No.
Tour de France
Grenoble fall out
One of the highlights of the Critérium du Dauphiné was today’s time trial stage around Grenoble. The route is identical to Stage 20 of the Tour de France, the crucial final stage before the parade in Paris. So what lessons can we take from today for July?
Here are the results, the top-10 plus a selection of others.
Contador’s CAS chronology
“One can only regret the time lag between the sports and media, and that of justice”
Those are the words of Tour de France organiser Christian Prudhomme, discussing the almost never-ending series of delays and postponments to the saga that is Alberto Contador’s positive test for Clenbuterol. Reading the Velonation article, Prudhomme says he “won’t block Contador” but he is frustrated with the delays and rightly so given the uncertainties, question marks and apparent inability of the sport to sort out this matter.
In the piece, I saw a timeline of events mentioned. I think it might be worth going in to greater detail here, to explore why this is taking so long, and to revisit the basic rules in the light of these delays, in case we forget what it’s all about.
Is Contador welcome at the Tour de France?
Tour de France organiser Christian Prudhomme has said he wants the matter of Alberto Contador’s Clenbuterol samples settled. “The only thing which we want is to have a response. It is the most important thing. Too often we are in a grey area” he told AFP in March.
But things are now set to stay grey for some time. Yesterday we heard that Court of Arbitration for Sport has postponed the double appeal from the UCI ad WADA at the request of Alberto Contador’s defence team. Fair enough, a hearing should always go ahead when both sides are ready. But at the same time, I can’t help noticing lawyers are paid by the hour and Contador is paid monthly and the incentives to play this one for as long as possible. The “contaminated beef” hypothesis was first presented in late August after all.
Fast forward to the present and Contador hadn’t reached cruising speed in the Giro’s opening team time trial before the Italian TV commentators mentioned the pending appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. It wasn’t an auspicious start for the Giro. To mention the race favourite is linked to an appeal and allegations of doping is like a magician opening his act with the words “this isn’t real and don’t watch my left hand too close“.
L’Equipe publishes UCI “suspicion index”
That’s the list from this morning’s L’Equipe. It shows an internal UCI ranking of riders according to levels of “suspicion” relating to strange values gathered under the bio passport scheme. The higher the score, the greater the suspicion. The list was formulated by the UCI on the eve of the 2010 Tour de France.
Handle with care
Suspicion’s a particularly nasty sentiment. Finger pointing, accusations, denunciations, whispers and more are all ugly because often they’re quite wrong. So take the list above with more than a pinch of salt. There’s no direct link with doping, this is just an internal score used by the UCI to help testing. But both the list and the leak raise serious questions.
Early Tour de France notebooks under the hammer
I found this thanks to French journalist Jean-Paul Brouchon. Today a collection of notebooks from Alphonse Steinès are up for sale in Paris at the Christies auction house.
Race radios and the Tour de France: data from 365 stages
You are probably getting rightly bored by the race radio debate. After all Milan-Sanremo was so exciting that it rightly put politics, protest and scandal in the shade. And by now you probably know by now that the radio is being used as a Trojan Horse where protesting teams are trying to push back the UCI in order to have more say over the sport. But bear with me…
Forgotten amongst all the debate, noise, protest and press releases is the fundamental premise of evidence. Nobody seems to have put forward any data to suggest the addition or removal of race radios makes any difference to safety or results. I’ve yet to see data, only anecdote. Until now.
Why German TV matters
Even Inspektor Derrick can’t catch the dopers You probably don’t watch much German TV. Here in France we’re treated to mid-afternoon re-runs of Derrick, a 1980s detective programme and not much else. But if German TV shows don’t export themselves, it’s worth remembering that the country is Europe’s largest and most wealthy country. It’s against … Read more
Tour wildcards: Saur-Sojasun gives Geox the boot
Tour de France organisers ASO have announced that Cofidis, Europcar, FDJ and Saur-Sojasun will get the four wildcard places for July. This leaves Geox-TMC out, the Italo-Spanish team had sought to improve itself following a lacklustre appearance last year as Footon-Servetto by hiring Denis Menchov (third overall) and 2008 winner Carlos Sastre but surprisingly this … Read more
Tour de France wildcards controversy?
French website cyclismactu got the news first: the Tour de France will announce the wildcard selections for the 2011 season in only a couple of weeks’ time. Gone is the chance for a small team to impress with a strong start to the season, especially under the noses of ASO in Paris-Nice and the Criterium … Read more