[01LUGrad]

Before I get too far on this one, let me point out that I am aware that most of the people on here don't give a rip about the Tour de France or cycling in general, but hear me out.

Alexandre Vinokourov, a long-time crowd favorite tested positive for a blood transfusion after his dramatic time trial victory on Saturday. He then proceded to bonk big time on Sunday, losing over 25 minutes to the leaders. Yesterday he made a dramatic recovery and won a very difficult mountain stage.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/tdf2007/n ... id=2947358

There have been all sorts of doping scandals in cycling over the past few years, with many of the big names (take my word for it) testing positive or being caught red handed with 'special juice'. Cycling tests riders constantly. I have no idea why they even try to take anything stronger than advil.

My question is, what do you think is the percentage of all pro athletes who dope? Baseball has started to crack down. The NFL is completely clueless (or couldn't care less) about its own drug problem. Check Sean Merriman's "penalty" for steriods last year if you need evidence of that. Now we are even hearing that golfers are on the juice (Tiger IS pretty ripped right now...).

Should we care about the drugs, or should we just turn a blind eye and enjoy the show?

[LUconn]

Did you just insinuate that baseball has a better drug policy than the NFL? The NFL has one of the strictest policies around. MLB just started testing like last year.

[01LUGrad]

Allow me to rephrase...
-Baseball has JUST started to crack down... (meaning they didn't do anything for years)
-My beef with the NFL was that Shawne Merriman was allowed to be on the pro bowl ballot, not the testing policy.

[RubberMallet]

the tour is going on right now?...

yawwwn

[Fumblerooskies]

That event is so crooked they ought to make them ride with square wheels.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/ ... SECTION=US

[01LUGrad]

This dude was almost 2 hours out of the lead. Imagine what he would have been like had he NOT doped. Yeow.

I do find all of this sad. If you have ever watched the final climb of a mountain stage in the TDF you know that there really is a lot of drama that takes place. (The flat stages are boring...I'll give you that.) I caught the end of today's stage and I saw the 4 leaders looking like they were about to die trying to get their bikes up a 9 mile climb at about a 10-12% gradient (that's a little less than Candlers Mtn Road for 9 miles). I have to say that they didn't look as fresh as guys in the past have looked going up the same mountain. Maybe that is because those guys weren't on the juice. I hope that is the case.

[LUconn]

I haven't followed this at all this year. I just went and looked at the standings on yahoo. No americans. Boo.

[BJWilliams]

Leipheimer is the high american but he is about 6 minutes back

[01LUGrad]

What in the wide world of sports is going on? First, the Italian champion was taken away in handcuffs after today's stage following a positive doping test, now the biggie...The race leader was fired by his team for lying about his whereabouts when he missed a drug test a few months ago.

That leaves the American team of Alberto Contador (ESP) and Levi Leipheimer (USA) in 1st and 3rd places with 4 stages to go. Levi is only 2 minutes behind and has a great chance of climbing into the yellow jersey on Saturday's final individual time trial.

Hopefully no one else gets nailed for hitting the juice.

[Sly Fox]

I'v ebeen following Julich's diary on ESPN.com and even he is perplexed at the insanity of the past couple of days.

TallyW - Bobby's from Corpus BTW

[RubberMallet]

ZZzzzZZZzzzzzZZZZzzZZZZ

[01LUGrad]

After all of the scandals this year, they have finally found a way to sniff out the cheaters!

Watch the video...You will laugh!
http://www.versus.com/tdf/article/categ ... e&ss=video

choose "Casar Crash with Dog"

[01LUGrad]

Rumor has it this was the French cousin of one of Michael Vick's pit bulls out for revenge.