn't anything credible about it they put a questions mark behind the allegation. That question mark of course often disappears when other people start to refer to the SZ article. Pathetic enough SZ then starts to talk about _another_ candidate for the Amigo de Birillo title, namely Lombardi. He is in my opinion the perfect candidate to be Amigo de Birillo; He is Italian, he lived (lives?) Spain, Basso _insisted_ to have him with him on all his races, even though the was pretty old and past his prime. He would never had become on the 2005 and 2006 TdF squads without Basso's insisting.
I am not saying that Frank wasn't a Fuentes client since Fuentes had so many clients that most major cyclist could be a candidate for that, but I simply refuse to believe his code name was "Amigo de Birillo".

Second: The allegation that Riis had travelled together with Frank to Fuentes in Madrid. SZ has two "inside" sources of people working on the Puerto case. Both are anonymous (understandable of course), but the interesting bit is, that if you close read the SZ article, it becomes clear that only one of the sources claims that this Riis-Fuentes connection took place, This is troubling since both sources must be asked about information about Riis, and Riis is just about the most famous DS and team owner in the world, so it is unlikely the other source wouldn't have known juicy stuff about him if it was in the Puerto files. So since only one Puerto insider says that such a meeting took place, we can infer that the second source didn't find evidence for such a meeting and therefore contradicts the first source.
But it gets even worse, the only source later admits that there are no factual evidence for such a meeting, DUH!

Anyway, I don't find it credible that Riis operated in such a way that he was holding Franks hand while visiting the "Doctor".
Jörg Jaksche, a man who had actually broken the "Omerta" said that there was never ever talk about dope on meetings at CSC, or that the team doctors where involved etc, but only that Riis seemed to "tolerate" that his riders doped.

I also find that the SZ journalist did a mediocre job; he should have squeezed his sources until they allowed him to see actual documents backing the sources' allegations, if such sources actually do exist.

--
Regards