Michael Rasmussen admits to doping

Well, basically what it says on the tin. The most interesting part was that he claims to have been doping right up to 2010 without ever failing a test, although he was banned for two years for evading testers in 2007; the year he nearly won the Tour before being sacked by his team for lying abut his whereabouts before the Tour.

At least he has promised to co-operate fully with the authorities and this is more what cycling needs rather than TV interview admissions which just contain even more lies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/21279737

He will just be in it for the money though. If he had shown any remorse he would have admitted it after the tour. Im guessing he has a book ready to come out. Another tyler hamilton

Let them dope is say... It made for far more interesting races.

I think the majority still do now, but they are more subtle than lance went about it.

i don't agree with your first line but i think you may be right about the second unfortunately.

Does anyone follow Paul Kimmage on twitter? Ex cyclist and journo. He is still very suspicious of the people out there, in particular Team Sky. He comes out with some quite interesting stuff especially regarding their no tolerance policy and then their employment of Dr. Geert Leinders. Don't know whether he has got a point, or if he is just a little bitter. It definitely is interesting though.

Huge kimmage fan, and to a lesser extent walsh. I've just read his book "rough ride", brilliant piece.

Why would he be bitter? There are a lot of worrying similarities with Sky and the USPT. I am suspicious of them, i don't particularly trust them, they seem reactive, not proactive and appear to want to be seen as doing the right thing
over actually doing it.

Maybe not so much bitter, but more seeing things that aren't there after having his belief in the sport shattered so much by Armstrong and US Postal.

There are similarities there and there are reasons to be suspicious i.e. their Postal-esque domination of the Tour this year, but also there is plenty to believe that Wiggins isn't doping as well with his previous Tour form whilst not at Sky, the fact that the times up all the climbs are so much slower more recently and the fact that he won the TdF by riding the Indurain strategy of tempo riding the climbs and blitzing the TT's.

I'll have to give his book a go, sounds like a good read.

I don't agree, he suspected LA from '99 onwards, and some say even before.

Look at LA's previous tour form before USPT.
He didn't finish the tour once or twice and really was suited to classics not at all the grand tours, sorry i don't agree with that logic and train of thought. Wiggo improved massively and although I dont think he is quite like LA doping wise, I am still suspicious of him, constant vigilance!

So what if you can't climb brilliantly or attack ala contador but still blitz it in the TT's, that makes you exempt from taking doping? please!

I think Big Mig was a big doper. For such a big, heavy guy to match the best ultra thin climbers in the world without drugs? can't see it.

He wrote it in '90, it really was revolutionary, the first of its kind you could say. Its about his experiences as a cyclist, his doping experience and a bit on others without really mentioning names.

That's sort of my point, after all the revelations about LA recently and the extent it went into cycling it might be hard for people who went through all that to believe anyone when they say they are clean nowadays.

Wiggo has improved massively since 2008 when he made the decision to turn into a bonafide road cyclist and tried to become a GC contender. When he took up road cycling after 04 he was still primarily a track cyclist so obviously his form wasn't going to be as good back then.

Not exempt from doping, but it is the principle that Indurain followed and suspicions or not, he is pretty much the only TdF winner for a long, long time not to be caught or implicated in doping (as far as I know, my cycling history is ropey before LA!). And I'd be more suspicious of guys getting near the times of LA et al. up the climbs rather than the way Wiggo goes about it.

Fair, I don't know an awful lot bout Miguel so I can't comment without doing some research on him.

Cracking, I'll definitely give it a read.

Enjoy! There are other good cycling books, but if you don't want to get depressed, don't read tyler hamilton's book, unless you plan to do an essay, assignment, or disso on it!

Too late for not reading Hamilton's book, haha!

haha! what did ya make of it?

JDizzle

Some interesting comments and questions regarding Sky, Kimmage and Indurain:

With regard to Sky and Wiggins:
1 - the employment of Dr Leinders certainly looks questionable. His former team Rabobank certainly had their share of blood doping and EPO issues, and he has been heavily implicated as significant to these.
2 - Similarly, employing Sean Yates as a DS, with his connections to Armstrong both at Motorola (team mate and room mate) and at USPS (as a DS), does little for Sky's credibility
3 - The dominance of the team in last year's TdF was rather reminiscent of the days of USPS domination on behalf of Armstrong.
4 - Froome's improvement in his time with Sky has certainly raised eye-brows.
5 - On the other hand, Wiggins has always had the ability to produce phenomenal power on a bike, and in the last few years has lost a significant amount of weight as he has focussed more on the road. His style of riding on climbs is consistent with what you'd expect from his background (i.e. that he can maintain a high power output for a long time, but doesn't necessarily have the ability to kick away from the smaller climbers).
6 - The speed of racing, particularly on mountain stages, has come down significantly, suggesting that, if not entirely clean, the peloton generally is much cleaner than even a few years ago.

On Kimmage:
He had some success as an amateur racer, sufficient to become a pro and for a few years a useful domestique to Stephen Roche. Struggled with injuries and was almost forced into doping simply to keep going (at the time amphetamines were the drug of choice). Interestingly, his career ended in 1989 which is just as EPO may have been coming in to the peloton (some blood doping was going on before this, for example for Moser's hour record in 1984 and around the US Olympic track cycling team for LA, but it does not seem to have been a widespread practice).
Ever since his retirement he has been a hugely out-spoken critic of doping in cycling and other sports - he's not always right, in particular because he's too far removed from the inner circle of the sport (burnt too many bridges over the years), but he is usually not too far from the truth.

Indurain
Circumstantial evidence suggests he may have been the first EPO-powered superstar of cycling. There is (now) strong rumour that EPO was coming in to cycling from around 1989, and Indurain was in contact with Prof Conconi (Dr Ferrari's boss at the time) during that period, which marked a time of significant weight loss and improved performance from Big Mig - prior to 89, he had been an outstanding TT rider but not much of a climber, but he improved markedly in 89 and by 1990 was as good as anyone.

On the other hand, his dominance was waning even by 94 / 95 when the Ariostea / Gewiss team (with the overt help of Dr Ferrari) were becoming increasingly successful, and ended by 1996 when other teams had really got their doping programmes in full effect (Festina were far from the only team with an EPO-based drug programme in that time - Deutsche Telekom were operating on a similar level, based on subsequent rider confessions).
I used to suspect that the Ariostea / Gewiss success was based on them being the first team to use EPO (from about 1993), but it may be that they were the first to really gain the full benefits of its use (higher doses allowing haemacrit values to be pushed up towards 60%, allied with taking extra iron and aspirin, the later as a blood thinner), and that the reason Indurain couldn't keep up was an unwillingness to push the boundaries so far (too high haemacrit levels can lead to heart attacks, simply because your blood becomes too thick for your heart to pump).

Of course, the fact that Indurain is generally well liked and a quiet man means that he has largely avoided being asked the tricky questions about his possible EPO use. Oh, and being Spanish and therefore in a jurisdiction where they have less motivation to rake up the past probably also helps.

The last TdF winner prior to the EPO era who is almost universally considered as being clean was Lemond.

Luv, I really enjoyed it. I found it really interesting and I was pleased he focused on actually what went on rather than using it as a vehicle for asking for forgiveness. Obviously it was a little disconcerting reading about the lengths that were gone to to win, by pretty much everyone. I suspect it would have had more of an effect on me if I had grown up watching this people and admiring them but it was genuinely very interesting.

Thanks for that dummy, some really interesting comments on everything there, particularly Indurain. I think you pretty much cover everything on Sky and mirror my own views. I am beginning to have more doubts now as I do more research due mainly to their apparent back pedalling on their original "no tolerance" approach and the fact they have done it so under the radar. I still suspect they are clean though, but that many be my ignorance and the trustworthiness of someone who didn't watch cycling during the doping years.

What you say about Miguel does sound very suspicious. Admittedly it is only circumstantial, but around that time if someone's performance changed in a way that was unexpected it is a reasonable assumption that they were doping. It is interesting that no-one I know of has pointed the finger at him with all the recent revelations though, although that like you say could be down to him being a quiet and well liked man.

Thanks again guys, very interesting stuff all round.

great post DH.

You outlined your points on sky, but are you, like me, suspicious of team sky among others?

Don't forget that BigMig was generally regarded as a physiological freak (like Greg LeMond).

Once he had the experience, and honed down his weight, he was pretty nigh invincible for a few years; but he proved he was human with the final, disastrous Tour-but we learnt later that his nemesis, Riis, was not so clean!