Tour de France

[langostino]

Here we go again ...


First Mickael Rasmussen is busted for failing to file reports on his whereabouts in the month leading up to the TDF, thereby ensuring the out-of-competition testers could not find him.

Next, when asked point blank of he's ever doped, he responds not with "No" but "you can trust me".

And now finally, the bombshell:
http://www.velonews.com/tour2007/news/articles/12851.0.html


Before last week, besides the general suspicions, I'd never read anything substantive about Rasmussen doping. He was clear of Operacion Puerto. Yet, I knew the second he responded to the doping question with "trust me" what the score was. That was ripped right out of pages of the Armstrong playbook. And a heck of a deja vu moment with respect to Tyler Hamilton's entire "Trust Tyler" campaign. In fact, I seem to recall Floyd rolling out the "trust me ..." line quite a bit as well.

And now the details come tumbling out.

A shame because Rasmussen is an engaging interview and a likeable kind of guy.

BTW, on the subject of Sinkewitz' positive, I agree, the checklist of things the UCI/WADA need to do to satisfy due process should not take nearly as long as they do. I was just pointing out that this is not a special delay, the timeline is similar to most WADA cases for how long it takes them to check the boxes before coming public.

Having thought longer about this though, there's one critical question that none of the media have zeroed in on ... namely, when did T-Mobile receive notice? Knowing the UCI's notification procedures, I think it's an almost guaranteed lock that T-Mobile was notified BEFORE the start of the Tour.

If that's true, then someone needs to ask T-Mobile why in the heck they did not follow the ProTour teams ethical code and hold Sinkewitz out of the Tour? It's absolutely incredible to think T-Mobile may have sent a racer to start the Tour knowing he had a positive A-sample!! I am not at all convinced that Bill Stapleton can be trusted. He hired riders with known doping pasts (like Sergui Gonchar), or with strong suspicions (like Mick Rogers who worked privately with Michele Ferrari, etc), he allegedly got rid of riders like Ullrich, Mazolenni, Kloeden, etc., etc. allegedly because he'd concluded they were involved in doping, and got rid of Walter Godefroot when it became clear there was a systematic program that Godefroot oversaw, but then never investigated where they got the dope, or whether the team doctors had been involved in administering the program and helping the riders beat the doping tests. Even after the doctors were fingered, he initially tried to ride things out and keep them until the flames got too hot.

Ditto the whole situation with Rolf Aldag and his extremely limited confession -- with Stapleton electing to keep him rather than get someone clean.

And here's an even bigger question ... it turns out that Sinkewitz has failed to filed the exact same paperwork as Rasmussen! Not once but twice! Naturally including the lead-up to the TDF.

Even without the A-positive, what exactly is Stapleton and Aldag doing not suspending the guy?!! He's clearly and obviously evading the out-of-competition doping tests. And the team is ENTIRELY AWARE because the papers are actually filed through the team!

The whole sorry mess is rotten to the core. That ASO and the Tour de France have been entirely silent on the Rasmussen stories is only the icing on the cake.

Fitting for a day when Mickael Rasmussen and Alberto Contador beat David Millar in a 54 km ITT. Bwahahahahahaha! The thought of it -- Alberto Contador and Mickael Rasmussen time trialing along faster than David Millar for more than an hour -- takes us straight out from the sublime to the ridiculous.