Rasmussen out

wafflycat' w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his whereaboutsas
regards the missed tests....

Excellent!

Where did you get that from Wafflycat?

raisethe said:

wafflycat' w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his whereabouts as
regards the missed tests....

Excellent!

Where did you get that from Wafflycat?

Possibly from
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/6916698.stm>

I wonder why he claimed to be in Mexico when he was actually in Italy...

Cheers,
Luke

--
Red Rose Ramblings, the diary of an Essex boy in
exile in Lancashire <http://www.shrimper.org.uk>

"raisethe" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

wafflycat' w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his whereabouts
as
regards the missed tests....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/6916698.stm

Man, that's really really bad news.

in message <[email hidden]>, raisethe

(') said:

wafflycat' w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his
whereabouts as regards the missed tests....

Excellent!

Where did you get that from Wafflycat?

The BBC are reporting it. Cycling News are not, yet...

As for excellent, this is as bad as it gets. Now we have Contador (ex
Astana/Liberty Seguros/Sainz/Fuentes) in yellow. Where will this end?

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; First they came for the asylum seekers,
;; and I did not speak out because I was not an asylum seeker.
;; Then they came for the gypsies,
;; and I did not speak out because I was not a gypsy...
;; Pastor Martin Niemöller, translated by Michael Howard.

Ekul Namsob said:

I wonder why he claimed to be in Mexico when he was actually in Italy...

An administrative error, no doubt.

Daniele

D.M. Procida said:

Ekul Namsob said:

I wonder why he claimed to be in Mexico when he was actually in Italy...

An administrative error, no doubt.

These Latin countries are all much of a muchness and easily confused ;-)

Tony

raisethe said:

wafflycat' w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his whereabouts as
regards the missed tests....

Excellent!

Where did you get that from Wafflycat?

From a message several posts earlier?

John B

"wafflycat" <w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his whereabouts
as regards the missed tests....

Once again you have to question the timing. Rabobank have known about this
for some time. Why wait until Rasmussen is virtually guaranteed of winning
the tour before pulling the plug?

Præthön said:

"wafflycat" <w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his whereabouts
as regards the missed tests....

Once again you have to question the timing. Rabobank have known about this
for some time. Why wait until Rasmussen is virtually guaranteed of winning
the tour before pulling the plug?

I notice that the BBC is now saying Astana were asked to withdraw
whereas early reporting implied it was the team's choice. Perhaps
Rabobank were leaned on too.

Whatever it is I feel sorry for the remaining field. Whoever wins it
will now be a hollow victory which is not what winning the TdeF should
be about.

OTOH I think in many ways the TdeF organisers have bought this on
themselves. For years they have tried to play the drug cheat card to
their advantage with all the games they played around Armstrong right up
to their triumphal announcements by L'Equipe (which is owned by the TdeF
organisers) last year of the discredited retrospective Armstrong tests
of the 1999 Tour. L'Equipe also seems to be hand in hand with LNDD on
the premature leaking and rumour mill of testing. As a trio the
organisers, L'Equipe and LNDD have been actively playing with fire which
is now coming back to burn them badly.

How many sponsors will want to come back for next year's Tour?

Tony

In news:[email hidden],
Præthön <praethonatnerdshackdotcom> tweaked the Babbage-Engine to tell us:

Quoted message said:

"wafflycat" <w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his
whereabouts as regards the missed tests....

Once again you have to question the timing. Rabobank have known about
this for some time. Why wait until Rasmussen is virtually guaranteed
of winning the tour before pulling the plug?

Precisely what Pat "Lone Wolf" McQuaid and Christian Prudhomme have been
saying. The scrap between Rasmussen and Contador made the last few days of
racing some of the most exciting I can recall, and I was very much looking
forward to slumping on the sofa after the 3 Downn 300 on Saturday and
watching the time trial in its entirety. Not sure I'll bother now.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

--
Dave Larrington
<http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk>
Me, I wanna be an anglepoise lamp, yeah!

Præthön said:

"wafflycat" <w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his whereabouts
as regards the missed tests....

Once again you have to question the timing. Rabobank have known about this
for some time.

Have they? I thought de Rooy believed his man Rasumssen when he said
he'd been in Mexico and missed the tests by mistake.

But then recently some new evidence surfaced that he'd actually been in
Italy. That was enough for de Rooy to realize Rasmussen was messing him
around and I think he did the decent thing by pulling him out.

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 08:27:24 +0100, Tony Raven <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Whatever it is I feel sorry for the remaining field. Whoever wins it
will now be a hollow victory which is not what winning the TdeF should
be about.

How will it be a hollow victory just because a load of cheats weren't
able to win?

Quoted message said:

How many sponsors will want to come back for next year's Tour?

Let's hope few enough that the teams continue to take cheating
seriously, and the organisers start banning teams, riders all involved
for life for these breaches, not pissant little fines and being
"leaned" on to leave the tour.

Jim.

Ben C said:

But then recently some new evidence surfaced that he'd actually been in
Italy. That was enough for de Rooy to realize Rasmussen was messing him
around and I think he did the decent thing by pulling him out.

Perhaps he misunderstood when Rasmussen told him "I was in Italy getting
a Ferrari" ;-)

Tony

Jim Ley said:

How will it be a hollow victory just because a load of cheats weren't
able to win?

Because Rasmussen was well and truly beating them all and his
performance and removal seems to have nothing to do with cheating - his
post stage tests have all come out clean.

Tony

"Tony Raven" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Jim Ley said:

How will it be a hollow victory just because a load of cheats weren't
able to win?

Because Rasmussen was well and truly beating them all and his performance
and removal seems to have nothing to do with cheating - his post stage
tests have all come out clean.

And because the sport is so dependent on things like pacing and tactics,
that if Rasmussen and Vino hadn't been there at the beginning, it would have
developed in a very different way.

cheers,
clive

Tony Raven said:

Because Rasmussen was well and truly beating them all and his
performance and removal seems to have nothing to do with cheating - his
post stage tests have all come out clean.

Afaik the reason they do random or out of season drug testing is to
establish if drugs were taken that will benefit a rider later on, but by
race time will have been purged from their system.

The fact that he missed random drugs tests and that he lied about his
whereabouts obviously doesn't prove that he is a cheat, but IMO the team
were right to sack him.

--
Membrane

in message <[email hidden]>, Dave Larrington

(') said:

In news:[email hidden],
Præthön <praethonatnerdshackdotcom> tweaked the Babbage-Engine to tell
us:

Quoted message said:

"wafflycat" <w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Dropped by Rabobank. Apparently he lied to Rabobank about his
whereabouts as regards the missed tests....

Once again you have to question the timing. Rabobank have known about
this for some time. Why wait until Rasmussen is virtually guaranteed
of winning the tour before pulling the plug?

Precisely what Pat "Lone Wolf" McQuaid and Christian Prudhomme have been
saying. The scrap between Rasmussen and Contador made the last few days
of racing some of the most exciting I can recall, and I was very much
looking forward to slumping on the sofa after the 3 Downn 300 on Saturday
and
watching the time trial in its entirety. Not sure I'll bother now.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

I had that feeling last year. I had the mountain stage on which Landis made
his amazing recovery taped for me, and, in the end, I never watched it -
because I felt cheated.

But... it's magnificent theatre. Like you, I've been excited by the
Contador/Rasmussen duels. Vino has been outstanding. Soler had been
brilliant. It's been a great tour to watch. I'm sorry that Vino doped, but
I really don't believe it makes him less courageous, less charismatic,
less mercurial. And I find it very hard to condemn people using blood
doping or autologous transfusion to raise their haematocrit, while raising
your haematocrit using an altitude tent remains legal.

So no. I feel sad for Vino, I feel that he is a tragic hero who has,
ultimately, destroyed himself. I feel profoundly irritated by Rasmussen,
and by that Cofidis rider with the t-patch. But I don't feel cheated.
This, too, is part of the drama.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

:: Wisdom is better than weapons of war ::
:: Ecclesiastes 9:18 ::

in message <[email hidden]>, Membrane

(') said:

The fact that he missed random drugs tests and that he lied about his
whereabouts obviously doesn't prove that he is a cheat, but IMO the team
were right to sack him.

Exactly.

We have no evidence he cheated. We have evidence he lied.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

[ This .sig intentionally left blank ]

Quoted message said:

Afaik the reason they do random or out of season drug testing is to
establish if drugs were taken that will benefit a rider later on, but by
race time will have been purged from their system.

The fact that he missed random drugs tests and that he lied about his
whereabouts obviously doesn't prove that he is a cheat, but IMO the team
were right to sack him.

<AOL>. Makes me nervous when cyclists aren't in competition before, say,
the World Championships - are they avoiding the in competition tests until
the evidence is purged from their system? IMO this is the greatest evil
that the cheats have inflicted - the unfair suspicion of any cyclist that
puts in a genuinely amazing performance.