Cycling and drugs of some kind or other (it's probably the same for a lot of other sports) have a long history with each other.

Tommy Simpson for instance is one particular case, but the following wiki page makes very interesting reading when you look at the dates involved. It's not a new phenomenon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling

Maybe Sastre, but I think you might have to go back to LeMond and Roche to take anyone seriously in terms of a winner not taking any drugs.

And was really saddened by the Contador debacle. This place cheered me up a bit:
http://bikepure.org/

I'm cycling from London to Paris at the end of May in aid of the National Autistic Society.

If any kind members of The Massive fancy sponsoring me, please contact me and I will give you the details.

Thanks and apologies for hijacking the blog

As for drugs in cycling, it is unfortunately endemic and very hard to stop. But something needs to happen. Cycling is a mass participation sport and the people at the top end need to be role models for everyone.

I'm certainly not ready yet. I need to do lots more training but really looking forward to the trip.

Good luck in July (take lots of suncream)

anyone that believes that doesn't know what they're talking about. I equate drug use in cycling with the blatant cheating that you see week in, week out in football and other sports. Whats the difference? I've been shot down on this subject before but until ALL professional sport is 'pure' I'll not entertain any armchair cyclist telling me the whole sports dirty.

I have to admit it's getting harder and harder to get excited about the major events. There's a weird kind of comfort in the fact that doping has gone on since day one, but part of the fun of watching the pros push themselves to the limit going up the side of a mountain is that I know more or less what it feels like to push yourself until you're about to pass out, even though my "mountains" are usually just the biggest hills within reach of my house. But if the blood in their veins has been doctored in five different ways, then the fun goes out of watching them.

I kind of agree with the comment above about the unfairness of cycling being considered "worse" than other sports in terms of cheating. At least they're being caught...

Cycle 100+ km a day for a month including the cimbing of ridiculously high mountains and recover in hours for the next sadistic stage.

Drugs are needed to achieve this.

While I'm an ardent cyclist, I've never been very interested in cycling as a sport. My thoughts on Contador are the same as they are on other athletes who are found to have cheated with drugs: lifetime ban. I think it's crazy that people can get away with one or two year bans, and I can't understand why the sports' governing bodies are so lax. If they want to make any dent in the use of illicit drugs, it's a no-brainer. It seems doubly perverse that, given the advances in testing, they're not pressing home this small advantage (the cheats will always make advances in their techniques too).

My theory about why cycling drug cheats get so much fuss about them compared to other athletes isn't new, I'm sure. It seems pretty obvious that in some sports, using drugs gives you more benefit than in others. I doubt they're of much use in football or table tennis, for example, given that increased stamina is only one component of a successful game. In cycling, it's pretty much all about stamina and the sort of strength which can be aided by drugs.

Changing the subject, I'd love to emulate Katy and Big Guxy and do London to Paris - but I'm committed to the Dunwich Dynamo this year, and I don't think doing both is an option.

Now, about that Massive Bike Ride...

have ruined many sports. I used to be quite keen on the athletics but too many retrospective revelations have thoroughly undermined my confidence in the results. I can't even bring myself to truly believe in the achievements of Usain Bolt and i now regard the Olympics as a competition to see which nation has the best drugs.

Without condoning cheating of any kind in any sport, surely there's a HUGE difference between (say) sticking your hand up to claim an illicit throw-in, and regularly injecting yourself with a cocktail of drugs, the potential long-term side effects of which may be completely unforeseeable?

As for cycling generally, sadly my working assumption is that they are all at it, and I am neither surprised nor disappointed by the latest 'revelations' to 'rock' the sport. What would surprise me would be if any of the current top participants were proven to be completely clean.

And that's the real tragedy.

is slowly being killed in top level pro cycling. Sponsors do not want to be associated with a dirty sport and dirty riders. The thrust for change must come from the riders and they must request harsher bans from the UCI. I believe life bans have been killed by the Courts but a minimum of 5 years should do the trick. I agree we shall never get rid of drugs but surely we must try to minimise the consumption? For riders safety and wellbeing if nothing else. Jaques Anquetil died at 50 it is widely understood because of drug abuse, we can't let that continue.

I don't quite understand why Contador hasn't been stripped of his TdF winner's jersey for 2010.
If he has been found guilty of a drug infraction surely that should mean he loses it a la Landis. Are there gradations of drug abuse?
I'm being an absolutist on this but, as I see it, being tainted for one day on the tour in failing a drugs test has to mean he's tainted for the whole tour and therefore loses the title.

He was mixed up in Operacion Puerto, at least tangentially, having been a member of the disgraced Once/ Libery Seguros team, which in its current form, Geox, has been denied a Tour spot this year because of its past.

Cycling is light years ahead of other sports in terms of drug testing but because of this, the sport's reputation is in tatters. The top riders are still being caught and this makes the sponsors dubious about continuing. Which other sports have banned the winners of their top event? Cycling has now done this two or three times.

I think many of the members of the peloton are now clean which they certainly went 10-12 years ago. Can the same be said for many other sports?

'Rough Ride' by Paul Kimmage

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0224080172/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_r...

Well worth a read for anyone with a passing interest the gruelling world of pro cycling and drugs.

It is 20 years old now and even though the parts about drug taking are by no means the central thrust of the book, he was roundly savaged by all and sundry as a failed and bitter former sportsman. Now one of the more respected sports journalists in Ireland, how he must have laughed as the sport imploded over the following decade.

You have to look at Team Sky, HTC Highroad and the old Garmin team that has merged with Cervelo.
All have a history of open, regular and published drug testing and biological passport analysis.
They have deliberately chosen to stay away from Italian and Spanish riders associated with those teams that were 'known' to have been involved in doping.
They represent a new guard and sit uneasily with an old guard of teams that often have DS's and management who come from the glory days of EPO's introduction to the peloton in the early 1990s.
It is interesting to look, after the fact, at the careers of riders who moved between teams which had (suspected) structured doping programmes. Roberto Heras went Kelme, Postal and then Liberty Seguros. The latter two teams have had retrospective scandals.
Look at all of the Postal trusted lieutenants - Heras, Landis, Hamilton and recently Yaroslav Popovych, all done, or implicated in, drugs scandals.
Perhaps the time has to come to admit that the Grand Tours, and their ever more difficult routes, and dominance of the calendar and commercial rewards, leads cyclists and teams to continue doping, of they have had that history.
Bertie the Accountant is a young man who straddles these eras and these types of old teams.
For cycling to grow it needs to look at the Classics and shorter races rather than focus on the behemoths of Le Tour, Giro and Vuelta.It certainly needs to look at the commercial power of the ASO which runs the tour and a lot of other races, it needs to reform both the UCI and the Pro Tour to address a system that ushered in the modern era of doping.

Really enjoy watching the Tour de France.
The coverage on Eurosport is wonderful as they spend as much time telling you about the chateau they've just passed as the race itself.
The details of the race pass me by though I did find myself recognising our sprint guy.

Sometimes in modern day sport it's best to not know too much.
That's the tragedy of football.
There is no mystery left, we know everything, we know John Terry et al are scumbags (we know they're rubbish n'all).

Now some rugby league guys might also be scumbags but, crucially, I don't know that because it isn't reported 24/7!
So, I can't wait for the Rugby League to start up again whereas if I never see another Premiership game it'll be too soon.

there is apparently an interview with Floyd Landis by Paul Kimmage. I imagine Lance Armstrong isn't going to come out of it very well!

It seems the Spanish Cycling Federation are buying his story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/feb/14/alberto-contador-ban-lifted-...

It was hardly likely Contador was going to be banned when the president of their own federation and the Spanish prime minister weighed in with support. In other countrys an independent tribuneral would decide but in Spain that appears to be too easy. The Spanish federation quite reasonably know that the UCI and WADA will do their dirty work for them and Contador will be banned quite possibly with a longer ban than 1 year at the end of proceedings.Lets be blunt, he is dirty and quite probably are the rest of the team. Odds on when we have the final judgement he will retire.

Mean while the Armstrong investigation winds on.

the name of Contador's butcher. I need all the help I can get.

http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/articles/contador-cleared-of-doping-by...