Cycling: The Landis Case Gets Even Stranger

It seems that pro cyclists are using the computer skills gained from the ubiquitous twitter profiles and putting them to nefarious deeds in a case that has echoes of the Dale Begg-Smith (who has added a silver in 2010 to his 2006 Moguls gold medal) affair.

An arrest warrant has been put out for disgraced doper Floyd Landis after he allegedly hacked into the computer system of a French drug testing laboratory. Landis tested positive for testosterone in the 2006 Tour De France which was odd in itself, as testosterone is easily detected compared to other methods available at the time (such as EPO). When presenting his defense against these allegations, Landis allegedly used documents which belonged to the French anti doping authorities (obtained through these hacks). An email with a trojan horse virus was allegedly sent from the computer of Landis' coach Arnie Baker, who is also sought by the French authorities. The trojan horse also provided for the removal and change of some documents in an attempt to show incorrect testing procedures.

Landis has fought hard in an attempt to clear his name, appealing to the Court for Arbitration in Sport and spending around $2 million in legal fees. He has had no success, except eating up most of WADA's legal budget. Landis has been unrepentant, and although the ban from his Tour De France doping has expired (in January 2009), he has only been able to get rides with minor teams such as OUCH and Cyclingnzshop.com. This arrest warrant is only valid in France, so with Landis recently only racing minor events, primarily in the US he may choose to simply avoid France and trial. I for one, hope that he faces the judgement, if only for the media circus that would result. For more details, check out cyclingnews or SBS cycling central.

Cycling: Danilo Diluca Imageblog

Cycling: Astarloza - A Star Loser !

Mikel Astarloza, the Spanish cyclist who won stage 16 of this year's Tour De France and finished 11th overall has tested positive for EPO. It is not yet known what type of EPO (presumably CERA) but SBS has reported that it was during an out of competition test. A disciplinary hearing will be held next month by the UCI to determine his punishment (probably a 2 year suspension) after he tested positive on the 26th of June. The UCI needs to act faster on these cases, the sample was taken before the TDF and yet Astarloza was still able to compete. But at least thats another cheat forcibly removed from the peloton. Astarloza's stage win in the TDF this year was his first professional stage win (he won the 2003 Tour Down Under around South Australia) but he had consistantly finished highly overall in major stage races such as the Dauphine Libre and Le Tour. There was no obvious upspike in his form this year, indicating that he had been doping for several years before this. I have added him and Danilo Di Luca to the shit list for being cheating gits.

In other news, after the flurry of recent postings, I've decided to finally get a related address. So this blog is now at rushedbehind.blogspot.com. Neat hey. If you are reading this, you are on the new site. The whole blog has been moved, so all the archives are still here. Call me a traditionalist, but I reckon a blog should have an address related to its name. So if you still have the old site bookmarked, change it now. And if you don't have this site bookmarked, what a great opportunity to do so. I don't know if the rss feeds were affected, so if you use these, you might want to check it out. But if you are getting this, then you will get all future posts. I do seem to have somehow lost my blogroll, so this will be refilled gradually, as I remember which blogs were worth reading.

Go rain, go! You are Australia's only hope at staving off defeat (and poor fantasy cricket scores from Brad Haddin given his late withdrawal after my kiss of death)!

Cycling: Di Luca Tests Positive

I just found out that Danilo Di Luca, 2nd in the Giro tested positive twice for doping with CERA (the same version of EPO that Ricco used). For more details check here. First of all, what a cunt-face. Second of all, this is a win for the biological passport system recently employed by the UCI. Third of all, a quote from Di Luca after he was found out: "Would I be so stupid as to take CERA at the Tour of Italy one year after (Ricardo) Ricco, (Emanuele) Sella and (Davide) Rebellin were caught." Well, clearly yes, you cheating bastard. Fourth of all, extra congrats to Menchov for beating a drug cheat (despite him falling off about 4 times in Le Tour, maybe hes been taking some happy drugs). Fifth of all, (wow, thats getting a realy tired sentence intro, maybe I should use something else) CNN, learn to quote properly, there needs to be quotes at the start and end of your quotes. Sixth of all, I hope its not 3 months until we find out the cheats from Le Tour (I'm looking at you Wiggo).

Thats almost all for today, just wanted to express my disgust at Di Luca.

Also, respect to George Hincapie, who rode the last 4 stages of Le Tour with a broken collarbone. Now thats tough, and gets him onto the legends list. Not like Nick Riewoldt who just cried when he broke his.