"Simon Brooke" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:
in message <[email hidden]>, B.
Lafferty (') said:
"Zak" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:
Well in France, at least, the sport is dead. Since 1998 Festina doping scandal the numbers of "licences" at the Cycling French Federation decreased year after year. Parents don't want they kids to practice such a tainted sport. And young amateurs are more and more reluctant to become pro. Indeed it concerns just one country yet one country which used to be important in this discipline and is now a non factor. You might blame the medias, but anyway, doping killed this sport in France.
Just wait. A French rider may well win the Tour this year. ;-)
Allors! C'est un cochon de vol!
I mean, I've a soft spot for Thomas Voeckler, but come on!
'You cannot put "The Internet" into the Recycle Bin.'
Perhaps he had Sany Casar in mind. It would be poetic if Cedric V. won.
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Well in France, at least, the sport is dead. Since 1998 Festina doping scandal the numbers of "licences" at the Cycling French Federation decreased year after year. Parents don't want they kids to practice such a tainted sport. And young amateurs are more and more reluctant to become pro. Indeed it concerns just one country yet one country which used to be important in this discipline and is now a non factor. You might blame the medias, but anyway, doping killed this sport in France.
I'm curious where you get the info that brings you to the conclusion that "Parents don't want they kids to practice such a tainted sport." Have there been public opinion polls with published results that show this? I'm just wondering if you're jumping to conclusions based on your personal prejudices. I think that there are many reasons why cycling isn't as popular among French kids, such as simple cultural drift.
I'd wager that the odds of becoming a star in a sport that does not test as much as cycling does are greater, so the kids focus on that. It's not that they want to dope per se, but sports that are more permissive of doping will produce more spectacular stars.
Dear Tom: Yeah. To carry the assumption of innocence AND cynicism a bit further, if one WAS operating a blood-doping/EPO lab, why WOULDN'T one aggressively market just testing services (at first) to pro cycling teams. It'd act both as a "cover" for all the neat toys and disposables AND as an easy way to get one-on-one with individual riders to make the pitch for "enhanced services."
Robert Leone, just back from the blood bank where I got deferred due to low hemoglobin....
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Tom Kunich said:
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Hello Allez1: Worst case for reputations scenario would be: The "clean" teams were sending their riders for private testing to make sure they were "clean" to the hematologists who were doing the "dirty" work for the "dirty" teams/riders. After all, who'd have the most experience in TESTING blood to see that it met UCI/WADA guidelines as a quality control measure?
That is a point. Probably entirely incorrect but certainly a possibility. Remember so many riders were testing right on the very edge of legal hematocrit that it isn't too far out to suspect that everyone was riding the line including those people who would NATURALLY exceed the hematocrit but weren't able to document it well enough for the UCI.
My normal hematocrit, living at sea level is 48%-49%. What would it be if I lived in Crested Butte, CO, at 9200 feet (2800 meters)?
