With Rasmussen getting kicked out of the Tour de France today, we’re only a “few more” expulsions away from Frenchman and Red Lantern-holder Jérôme Pineau from winning.

What other surprises are in store in the coming days? Now, Discovery teammates Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer are 1 and 3 respectively in the overall standings, with Aussie Cadel Evans sandwiched between them in second place.

Although I get the Versus channel here at my house, I haven’t been watching the live coverage of the Tour. After today’s revelations that our second-favorite Kazakh, Alexandre Vinokourov, has been thrown out of the Tour (along with the rest of his team) for homologous blood doping following his Stage 13 time trial win, I wondering why I should even bother. I’ve always been a fan of Vino’s constant attacking and blowing up in the past. Now, I know there might have been a method to his amazing recuperative powers. There’s a cloud of suspicion hovering over the current race leader too, Michael Rasmussen, and that does not appear to be blowing away anytime soon.

All of the riders prior to the Tour signed a legal agreement saying they are not doping, and that — if caught — they would forfeit their salary and be banned from cycling. I guess several riders thought they could get away from it. On the eve of the Tour, Vino gave an interview with CyclingNews and said, “At the age of 33, for me, it’s this year or never.” Like Michael Vick’s reputation and career in the NFL, Vino and Astana is shot. That’s too bad, as no one will be around for Borat to cheer for.

When Jorge asked me to sign up with him for the 2007 Death Ride, I said yes without really thinking what I was getting myself into. It was only after signing up did I think to look on Felix’s website to see if he had done the race. Sure enough, Felix had conquered the Death Ride in 2002. As I read his ride story, I discovered to my horror what was in store on July 14, 2007: 129 miles and 15,000 to 16,000 feet of climbing over five passes in the California Alps near South Lake Tahoe.

Training Goals

I knew I was in big trouble when I mentally counted out my cycling palmares. With only one century under my belt and maybe a handful of rides where I topped 6,000 feet of climbing, I had a lot of work to do. We got our tickets in March, giving us a scant four months to train. Jorge and Richard are hard-core athletes, so they took to the task of training with gusto. As for me, I employed a variety of successful excuses to limit my bike training, most notably work and the comforts of my Aeron chair.

When I actually did ride, I did not feel anywhere near my peak. What’s worse was the feeling that I had riding with Jorge and Richard — and later Stephen and Gilad — on several of our training rides. I felt fat, slow, and weak as they pulled away from me up the slopes of Mt. Hamilton, King’s Mountain, and Highway 9. My quads and knees were aching and cramping 30 miles in on an “easy” 70-mile ride from San Mateo to Cupertino. I kept telling Rae, “What have I done to myself?”

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I’m exhausted right now having completed all five passes during the Death Ride. I didn’t think that I would be able to do this, and it was the hardest physical thing I’ve ever done. 129 miles and 15,000 feet of climbing. Oh my god, I’m tired!

I started the ride at 4:30 am and reached the top of Carson Pass at 6:00 pm. My legs were so sore and raw after only the first pass, but somehow I managed to fight through the pain and complete each of the passes. The hardest was the frontside of Ebbets, but it was also the most fun descending. Carson Pass was also tough, seeing that it came at the tail end of the ride. I had a slow leak in my rear tire somewhere between Woodsford to Pickett Junction to 3/4 of the way up Carson. No wonder the climb felt so bad!

At any rate, I’ll have a full recap with photos and text in the coming days. Right now, I really need to sleep.

I’ve been down in Long Beach for the Society for Information Display (SID) conference this week. I’ve been helping out DigiDelve, a Bay Area startup with some great OLED-based technologies. In and out of Internet coverage, I haven’t been keeping up with the news lately. I just read that Riis admitted to doping during his Tour Victory in 1996. It wasn’t quite an open secret that he doped, but everyone certainly suspected that he did, despite his frequent denials. In the same article, I read that Eric Zabel and Rolf Aldag, teammates of Riis (and Ullrich) on Team Telekom, also admitted to doping.

It’s best for the sport for everyone to come clean now. That said, I don’t think the UCI and the Tour will be able to rewrite the history books because of the prevalance of doping in the sport throughout this decade and the 90s. In 1996, Riis, Ullrich, and Virenque were the podium finishes. Virenque admitted doping several years later and Ullrich, though denying that he’s ever doped, is linked to the Puerto and the emerging Telekom scandals.

Prudhomme, the Tour Director, is suggesting lifetime bans for people who deny cheating but are later outed. I wouldn’t go as far as that, but obviously a hard line needs to be drawn to cleanse the sport.

When I was in high school, I received a series of annoying prank calls, the subject matter of which was crude and sexual in nature. Though I never found out the identity of the caller, I have a good guess who it was. If this were to ever happen today, however, it would be relatively easy to find out who the perpetrator is with Caller ID.

Uh, paging Mr. Geoghegan. WTF were you thinking?

Today’s events at the Landis hearings in Malibu may have turned the case on its head for me. It sure doesn’t look good for Landis to be associated with a guy who’s threatening a witness. Cycling has a drug problem, no doubt. The optimistic and naive side of me has wanted to believe that our cycling heroes can and will do no wrong. Basso, Millar, and Ullrich have proven us all wrong. Hamilton and Landis are on deck.

Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding cycling, it isn’t preventing me from riding my bike. It actually feels good to have to huff and puff up Highway 9 on my bike. I’m slow, but at least I’m clean!

The news is out this morning that Floyd Landis’ B sample has confirmed the adverse reaction of the A sample from his Stage 17 victory in the Tour de France. Landis maintains his innocence:

I have never taken any banned substance, including testosterone. I was the strongest man in the Tour de France, and that is why I am the champion,’ said Landis. ‘I will fight these charges with the same determination and intensity that I bring to my training and racing. It is now my goal to clear my name and restore what I worked so hard to achieve.

We want to believe that our heroes are telling the truth. It maintains our belief system in the world. Hearing events such as these shatters our mental model of the world, making us doubt future achievements in the sporting world. I still maintain that something is fishy in this case, and I will continue to let Landis prove that he was the rightful winner of the 2006 Tour de France. Next up in this case is arbitration to the high court of sports, the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Tyler Hamilton tried to get his doping case thrown out and failed. Will Landis succeed any better?

It’s just an unfortunate situation for all parties. Even if Landis proves that he did nothing wrong, his reputation and credibility are shot. The Tour suffers because it’s the first time in the 103-year history of the race that the winner has been thrown out for doping. No one seems to win, not even Oscar Pereiro, the runner-up in this year’s Tour and former teammate of Landis who would be declared the victor if Landis loses his case:

I have too much respect for Landis to do otherwise… In any case, I have a bittersweet feeling because it is bad news for cycling, and I would prefer to remain second and that they don’t confirm the positive.

Lots of information on T/E testing on FreeFloydLandis. Lots of press coverage on the incident, far more than there was when he was winning the Tour de France.

Great comparison on PezCyclingNews that demonstrates the differences (or lack thereof) between Floyd’s training rides and his epic Stage 17 performance in the Tour de France.

Training Ride:

Duration: 6:04 (hrs:min)
Distance: 115 miles
Average Speed: 19.0 mph
Perception of Effort (1-10): 7
Average Power: 247 Watts
Total Work from Power: 5394 Kjoules
Peak Power for 1 min: 545 watts
Peak Power for 5 min: 470 watts
Peak Power for 30 min: 391 watts
Peak Power for 1 hour: 377 watts
Peak Power for 2 hours: 372 watts

Here’s Floyd’s data from Stage 17 (source: Allen Lim, Bicycling.com):

- 5 hours 23 minutes and 36 seconds.

- Covering 200.5 kilometers (130 km alone in the wind).

- At a speed of 37.175 km/hr.

- Averaging 281 watts when moving for the whole ride and 318 watts over the last two hours.

- Averaging 324 watts while pedaling for the whole ride and 364 watts over the last 2 hours.

- At an average cadence of 89 rpm.

- 5456 kj

- Attacking about a quarter of the way up the Col des Saisies for 30 seconds at 544 watts, which settled into a 5-minute peak of 451 watts, which continued for 10 minutes at an average of power of 431 watts, and left everyone in his dust after 30 minutes at an average power of 401 watts.

- Spending 13.2% of his time or 43 minutes coasting like a rocket on the descents and another 60% between 4 to 7 watts per kilogram of body weight (aka, the pain cave).

- Holding onto 373 watts over the Col de Joux-Plane.

Landis won several prestigious races this year, including the Tour of California and Paris-Nice. He passed all of the doping controls then. It doesn’t add up that he would pass all the tests up to and after Stage 17.

I used to be a Tyler Hamilton apologist (after all, he swore on his dead dog’s grave!), but after looking at the faxes between his wife and Dr. Fuentes, I’m more skeptical. With Landis, I’m still on his bandwagon. Occam’s Razor, in my mind, doesn’t apply here even if the B sample confirms the A sample. Elevated T/E ratios doesn’t imply doping; it is what it says, and those ratios can be explained by other means than doping.

This is not what I wanted to hear when I heard that one rider tested positive during the Tour de France last week. Floyd Landis tested a positive A sample following the 17th stage, when he single-handlely decimated the peloton and rode himself back into contention.

I’m still siding with Floyd on this one, and here’s my explanation of the situation. Medical science and testing still cannot explain seemingly superhuman feats of athletic achievement. Two weeks ago, Rae and I watched Wired to Win, the IMAX movie on the Tour de France and the brain’s ability for adaptation. The movie originally was supposed to focus on Tyler Hamilton, but that plan got thrown out the window when he tested positive in the Vuelta. Focusing instead on Baden Cooke and Jimmy Casper, the movie explained how the brain wires and rewires itself after every experience and challenge.

For Landis, the effort he put into Stage 17 must have affected his body in ways that scientific tests would categorize as potential doping. I believe in the power of the mind to push the body to heights not normally attainable, and I want to believe that this is what happened to Landis. The thought of him shooting up in the middle of the night (following his beer and press conference) doesn’t jive with me.

There’s got to be another reason, and I speak for nearly everyone in saying we’re on pins and needles awaiting more information.

Wait, there’s one more thing. Landis got this little sidebar mention that he won the Tour on all the major US news sites last weekend. One reason is surely Tiger Woods’ 11th Major Win at the British Open. Now, when he’s accused of doping, guess what Floyd gets? Not a little sidebar, but a front-page photo and headline. Gotta love the sports media here.

Listen to today’s press conference with Floyd Landis on VeloNews.com.