Pat Jonker’s an Aussie-Dutch rider who’s recently come out in support of Lance Armstrong, telling FoxSports.com.au about doping at US Postal:
“I didn’t see anything. If I was subpoenaed to go to court and put my hand on the Bible, I’d go.”
Nice. But I’d make two remarks.
First, the image below is a screen grab from CyclingQuotient and it shows Jonker barely raced in 2000. So this is fairly light support, he hardly seemed an integral part of the squad: perhaps he didn’t see everything? Being flippant, he didn’t see Lance Armstrong win the Tour de France in July but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Second, US Postal doesn’t seem to have had a total team-wide doping programme. Believe Landis and it took time for him to get access to the serious “programme”. Landis suggests some riders were brought into a scheme linked to Dr Michele Ferrari. In other words, seeing nothing on the team does not mean riders were not working closely with the likes of Ferrari.
I suppose Armstrong might welcome the support but Jonker stands out as a rather weak voice of support: if this is about the only help you can can on, things aren’t going great. The real testimony right now is the court room action with the Grand Jury in California.
I gotta agree with you.
Like the blog, can't believe I only just found it. Real inside info and analysis that doesn't get done by the media.
CQ doesn't show all results, Jonker has started at least 43 races and shared at least 9 events with lance.
Including Dauphine!
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/2000/jun00/dauphine00p.shtml
anonymous no.1: thanks for the feedback.
Good point anonymous no.2, although he still seems to have had a light year. But as I say, it seems any "coaching" with Dr Ferrari was done not for the whole team but with selected riding.
As such the issue isn't whether the whole team was being administered with performance enhancing drugs, it's whether some riders were turning to these, who these riders were and who on the team (and the management company behind the team) knew about this.