i have no time for this dude. he was great, then busted, then rubbish, then booming again.
i don’t care if he’s doped up or not now, i just don’t wanna see his face around.
he cried blue murder over the Clenbuterol, hung on and won shed loads when really he should have done the right thing and stepped away to clear his name. instead, dragging the sport through even deeper fathoms of mud whilst his ego got soothed was more appealing.
the one strike and you’re out policy is starting to really appeal to me…
oh yeah and well done Conty, for winning TA. no really. i mean it.
Dude, I think that your criticism of Contador is way off the reservation. The powers that are concluded that the positive test of PICOGRAMMES (that is a zero, a decimal point and then NINE other zeroes) was more likely due to a contaminated supplement. He may not have lost 2 years of cycling, but he DID lose 2 Grand Tour Victories, which is a high price to pay indeed- If he kept his Tour and Giro victories he would now be only the second man to win all the GTs at least twice (Hinault). Then he had to come back and race at a world class level right away, while doing the sponsorship dog and pony show.
So he was underprepared and got his ass kicked at last year’s TDF by a clearly superior Froome and Quintana. Cool…No complaining, he just goes quietly about his business and trains hard for 2014- You have to respect that. Also, you have to admit that Contador is an attacking rider with a wonderful tactical awareness that Froome and his power meter could only dream of. the man brings style and agression to racing and without him, GT racing would be either a power/weight ratio contest, or a “Can you hit this powermeter number?” contest- Boring.
Finally, if you discount Contador, then for consistency you should also categorically state that Eddy Merckx also “sucks”- Dude was possed THREE TIMES for doping- (’69 Giro, ’73 Lombardia and ’77 Fleche) and most people (including you I imagine) still think that he was a fair bike rider….
Cheers…
I have to agree with the DoctorNurse (what does that even mean?) here. I sure get the angst about dopers, but that’s a meme whose time has run out. Competitive systems will ALWAYS have people gaming the system (ala Lance), and it’s the UCI’s job to be the mean parent and weed that crap out.
I find it so interesting about doping in that this righteous indignation only seemed to arise once Lance had come and gone. Where were any of you before then? Get off my lawn.
I always wonder about writers who put in such a personal feeling about a rider. Sure, I’d likely write this way, but who really knows what happened? Imagine you’re the Contador that didn’t actually dope. Now, you have people who are righteously indignant about something that never happened, but you can’t prove a negative, so there you so. I for one wouldn’t want to write in a way that executes the rider for the foreseeable future in the minds of your readers. Just doesn’t seem, well, right.
I for one don’t grasp why all cyclists aren’t vegetarians that this point, and why this isn’t a forum for discussing the problems with the food supply (clenbuterol is the tip of a massive iceberg). How many riders does it take to see the problem? Mick Rogers, anyone?
I’d like to know also why there are no articles ADVOCATING for cyclists who may have been mistreated by the whole charade of doping justice as it’s existed over years. It’s quite possible that Contador here is one of those.
I’m more interested in the innocent riders unjustly accused than the fact of their accusation (and therefore ASSUMED OBVIOUS GUILT!) in the first place. Why are we so passionate about even the IDEA of someone doping, and so UNINTERESTED in the proper carrying out of presumed innocence.
Isn’t that MUCH more important than always getting to be right (therefore righteous, therefore righteously indignant). When did being right become more important than being scrupulous in the defense of the innocent? Since we don’t know what REALLY happened, why do we all assume guilt?
It’s interesting to see how we expect both “dominant” performances, and yet suspect them when they happen. These are HUMANS, people. Why don’t we treat them humanly?
This paragraph will help the internet viewers for building up new weblog or even a weblog from start to end.