[squeek]

amazing. he is with no doubt the fastest in the field.

I think they should have given a time difference between him and 2nd yesterday.    Also liked the commentary:
"Cav looked like he could have gone sooner there too."

Did you get much cycling done chappers?
"Yes, it's lucky for the other riders he didn't or else he would have finished even more bike lengths in front"

[chappers]

yeah, did a fair bit...but i was ill and we suffered a few days bad weather.

did do a 180km day over the aspin, tourmalet and the col de coup. mega.  the last 7km of the tourmalet were in the cloud and really cold on the decent, but an amazing day in the saddle.

[Dolly]

Which side did you go up the Tourmalet from Chappers ?
How did you find the narrowing road at the top ? (I haven't done it BTW am just curious)

[chappers]

we rode up the side with the ski station of la mongie> which i guess is the east?? the way the tour did it when they finished in pau. The col is steady away until 4km to go then it gets wildly steep - which is not ideal after riding uphill for 18km or so!!

there are lamas up there though.

[Dolly]

That last bit just looks mad. I drove up it thinking it looked enough to wipe you out if you didn't have anything in the tank.
Chapeau for doing it tho'

[cofe]

More bangers from the big picture

[cowboyhat]

What is going on with Fabien's calves here? Looks like scars up the back of each...



Must be where they put the pistons in.

[webbo]

so thats where they hid the motors not on the bike.

[chappers]

i like the bionic man idea but i assume it is the seams from leg warmers worn whilst warming up?

[chappers]

i like this one best. Vino for me was amazing this tour, great to watch just how tough someone can be. And Daniel Nevvaro, watching him bury himself on the climbs for contador was an inspiration. Everyone said that contador had a weak team, but so wrong, when schleck dropped his chain only contador had a rider with him - Vino!!!

[Percy B]

But Vino is mental (attacking his team leader in the tour?!), and I can't forgive him for doping. Give me Jens Voigt over Vino any day of the week. Jens is older than me but I'll bet a large sum of cash that he rides the tour again next year at the age of 40, and still buries himself for his team leader whilst the rest of the team are back crying at the team car. If you require further proof, Here's an interview with Jens after this years massive crash...

[chappers]

ill give you that one percy, watching him ride up the aspin holding onto the broom wagon refusing to get in, covered in blood was quite amazing.

i loved the 2008 tour interview in paris: (no seat on his bike).
"what happened to your saddle yens?"
"it fell off" - totally deadpan.

I dont want to get into a doping debate but there are plenty of riders who have been forgiven, yet vino still gets loads of shit off the press - i guess you need to give a hollow apology to get the media back on your side which he refuses to do...as for attacking contador, i think that "mental streak" is what i like, i just imagine his typical soviet block voice saying "i must win race".

i am pretty psyched by the news of contador leaving astana and taking "the spanish block" with him. and rumored to ride alongside cancellara under riis! what a team this could be, classics and grand tours. contador has stated that he wants to ride two tours next year too.

[jfw]

What is going on with Fabien's calves here? Looks like scars up the back of each...

Must be where they put the pistons in.

if he's about to start, is it not just seams from his warm up tights?

[Palomides]

i am pretty psyched by the news of contador leaving astana and taking "the spanish block" with him. and rumored to ride alongside cancellara under riis! what a team this could be, classics and grand tours. contador has stated that he wants to ride two tours next year too.

Word is that Bertie and Riis are talking about going for all three Grand Tours in 2012.

Given how every single one of the big-name riders who did the Giro completely collapsed during the Tour (OK, apart from Vino but he's not a man - he's a piece of iron...) that looks like crazy talk.

But if anyone can do it, why not Bertie-boy?

[Snoops]

Contador dope shocker:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11441045

Sad. I'm pretty sure you cant get clenbuterol in food though.
Not really a suprise either, whole Astana team banned 2008 for doping.
2009 He blows away Cancellara in the time trial. 

[stevej]

Contador dope shocker:

Sad. I'm pretty sure you cant get clenbuterol in food though.

To put the BBC science to shame (yep, def. no capitals deserved there, I had to do a bit of looking to convert "a concentration of 50 picograms" into something that wasn't GSCE-FAIL-science) and put the numbers into perspective I reckon you can get 0.000000000005g/ml of anything you want to find. If I've got the numbers right, that's roughly equivalent to them detecting 1/123,000 of a dose of ibuprofen in my body assuming it all gets equally spread through everything.

[50e-12 g/ml, 65kg body is ~65e3 ml, g of clenbuterol in whole body is 50e-12*65e3=3.25e-6g, fraction of a 400mg dose of ibuprofen is 3.25e-6/400e-3 = 123e3] Right this time?

[Stubbs]

It says the amount is 400 times less that the detection limits the labs have to meet, so I assume this concentration will be below whatever guideline they work to.  From this article http://www.iol.co.za/sport/cycling/contador-blames-food-poisoning-1.682573  they seem to be talking about food tampering rather than a natural occurrence?

[stevej]

To shit on that previous science,

Prescription clenbuterol is around 40 micrograms/day and the half life is about a day and a half

Sounds like if you could take a supplement at a concentration hundreds of times lower than previously could be detected by labs then we might see a few more cropping up.

Judgement=reserved...

[Snoops]

Fair enough. I'm not sure why the UCI have suspended him then though if it is beneath the 'dodgy' level?
At the end of the day, his whole team being baned 2008 for dope, and this now: smoke - fire.

[stevej]

They don't have a 'dodgy' line, it's not a natural substance and there's assumed to be no way an athlete can get it in their bloodstream without foul play or contamination of some kind. Sounds like the 400x thing is a bit of a red herring, that's the minimum accuracy for a lab to be certificated to deal with piss samples rather than either the minimum accuracy that they can either do anyone for, or the accuracy that their equipment is judged to be.

The drugs labs always seem to be way behind the cheats (genuinely pointing no fingers here, hope it turns out some nasty bastard is sneaking around sprinkling stuff on food) so any way they can get an edge seems to stay under their hats until they catch a winner. Wouldn't be surprised even if they let small-fry go that they detect with new tech to try and lure everyone into a false sense of security and net the big ones.

Hmm, don't think I've ever used that many fishing-related clichés in the same plaice before.

[Stubbs]

I was simply trying to make the point that if they were testing to the prescribed detection limit, the results would have been <20 ng/l (for example of urine, rather than blood as it says in UKC) rather than a detected amount and as such would have counted as a negative test. 

[Snoops]

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/sport-headlines/tour-de-france-bans-terry%11thomas-201009303129/

[Palomides]

Crikey, Contador, Mosquera, Dapena and possibly Ricco in the same day.

For Contador, there is precedent for Clenbuterol being present in beef - apparently unscrupulous farmers can use it to (illegally) increase growth rates in cattle.

He's saying that he (and only he, from the whole team) ate steak from Spain on the day in question.

Given that the amounts are tiny (too tiny to actually have any benefit I think?) this is actually quite plausible.

Suspicious folk on other websites have already suggested that an alternative to this is that AC has been using Clenbuterol as a weight-loss aid during the off-season, stored some of his own blood a day or two earlier than intended and then had a small re-transfusion, which would have topped him up, not just with his own red blood cells, but with traces of clenbutrerol too.

The only way he can prove his explanation is to trace the beef... not easy.

The day in question was the second rest day - just before the key Tourmalet stage.

Given that this is a confirmed positive, I get the impression that the best he can hope for is being stripped of this years TdF win, and a one year ban.

Sucks to be Bjarne right now!

[Jaspersharpe]

Was his food spiked by jealous locals out to discredit him?

[Palomides]

Jealous Americans maybe...

... the French know that they don't have any GT winners amongst their ranks.