Ullrich on a happier day
The Tour de France was stripped of three of its biggest names on Friday after Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Francisco Mancebo were implicated in a doping investigation in Spain.
The Astana-Wuerth team, formerly known as Liberty Seguros, also announced their withdrawal from the race. Five of their riders were on a list of nine Tour competitors provided by the Spanish police to an investigating magistrate.
The doping scandal erupted last month after the Spanish Civil Guard raided a number of addresses to find large quantities of anabolic steroids, laboratory equipment used for blood transfusions and more than 100 packs of frozen blood.
Earlier on Friday, ASO announced it was in possession of a list of more than 50 riders involved in the probe after being handed a 37-page document by the Spanish Cycling Federation.
On Monday, Ullrich and Pevenage had issued strong denials about their involvement in what could be the biggest doping scandal in cycling since the Festina affair in 1998.
“At first we had no reason to doubt the riders’ statements. Therefore we couldn’t make any decision merely based on speculations, rumours and guesses”, said Christian Frommert, director of sports communication for T-Mobile International. “This situation has now changed profoundly. Accordingly we will now live up to our responsibility towards making cycling a clean sport.”
“There was clearly contact between the Spanish doctor and Jan Ullrich, Oscar Sevilla and Rudy Pevenage, which all three had previously ruled out as having taken place,” T-Mobile media spokesman Stefan Wagner told German television on Friday.
The only comment I can offer is one of those predictably trite statements, like — decades of support for competitive cycling convince me that 99.99% of those involved don’t consider doing stupid things to their bodies to get a bit more hardware and a few extra dollars.
We said the same thing thirty years ago, forty years ago.
I thought it ironic that just before this “scandal” started getting visibility, I had read a news stroy about Lance Armstrong promoting his charity – and having to continualy confront charges that he was involved in doping… an example click here.
I’m curious to see how long these other riders are dogged by suspicions of doping…
Ah, but it does make for a wide open Tour. I just wonder how the Bookmakers are dealing with all the last minute drop outs. Setting odds this year is going to be as chaotic as the initial stages of the race. Wanna be teams suddenly have to recalculate their stratagy of blowing everything on taking one stage for TV and not bothering with longer term stratagy.
Most Americans wont give a rip, now that the Lance phenom is over, but this actually ups the odds of some of the Yanks who have long been team support rather than lead riders. Leipheimer, Landis, and Hincapie are all sitting in top slots on a Brit oddsmaker’s list (2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively). That’s unprecedented.
Pro-athletes cheating? (gasp)
When I heard about this the other day it just stunned me. I was looking forward to watching Ullrich and Basso battle it out. I wanted to see if Ullrich was going to be able to battle out from under the shadow of Lance Armstrong. I wanted to know if Basso was going to be as strong as last year. Sadly that won’t happen now. But the Discovery team is strong, I’ll still get to see if George Hincapie steps up for the team as leader, he’s already come in second on the first day day prologue and Thor won the day. Whatever happens throughout the three weeks of the race it will still be men on bikes, teams working with each other or not, mental strength and weakness and rain and sun and mountains and crashes and who knows what else. Should still be great.
It’s too early, but after the first stage, Americans are in 2nd and 3rd place. This is going to tick off the French again. 🙂
What’s with the pink?
T-Mobile is into pink. Must be a German thing.