OFFICIAL Tour de France Thread 2022

This morning’s sporting drama is courtesy of results & rumours dripping out of the all rider Covid tests on the Tour test day today. Could have a huge impact on the race.

So far, all Ineos, Jumbo and EF riders said to be negative.
 
I love the sport and want to believe what I am seeing. Same with athletics.

But I regularly flip between believing all is clean due to the "most tested" argument mentioned above, and then to not believing anything that I see when (just for example) a skinny climber can out-sprint one of the best sprinters in the world and put in performances that look even better than those put in by proven drug cheats in the past etc.

I want to believe all is clean, but constantly expect the next drugs scandal to be just around the corner. Especially when authorities keep raiding homes and team HQs - which are NOT the usual tests, but obviously someone somewhere high up in the anti doping agencies are very suspicious about something.
 
The_Lizards_Jumpers said:
Interesting none of the threads about football (especially the "big 4"), rugby or tennis attract the same tired old cliches about drugs and drug testing.....
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They don't - you are right.
However I cant remember any Tennis grand slam , football world cup or Rugby 6N winners being expunged from the record books due to proven drug taking.

I would love the drug suspicions to be tired old clichés - but to become that cycling needs to be very clean for a very long time.
 
Steer said:
I love the sport and want to believe what I am seeing. Same with athletics.

But I regularly flip between believing all is clean due to the "most tested" argument mentioned above, and then to not believing anything that I see when (just for example) a skinny climber can out-sprint one of the best sprinters in the world and put in performances that look even better than those put in by proven drug cheats in the past etc.

I want to believe all is clean, but constantly expect the next drugs scandal to be just around the corner. Especially when authorities keep raiding homes and team HQs - which are NOT the usual tests, but obviously someone somewhere high up in the anti doping agencies are very suspicious about something.
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You've got to think of doping / cheating as part of the sport, and part of the rich tapestry of why it's such an amazing sport. From the first tour in 1903 where cheating was prevalent, it's come to be part and parcel of the sport, up to the current day.

If you think about moments from the TDF, as well as remembering the 1988 tour that was lost on the last day TT by 8 seconds, or Millar's thwarted breakaway in the 2007 tour, you also think about the Festina affair or Landis' positive test 4 days after the final as key moments in tour history.

To me it just adds to the drama and excitement of it all.
 
Steer said:
They don't - you are right.
However I cant remember any Tennis grand slam , football world cup or Rugby 6N winners being expunged from the record books due to proven drug taking.

I would love the drug suspicions to be tired old clichés - but to become that cycling needs to be very clean for a very long time.
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That's almost my point, there's a reason you dont remember those moments and it's because they haven't been caught, not because they're not cheating or clean.
 
Imagine this was cycling

www.fourfourtwo.com

FIFA: 100+ clenbuterol cases at U17 World Cup

More than 100 players tested positive for the banned substance clenbuterol during the Under-17 World Cup held in Mexico in June-July, a FIFA official said on Monday.
www.fourfourtwo.com www.fourfourtwo.com

If the u17's are doing it, imagine what the rich and powerful CL clubs are up to. The whole "too big to fail" saying can be applied to football.
 
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Personally I look at the sports trying to catch the cheats as to if performances are believable or not.

London 2012 was the dirtiest Olympics ever but that's never really brought up - we don't want to know as it was our amazing games. Sadly a lot of what we watched was doped.

Cycling are trying to catch people - that's a start. Football isn't, their testing is a joke. Tennis - joke. You can't have Djokovic puffing on his magic bottle and nothing happen. That should have been tested or he should have been raided. Rugby, they are starting to catch a few so that's positive but obviously they have a problem.

Football is the big one for me though. They have magic injections, special drinks etc - Wenger spoke about it in the past... It's very dodgy. Problem is they have too much money. They could bankrupt UKAD in the courts - then the problem goes away.

I doubt many on here would turn their back on Boro is we had a team wide doping programme if it meant we were winning the league / sups every year. But cycling... tut tut.
 
Steer said:
They don't - you are right.
However I cant remember any Tennis grand slam , football world cup or Rugby 6N winners being expunged from the record books due to proven drug taking.

I would love the drug suspicions to be tired old clichés - but to become that cycling needs to be very clean for a very long time.
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You don't find that because they don't want to catch them. And when they do catch the odd one or two they don't ban them.

www.marca.com

British football's drug problem: 88 players return positive test samples, 15 in the Premier League...

Fifteen Premier League players failed drug tests between 2015 and 2020 and faced no ban of any kind. The number could be higher, too. Of the 15, 12 returned positive results for b
www.marca.com www.marca.com

Reporting in the Daily Mail in April 2022 but not linking that rag. I can't remember the outcry in April.
 
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