Men in black?
Posted June 22nd, 2007 in Race, Dope, TdF 2007
The doping authorities are getting smarter and more pro-active in targeting specific athletes.
With the Tour de France just weeks away, there’s a high stakes game of cat and mouse between a half-dozen so-called suspect riders identified by the UCI and anti-doping testers. Anne Gripper, director of the UCI’s anti-doping program, told the AFP that “six or seven” big-name riders have been subject to surprise out-of-competition controls which have yielded some”non-negative” results. Gripper added officials are waiting for the results of the second “B” sample before jumping to conclusions.
Unlike some I don’t see this as unusual. Yes it can be read as a presumption of guilt by certain individuals blinded by the fallout from another issue - falling down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory will eventually do that to you.
In fact this has been the notable change in how doping authorities are now going about their business, and they are doing it in association with various Govt instruments like Interpol and customs. No surprises there because this approach has been announced in the past.
By now the doping authorities should have a pretty good idea of some of the tricks used by athletes and their handlers to make themselves invisible to surprise testing and they are acting on that experience.
Conveniently the MIB’s have outed themselves.
The story prompted a press release from officials from the Astana team Thursday, which took offense at some insinuations in the European media. The statement said if riders sometimes train in regular jerseys it’s because they don’t want to be bothered by cyclo-tourists, especially along France’s Cote d’Azur, and said that the team is conducting a training camp in the Pyrénées riding in Kazakh national jerseys.
It’s nice to see that Astana has such good form that the fat Cote d’Azur cyclo-tourists who roll along at 25kph on the flats and 8kph in the mountains have no trouble keeping up with them. Maybe the surprise testing is working.
technorati tags: cycling, bicycles, doping,
What others have to say…
All normal Euan, just a bunch of Yanks and a certain team under suspicion getting all worked up about nothing.
Sometimes I swear I think they’d like nothing better than to see no testing.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I thought out of season testing was the norm? Lance has indicated as much in one of his books, can’t remember which one.
Or is it country dependent?