Tour de France stripped of top riders

By Julien PretotSTRASBOURG, France - The Tour de France was stripped of three of its biggest names on Friday after Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Francisco Mancebo were implicated in a doping investigation in ...

[alison]

I am shocked that these riders, including Ullrich, are out of the Tour based on mere suspicion and no actual proof. Furthermore, common sense should tell these idiots that with the fairly new rule that hematocrit cannot be above 50, cyclists COULDN'T use crit boosting drugs due to the fact that most of them sleep and/or train at altitude, thereby making their crit close to the "tour legal" limit of 50 naturally.

[Johnny Bugno]

alison wrote:

I am shocked that these riders, including Ullrich, are out of the Tour based on mere suspicion and no actual proof. Furthermore, common sense should tell these idiots that with the fairly new rule that hematocrit cannot be above 50, cyclists COULDN'T use crit boosting drugs due to the fact that most of them sleep and/or train at altitude, thereby making their crit close to the "tour legal" limit of 50 naturally.

Well Alison, the Tour organizers make the rules. It's their game. I think they can supply proof and the Teams know it, especially T-Mobile. They have the blood. blood boosting is illegal.

[matt]

I think this whole scandel might have a number of concecuences on the tour.
It could open it up to less known riders and could be very tight.
Or it could just ruin it by not haveing the big name riders after banning them on mere suspicion instead of real proof.
I am really ashamed at cycling as a sport that you cant go for one single year without a doping scandel. It sends a very bad image of the sport.
Cycling needs to clean up

[Blair Allister]

Personally, I think that these performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed. The reality is that people will do what is required to get the extra margin of performance wich puts the over the top. Why pretend otherwise?

[Eddy Brouwer]

They ALL use. It's not just the hematocrit level, they can get that close to 50 by sleeping at high altitude. It's the growth hormones and testosterone and IGF-1 growth factor. See products prescribed for Tyler Hamilton found in faxes. Still he denies. They all use these same products. If they wouldn't, then they wouldn't be riding.

[mag_usa]

Blair Allister wrote:

Personally, I think that these performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed. The reality is that people will do what is required to get the extra margin of performance wich puts the over the top. Why pretend otherwise?

very soon that might be a moot point. genetic research is moving towards nanotechnolgy at the near microscopic level. repairs can be made to cell walls, colonoscopoies performed by drinking nanobots that are trackers and reading their scans as they pass through you.

it's not impossible that muscles might be enhanced for a short duration, like a climb up Alpe de Huez and then flushed out within 24 hours. then what?

also important to remember: just taking EPO, HGL, etc, will not mean you will actually perform better, if everyone is doping, it's still a level playing field. you still need the ability to perform at that level. if i took EPO, i would still not be able to go up the Alpe at Pantani or LA's speed, regardless of the dosage.