Great read...thanks ssp.
Kevin ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of ssp Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2011 2:07 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [COWs] where is our cycling reporter? contador, tdI and tdF ...after smoking the field in the tour of italy: Why is Contador Waffling on the Tour?<http://bicycling.com/blogs/boulderreport/2011/06/02/why-is-contador-waffling-on-the-tour/> The path is cleared for him to race, but he's acting like he's unsure of his plan. By Joe Lindsey The irony is that, up until about a week ago, it was assumed that Alberto Contador would ride the Tour de France if he were able - if the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld his acquittal on doping charges by the Spanish Cycling Federation. Only now, with CAS having postponed the hearing until after the Tour, and race organizers ASO saying publicly that they had no recourse<http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/8615/Prudhomme-says-ASO-wont-block-Contador-from-Tour-de-France.aspx> to keep Contador from racing, and his Saxo Bank team director, Bjarne Riis, saying clearly that he was looking forward<http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/riis-defends-contadors-right-to-ride-the-tour-de-france> to another Schleck-Contador duel, and Contador's thorough demolition of the rest of the field at the Giro, does the Spaniard come out andsay he's uncommitted<http://velonews.competitor.com/2011/06/news/alberto-contador-remains-uncommitted-about-riding-tour-de-france_176863>. It makes me wonder why he'd do that? The Giro was likely on the calendar as a consolation prize in case CAS ruled against him. Sure, he'd be stripped of his title, but retroactive punishments are pretty much ineffective. Quick: Google a photo of the 2004 Olympic time trial winner and see who comes up. Contador is the most dominant stage racer in generations, and perhaps the best Grand Tours racer ever. Yes, he's better than Lance Armstrong ever was. Contador wins stage races with such regularity that it's actually news when he loses - as at Paris-Nice in 2009. He has not lost a Grand Tour since July 2007. The only racer in history with that kind of a streak was Eddy Merckx, who between 1969 and 1973 won four Tours, three Giros, and a Vuelta. And Contador wants more, clearly. He wants to be known as the best stage racer ever, not just in the debate. He has a chance this year to knock the first Giro-Tour double since Pantani in 1998. So why wouldn't he enter? He's hedged, saying it depends on his form and recovery from the Giro. He said he'll take almost two weeks off the bike to recover from an arduous Giro that saw eight mountaintop finishes and two back-to-back days with 35,000 feet of climbing. But that still gives him three weeks to build back up for the Tour, and this year's course - backweighted again - is one that a contender will want to start just a bit shy of top form. The first 10 days of the race have their idiosyncrasies, but the finish atop Super-Besse isn't going to give him any trouble; it's basically a week and a half to round his top end into shape before the Pyrenees. Maybe Contador's being cautious. Or maybe there's more to it. The Spanish decision was widely seen as a farce. It turned on a novel interpretation of the inadvertent contamination clause (No. 295) in the UCI's anti-doping rules. That clause says that if a rider can establish that a positive test occurred through inadvertent ingestion, through no fault of his own, a ban can be reduced or eliminated. But the clause also goes on to say that the rider must establish how the substance entered his body and provide corroborating evidence to establish the absence of an intent to dope, to the comfortable satisfaction of the review panel. That's a courtly way of saying that a rider has to prove it's more than just a theory, and to this point it's unclear what evidence Contador might have presented to back that up - the levels of clenbuterol alone wouldn't do it. (Comfortable satisfaction is defined by CAS as between probability and beyond reasonable doubt.) Numerous riders have been tripped up by that in the past, including Scott Moninger and Tom Zirbel, both of whom went to considerable time and effort to prove contaminated supplements caused their positives (Moninger in fact DID prove it) but still served bans. Hypotheticals won't do it - Contador has to show not only that he did eat contaminated meat but also that there's no other reasonable explanation for his positive. Many observers expected CAS to summarily overrule the previous decision, and that Contador would be banned, his Giro and Tour titles stripped and that he would be ineligible to enter the 2011 Tour de France. And if CAS upheld the ruling, well, there would be grumbling but everyone would have to accept that Contador was officially cleared by something other than the Spanish kangaroo court that greenlighted him the first time around, and that he'd be genuinely free to race. But now, racing faces the prospect of a rider with a pending case getting to ride and win the sport's biggest event and, less than two weeks later, having the victory legally annulled. Yuck. If you ever needed proof that the Giro, however spectacular it may be, is a distant second to the Tour in stature, it's seen in the debate over whether Contador should ride the Tour - a debate that wasn't had for the Giro. It's pretty obvious that the stakes for Contador riding the Tour with an open case are far higher. And while he clearly wants the prize, he's not publicly ready to jump at it yet, despite assurances from the ASO that they will not try to stop him from entering. Why not? Is he just being cautious? Or is there more going on behind the scenes? Bike racing can be a rough sport politically. French TV execs lean on the UCI about race radios; riders' agents pressure teams to let them out of their contracts; I have nothing more than a hunch, but it feels to me like someone is putting pressure on Contador not to race. Contador already missed one Tour over allegations of foul play by his team (even if much of that pre-dated his time); he likely won't want to miss another - every Tour he can't enter and can't win takes away from his time to rack up results and be considered in that best-ever debate. That the door to another Tour title is open and only now he's waffling, it seems odd. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CyclistsOfWilson-COWs" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/cyclistsofwilson-cows/-/tbyeBbM7Mf0J. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cyclistsofwilson-cows?hl=en. ________________________________ DISCLAIMER : This e-mail is for the intended recipient only If you have received it by mistake please let us know by reply and then delete it from your system; access, disclosure, copying, distribution or reliance on any of it by anyone else is prohibited. If you as intended recipient have received this e-mail incorrectly, please notify the sender (via e-mail) immediately. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CyclistsOfWilson-COWs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cyclistsofwilson-cows?hl=en.
