The world championships in Oz becomes but a tortilla chip in the movable feast of global doping as El Pistolero trips the Dope-O-Meter®. Must’ve been all that kung pao pork before the final parade stage, que no? Que triste es la vida loca.
• Late update: Juliet Macur of The New York Times notes: “In Contador’s case, the Spanish antidoping agency will probably be in charge.” I feel better already.
Mad Blog Media 
Patrick,
I was going to write that you need to pick up the snark level, after reading the comments over on the Velonews site. But after reading your short paragraph I take back my thoughts. I eat my words, with a helping of clenbuterol no less. I am reminded of the story of the minister who was being congratulated by a parishoner after a particularly long sermon. “Why did you have such a long sermon, minister?” “Why bless you,” responded the cleric, ” I didn’t have time to write a short one.” I see that you can crank ’em out short and sweet on short notice.
Oops.
So Bordry announces his early resignation from AFLD a few days ago and now this. Hmmmm.
I don’t know nuthin’. I’m just sayin’.
Man i’m tired of reading about these dopers…when will we get to the point of let the legs do the talking beatch? We need more blue colllar Belgian types(and Ned Overend) and way less of the “how much money for me to be the champ?” punk asses…Bitter and weary i is 😦
Doping in cycling, what’s next air in balloons? The world is not flat?!?! Thank goodness hockey is coming up soon…not to mention ‘cross season.
So, over/under on Schleck getting busted? 3 days…No way he kept up with Contadoper without also eating “the spanish beef”…
♫…somebody put something in my drink♪–Joey Ramone
Well, well, well….they finally nailed The Green Bullet and now Il Pistolero. And the guy who almost pulled off the miracle win of the Vuelta seems to be doped as well. FINALLY the Spanish riders are getting caught and (we can only hope) sanctioned. I’d bet the destruction of the Puerto blood bags will be announced any day — they’ll want to do it before the whole Spanish cycling house of cards is brought down! And add one more to the list of former BigTex’ team members to trip the dope-o-meter…an amazing coincidence, eh?
I’m as cynical as the next reader about these guys racing clean, but caution folks that without seeing a report, I’d hold my fire.
This positive seems to be an extremely low hit. 50 picograms, as Charles Pelkey reports, is 400 times below what WADA tells the testing labs they must report as reported in Charles’ article (assuming the numbers in CP’s article are correct).
My day job is as an analytical chemist, and before I passed judgment based on a number, esp. one that low, I’d want to see the laboratory’s detection limits, blanks, standards, the uncertainties on the measurements, and know something about the measurements themselves before I called out the posse and threw a rope over a branch. Numbers are just numbers unless they are understood and justified.
// We need more blue colllar Belgian types … //
Yeah, ’cause everyone knows Museeuw, Maertens, and VDB never touched anything that wasn’t certified organic and fair trade.
For fuck’s sake, St Eddy tested positive THREE times!
// FINALLY the Spanish riders are getting caught … // Finally? Who tested positive at the ’72 Olympics? Who were the two guys caught alongside Pollentier in ’78? Who tested positive for probenecid in ’88? Hint: Spanish, Spanish, Spanish, and Spanish. Best I can tell, each country has been caught at the rate one expect given their relative numbers in the pro ranks. Would like to see some numbers that say different.
Funny how much cognitive dissonance it takes to be a bike racing fan. They’re all bums, except for my guy. And we’re all so willing to believe every lab report, even if it means we don’t believe the lab results from the day before and the day after. But best of all, we all act like we hate doping, but we take so much pleasure in reading about who’s the latest to fall. We’re all walking contradictions.
K has a strong point here. It’s also worth considering that we tend to think of performance enhancement as something that will make us race better … but in a stage race, racing better tends to be about recovering faster. Could a microdose going into a rest day help speed recovery? Who knows? Not me, that’s for sure. I’m a part-time rumormonger, not a sports scientist.
Dutch anti-doping expert Douwe de Boer, who AFP says authored a report backing Contador’s claim, wrote that “knowing the history of clenbuterol intoxications in Spain and knowing the fact that clenbuterol can be detected in extremely low levels, it is obvious that in this particular case the scenario of an accidental intake of clenbuterol by consumption of meat is extremely likely.”
But if clenbuterol intoxication is so famously widespread in Spanish beef, what sort of idiot would order up a platter of hometown carne while racing the Tour? Better to stick with the Frogs’ filet de caballo. Better to eat a horse’s ass than be one.
Microdosing might be good as a placebo effect, too. But too many question marks here. In this day and age of intensive testing, you would have to be a reckless fool or hopelessly naive to deliberately dope when you are so close to a podium finish.
Then again, some of these guys aren’t exactly brain surgeons. If someone up in management tells them they can get away with it, they probably will try. (taking off analytical chemist hat and having some fun speculating…)
@ rust…I believe that Joey never sang that song. Methinks it was Marky Ramone from a true story.
@ James, Joey sang it at the 3 Ramones concerts I saw over the years, Richie wrote it.