# General TdF 2014 Doping Thread. Try to put 2014-specific talk here. (spoilers)



## PJay (May 28, 2004)

General TdF 2014 Doping Thread. Try to put 2014-specific talk here. (spoilers)


----------



## PJay (May 28, 2004)

Was this the first clean TdF?
Why hasn't everyone been saying "Nibali is riding well, therefore he is on dope?"
Where have the asthma-inhaler episodes been?
Does anyone's relatively weak performance now versus 2-3 years ago mean anything?


----------



## viciouscycle (Aug 22, 2009)

We will not know if this one is clean for another 7-10 yrs if history is any indicator.


----------



## spade2you (May 12, 2009)

viciouscycle said:


> We will not know if this one is clean for another 7-10 yrs if history is any indicator.


Cycling is clean now. We stopped after Festpuertstrong.


----------



## J24 (Oct 8, 2003)

The Sky boys are still there except for Froomy and G-Tom so I'd say its not snow white clean maybe closer to a little smudged


----------



## PJay (May 28, 2004)

how long until the tour lab results come back in?


----------



## den bakker (Nov 13, 2004)

spade2you said:


> Cycling is clean now. We stopped after Festpuertstrong.


glad you came clean.


----------



## ddave12000 (Aug 16, 2013)

I thought Lance was the only doper out there? Well, other than Contador, but he quit doping, right? 

I won't make a judgement one way or another, but I found it hard not to be skeptical at times just watching Nibali - some of those mountain stages, every guy is grimacing, obviously grinding it out. Then along come Nibali with his poker face, riding to the front like he's not even working hard. Maybe he's just that much better than everyone else this year.


----------



## Winn (Feb 15, 2013)

Of course every winner forever now will be a suspected doper right? It sucks for how long will it go on??


----------



## Local Hero (Jul 8, 2010)

Winn said:


> Of course every winner forever now will be a suspected doper right? It sucks for how long will it go on??


Just until next year. 


Then we'll suspect someone new.


----------



## crit_boy (Aug 6, 2013)

Winn said:


> Of course every winner forever now will be a suspected doper right? It sucks for how long will it go on??


Until the rules are changed => what is doping now will no longer break the rules. Hence, everyone will be clean - just like the NFL.


----------



## spade2you (May 12, 2009)

den bakker said:


> glad you came clean.


I love how this is acceptable because I don't hate Armstong.


----------



## J24 (Oct 8, 2003)

spade2you said:


> I love how this is acceptable because I don't hate Armstong.


I'm pretty much indifferent to Armstrong and his being a doper, and I'm not meaning to rationalize his or any other rider's doping, but I really would like to know, in every tour Armstrong won, how far down in those tours' finishers would you have to go to find a clean rider, is it top 5, top 10, 15, 25, it could be as bad as having to go down to 100 on the finish line.


----------



## Local Hero (Jul 8, 2010)

J24 said:


> I'm pretty much indifferent to Armstrong and his being a doper, and I'm not meaning to rationalize his or any other rider's doping, but I really would like to know, in every tour Armstrong won, how far down in those tours' finishers would you have to go to find a clean rider, is it top 5, top 10, 15, 25, it could be as bad as having to go down to 100 on the finish line.


Oddly enough, #1 doper Armstrong gets the blame for dopers 1-100.


----------



## deviousalex (Aug 18, 2010)

Local Hero said:


> Oddly enough, #1 doper Armstrong gets the blame for dopers 1-100.


That's a straw man argument more than anything. I highly doubt most people on this forum believe that.

I think I've read enough "Doping stopped after Lance left the sport!" posts. Let's stop filling up RBR's servers with useless dead horse banter.


----------



## spade2you (May 12, 2009)

J24 said:


> I'm pretty much indifferent to Armstrong and his being a doper, and I'm not meaning to rationalize his or any other rider's doping, but I really would like to know, in every tour Armstrong won, how far down in those tours' finishers would you have to go to find a clean rider, is it top 5, top 10, 15, 25, it could be as bad as having to go down to 100 on the finish line.


I'd like to think there _might_ be a clean rider 11-20. Definitely not in the top 10 during those years, few years before, and few years after.


----------



## Local Hero (Jul 8, 2010)

deviousalex said:


> That's a straw man argument more than anything. I highly doubt most people on this forum believe that.


I'm starting to doubt whether people here even know what "strawman argument" means.


----------



## Winn (Feb 15, 2013)

It doesn't matter he is here










I expect the goal posts will move soon


----------



## Germany_chris (Sep 9, 2009)

No this tour wasn't clean nor any tour before it nor any tour after it.


----------



## bigjohnla (Mar 29, 2010)

I think expecting the entire Peloton to be totally clean is naive. There are average Joe's who dope for Gran Fondos. A strong performance in the Tour means more money for next year, even for a domestique. I can't imagine that someone out there didn't take a chance and try to get by with doping. I thought in general it looked like a lot of the riders had a tough time stringing together a bunch of consecutive strong days. Everybody looked more tired than in previous years. Nibali took a lot of heat for riding a soft schedule pre Tour. He skipped the Giro, which for Italians is nearly a mortal sin. Nibali paced himselve well and picked his spots. He also usually had a lot of team mates around him especially in the latter part of the Tour. I felt his performance was great but not so overpowering that it was unbeleivable.


----------



## Local Hero (Jul 8, 2010)

bigjohnla said:


> Nibali paced himselve well and picked his spots. He also usually had a lot of team mates around him especially in the latter part of the Tour.


One post tour picture was very telling: Nibali riding with four teammates on his left and four teammates on his right. Astana started with nine riders and finished with nine riders, zero attrition.


----------



## spade2you (May 12, 2009)

Local Hero said:


> One post tour picture was very telling: Nibali riding with four teammates on his left and four teammates on his right. Astana started with nine riders and finished with nine riders, zero attrition.


Vino is also their boss. Seems legit.


----------



## spade2you (May 12, 2009)

deviousalex said:


> Vaughters (an admitted doper) is the Garmin boss. Seems legit...?


They testified against Lance. Makes it legit here.


----------



## deviousalex (Aug 18, 2010)

spade2you said:


> Vino is also their boss. Seems legit.


Vaughters (an admitted doper) is the Garmin boss. Seems legit...?


----------



## deviousalex (Aug 18, 2010)

Local Hero said:


> I'm starting to doubt whether people here even know what "strawman argument" means.


You build up an argument that no one is really arguing just to shoot it down. The straw man in this case being the posts that imply that people on RBR believe cycling magically cleaned up after Lance peace'd out.


----------



## J24 (Oct 8, 2003)

bigjohnla said:


> I think ..................... Nibali paced himselve well and picked his spots. He also usually had a lot of team mates around him especially in the latter part of the Tour. I felt his performance was great but not so overpowering that it was unbeleivable.


Not to mention superior race tactics most notably by putting more than 2 minutes in the bank with his attack on the cobbles, taking the chance that Saxo/Bert and Sky/Froome would be afraid to chase.


----------



## BacDoc (Aug 1, 2011)

Local Hero said:


> One post tour picture was very telling: Nibali riding with four teammates on his left and four teammates on his right. Astana started with nine riders and finished with nine riders, zero attrition.


Pretty much what I was thinking when I saw the entire Astana team intact on the final stage.

I might be wrong, but wasn't that the same scenario with Sky and Postal?

The hardest thing for me to understand is the lack of "bad days" for some riders. I mean the whole Grand Tour thing is almost impossible for mere mortals, you have guys racing over a hundred miles a day for 3 weeks. I would think everybody would have at least a couple of bad days turning your guts inside out over all those miles. Even Tony Martin cracked! Young TJ had at least one. 

I guess it's possible but watching the shark hold those incredible tempos on the cobbles and in the mountains and attacking on the toughest grades does seem unbelievable. I mean in the drops and flying up 10%, anybody know how fast he was moving on that last section of Hautacam? Some of the most impressive riding I have ever seen and he looks like he could pull out the cellphone and take a selfie!


----------



## Local Hero (Jul 8, 2010)

deviousalex said:


> You build up an argument that no one is really arguing just to shoot it down. The straw man in this case being the posts that imply that people on RBR believe cycling magically cleaned up after Lance peace'd out.


Can you walk me through how that applies to post #14?

Because Armstrong has taken the brunt of the punishment for the "doping era" of cycling.


----------



## deviousalex (Aug 18, 2010)

Local Hero said:


> Can you walk me through how that applies to post #14?
> 
> Because Armstrong has taken the brunt of the punishment for the "doping era" of cycling.


Whoops, quoted the wrong post I guess


----------



## Local Hero (Jul 8, 2010)

deviousalex said:


> Whoops, quoted the wrong post I guess


Yeah but I think what I wrote is a little incorrect. I don't mean to say that Armstrong took the heat for the era (which, in a way he did) but that he takes the punishment for the dirty peloton for the years that he won. If riders 1-100 were dirty in the 2003 tdf, only a fraction were punished.


----------

