Posted on 07/26/2006 11:13:14 AM PDT by commish
AIGLE, Switzerland (AP) - A rider in the Tour de France tested positive for doping, the sport's governing body said Wednesday.
The UCI said it wouldn't disclose the rider's name, team or nationality pending completion of the testing process.
"The UCI received today a report of the anti-doping laboratory of Paris stating an adverse analytical finding following an anti-doping test carried out at the Tour de France 2006," the statement said.
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(Excerpt) Read more at msn.foxsports.com ...
Probably the French one.
PING
Must be a French rider. If he were American, they'd release his name immediately.
They also found other materials with him that are illegal in France...deoderant and shampoo.
That would be ironic to say the least. The French had been trying to catch Lance Armstrong using steroids from the first year that he won the Tour de France. And when their worthless investigations always turned up nothing, they resorted to planting rumors in the media. I'm not a Lance groupie by any means, but the Frenchies doing this stuff are a bunch of idiots.
Given all the cryptic comments we heard during the Tour from the announcers, blogs etc., I'll lay odds it was a T-Mo rider - M.R.?(don't want to write out his name;innocent until proven guilty & all that, but all the sub-rosa comments lead me to think that he's the most likely.) I think we can all rest securely that it wasn't Landis.
Sounds plausible. I have seen that name being bandied about along with the surprise entrant on the podium (O.P.), but in the blogosphere T-MO is the top suspect.
T-Mo makes sense considering what happened to Ulrich, but CSC/Ivan Basso were also linked to Eufemiano Fuentes, the Spanish doctor at the center of a suspected blood doping ring. I wonder if the unnamed rider is part of the same scandal.
Floyd Landis didn't see a movie until he was 17, nor wear bike shorts until he was 18. I would bet my house it ain't him.
I'll be really bummed if it's OP.
Not sure what its like now, but I seem to recall say 15 years ago that it was generally assumed that all riders in the Tour De France were on something; they must have introduced new rules and testing.
Am now seeing a lot of blog traffic saying it is Floyd Landis, and that the positive test is for Cortisone. Landis was given an OK by the TDF people to recieve Cortisone injections in his hip, but seeing as how the UCI has such a hard on to smear Armstrong, I can see them releasing this to cast doubt and smear Landis.
OMG! You're kidding! The cortisone shots were widely publicized. If they do this to discredit his win, I will swear off TdF forever. I'll take up Celebrity Poker before I'll spend another minute with the sport if they try to smear him.
I'm not sure if it was Rogers, although he did ride better than expected to a top 10 finish.
It seems most of the guys nailed in Operation Puerto were Spanish, with a few others like Ullrich and Basso (and Tyler Hamilton?) thrown in.
If this positive test is related to Op. Puerto, then I am tending to believe it is a Spanish rider. Hopefully not Pereiro or Sastre.
Dirtying-up Landis for an approved cortisone shot would be the last straw for me as well. The French were hailing Floyd for his solo stage win that literally brought him back from the dead. If the Tour needs to 'clarify' this immediately.
Speaking of Operation Puerto ---- that is the other big news breaking -- Joseba Beloki, Isidro Nozal, Sergio Paulinho, Allan Davis, Alberto Contador, and the Astana Team have been cleared of any wrongdoing in the investigation.
So far though the majority of suposition is on the three we have discussed - Rogers, Perreiro Sio and Landis.
If the testing process isn't complete yet, then no riders have tested possitive yet.
They need to complete the process and verify the results before making such accusations.
The only purpose to doing it this way is to smear someone's name before all the evidence is gathered.
Some idiots at the UCI need fired.
Sheesh. No names, just a nice brush to paint all the riders.
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