The International Cycling Union (UCI) announced Friday that it is suspending Spaniard Mikel Astarloza for failing a doping control June 26, which was 25 days before he won the Tour de France's mountain stage to Bourg-Saint-Maurice. His Euskaltel-Euskadi team stated emphatically that it had not seen any abnormalities in the team's internal controls. It said the rider will request the counter-analysis of the sample. Until then, the press release stated, he will be considered innocent until proven guilty.
On Friday, the UCI announced that Astarloza tested positive for recombinant EPO, a blood booster, in an out-of-competition control. He is the second rider from the Euskaltel-Euskadi team to return a positive doping control in June. Inigo Landaluze was suspended in July after twice testing positive for EPO CERA. In the case of Landaluze, the team condemned the rider and he took full responsibility for his positive tests.
Astarloza's urine test was performed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and analysed in Madrid. The UCI received its results on Thursday. The suspension is provisional until a Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC) panel meets to examine the results. "The hearing panel will make a decision on an applicable sanction for Mr. Astarloza," read a UCI press release. The failed doping test is the first related to a rider who participated in the 2009 Tour de France. There were eight riders who tested positive for doping in last year's race.
it's still better to have the doping control officer from wada sit down for a nice cup of coffee for an hour's chinwag before getting down to the actual testing in addition to a team's internal programme.
Rider: Oh [censored], got tested today! DS: No problem, our internal controls show that the testing agents and lab won't find a thing.
If you think internal testing serves any other purpose, then you probably also believe that self-regulation of banks worked wonders.
it's funny how they flipped the script on these internal controls.. teams always did them, so they'd know exactly when to tell riders when to get "sick" and take a trip somewhere. now the exact same controls that were used to ensure doped riders don't get caught are somehow proof that they are not doping. what a joke. don't get it twisted these control are what they always were insurance that your riders are doping properly.. not that they are not doping.
I can remember reading the details from the Tyler Hamilton case where his team got so [censored] by receive letters from WADA saying that their numbers were X when they thought they were X that they went out and bought the exact same machine as the lab so they would get the exact same values. Tyler was slicing it pretty thin though.. hematocrit 49.7 when the limit is 50.. so those decimal meant a lot to him. his hematocrit was around 37 in off season.. that's kinda weird eh? lol..
I can remember reading the details from the Tyler Hamilton case where his team got so [censored] by receive letters from WADA saying that their numbers were X when they thought they were X that they went out and bought the exact same machine as the lab so they would get the exact same values. Tyler was slicing it pretty thin though.. hematocrit 49.7 when the limit is 50.. so those decimal meant a lot to him. his hematocrit was around 37 in off season.. that's kinda weird eh? lol..
Hamilton folly was in putting so much confidence in his own team's monitoring of his doping program. They had the balls to ignore multiple warnings to cut out the sh!t, and then he got popped for the transfusion after he screwed up his own blood supply and needed a new source.
It's one big, doping circus, and no one at the top is serious about fixing the issue. I say that we just let everyone dope out in the open.
I've defended Contador but I'm starting to be a little more suspicious of him. One of the main reasons Lance came back to the sport, in my view, was that he thought that the doping controls were so tight he could still win in a fair fight. So his remarks about Contador producing numbers that he never did, on the Swiss climb, after that stage, seem a rather coded attack. I think Armstrong may have a point.
I've defended Contador but I'm starting to be a little more suspicious of him. One of the main reasons Lance came back to the sport, in my view, was that he thought that the doping controls were so tight he could still win in a fair fight. So his remarks about Contador producing numbers that he never did, on the Swiss climb, after that stage, seem a rather coded attack. I think Armstrong may have a point.
The irony is so strong it just came through the internet and hit me in the face like a brick.
I've defended Contador but I'm starting to be a little more suspicious of him. One of the main reasons Lance came back to the sport, in my view, was that he thought that the doping controls were so tight he could still win in a fair fight. So his remarks about Contador producing numbers that he never did, on the Swiss climb, after that stage, seem a rather coded attack. I think Armstrong may have a point.
After Festina we were hopping that riders will leave EPO... and then Lance arrived in 1999 full of EPO , confirmed in 2005. We felt very disappointed.
