Lucky Luke.

fast, but not too fast! Brailsford probably has a warning light on the SRM when the w/kg reading strays into mutant territory.

Indurain is all but telling you here that he did what he had to and kept his mouth shut about what went on with Dr Padilla and the Banesto medical program.

Really no need to wonder about Indurain, he was on the orange juice big time, along with everybody else. Lance could have learned a thing or two about modesty and discression from him.

Bugno and Indurain with their '91 effort weighed in about 25kg heavier than previous record holder Herrera http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mwhWUxZCDQ

I'm pretty sure the first sub-40 climb by Indurain in '91 registers the line in the sand where EPO entered the tour. He beat Herrera's 1987 record by more than 2 minutes, and Big Mig was hardly built for pure climbing.

bank balance going into the millions? - yes, apparently they have a very healthy bank balance, according to a reliable source on this forum. league prize money has absolutely nothing to do with PPA.

At the end of the day it's the bike under our asses that makes us cyclists, not some faceless government body. The vast majority of us don't live or die by which events CSA sanctions. If it implodes tomorrow there will still be roads and mountains to ride on, and I'd be willing to bet there will still be racing too.

As soon as I can see CSA engaging with riders, showing a human presence at events (or anywhere) and visibly contributing value to my experience as a cyclist, I will continue to ignore all of their press releases. Actually I ignore press releases as a matter of course. So if they want my attention at all they'll have to try another channel.

yes. Unless your name is Pat McQuaid, in which case we will soon win the tour de france.

zoolander

Should not have been so stupid as to patronise them in the first place. They serviced my bike when I lived in London and cocked it up multiple times.

Yes. Ordered a wheel for my fixie - purple one to match the existing Halo rear wheel - a few weeks back. Evans' charge for the postage to SA was 2x the cost of the wheel - £130! So I sent it to my uncle in the UK, and he posted to me for £65. Thought I was super clever for organising that. Also no duty to pay on wheels - hooray. Wheel arrived last week and they sent me a white one instead of purple. Seriously - how do you mistake white for purple? I already have a wrong colour wheel to ride around with. Facepalm x 1000,000. Now I am fighting with them on the cost of sending the stupid thing back to them so they can send me the right colour wheel.

Ja, I agree, my feeling is Wiggins is done. He will want to get out now with his legacy intact and tour win under his belt. I don't think he can possibly get another one.

Froome or Porte to be in the leaders jersey after today.

Ye, looks like the microdosing is getting more and more micro, assuming the UCI can be bothered to follow through on the positives. Looks like they are only interested in hammering the Russians and the Italian version of Rock Racing, packed full of guys with sanctions behind their names, and only now because it's pre-tour and Pat needs to show everyone how hard he's working to clean up the sport.

Hard not to pick Froome for the Dauphine win though. Maybe Porte if the DS manages to talk some sense into him and gets him to take his foot off the gas a bit.

I don't really root for anyone as I don't believe any of them are clean. I just watch the show with morbid curiosity. Evans is probably cleanest of the lot, but inevitably suffers from a boring style because he is constantly on the limit just to keep up. I reckon in a fantasy dope-free world he'd be a pretty exciting rider and would have quite a few more yellow jersies to show for it.

AICAR and GW501516. Lots of money thrown at their program, good masking agents, maybe some transfusions as well, and top it all off with some degree of leverage / protection from UCI & British Cycling.

I reckon if you have no power, and guys you routinely pummeled in the past are catching you, it's natural to shift around on the saddle trying to fix the problem.

I'm not sure I understand. Do you want some theories on what Sky are up to?

Very cheeky!

In my opinion, between LA and Contador there is an impossible gap of natural talent and a drive to make the racing that I would like to think goes beyond whatever program they are or were on. Contador's attacking style is something we only saw from LA when he was on no-holds-barred juice with a full blue train to back him up before making the move. Bert rides like that all the time - see the last Vuelta for an example - and has been a talented climber and TT rider from day dot. That said I don't think Riis will be able to mount an attempt on the tour without a serious program for his team leader. We won't see much from AC at the Dauphine, but I'll be very surprised if both he and his teammates - nearly all of them bar Rogers performed poorly in the TT - don't show a major improvement in their ability when the chips are down at the tour. Riis has long been a fan of transfusions and it looks to me like he and Bert have been making some big deposits these past few months. As long as they can get the logistics right to put the stuff back, it's probably the safest way for them to beat the tests.

Makes sense to a degree, except for his history of strong TT performances, going back to when he was U23 Spanish TT Champ way back in 2002 as a neo-pro. To me it looks like he's either ill or missing some blood. Even clean he should be going faster than that.

poor guy is running on empty

Did anyone else hear Aldirto shout 'AICARrumba!' when Richie Porte overtook him?