cheers for that................tut, tut............

Just looking at past Olympics results and remember Chris Boardman's 1992 effort but didn't know we won a bronze in the 96 road race via Max Sciandri....bit of a surprise I suspect.

Hard to think we only won ONE gold in Atlanta compared to winning 29 last year.

Yes, I remember that bronze medal.............1996 was the year I started watching the cycling.

Max Sciandri was pretty much as Italian as they come but I think he'd either been born in Derby or one of his parents was born in Derby so he chose to ride for Britain. He would have been about 25th in line for the Italian team !...............after Boardman and before Millar he was the token Brit in the peloton.............Forza Sciandri !

AH well - we'd taken that at the time!

Mind you it would have opened up the old "is he really British debate" again had social media been around.

yep he was born in derby - believe he had a role with team sky for a while before taking on a similar role with a different team.

reason i'm into cycling is him our local rag used to report the tdf with the token story 'Derby born Max Sciandri...'

I remember during what must have been the 1992 Tour of Britain, Paul Sherwen interviewed Mrs Sciandri, a very glamorous lady who confirmed in a very un-Derby like RP accent "I'm the mother".

Jeez, we were really feeding on scraps back then.

Yeah, I remember it was a race with lots of short sharp climbs, so no big peleton developed and Sciandri was able to get away in a breakaway of three with about 30 or 40k to go, but lost out in the final k. Can't remember the name of the gold medal winner, but he was Swiss. Actually, I think it only got BBC coverage live because it was obvious from a long way out that Sciandri was in with a shout of gold, it would never have been shown otherwise.

We did have a British team before Sky ...........the Linda McCartney team, formed to promote the vegetarian ready made meals bearing Linda's name

Sciandri rode for them along with a young Bradley Wiggins

I remember them winning a stage of the Giro

I just checked and they went bust in 2001 with debts of a million dollars

also something I didn't know............apparently in 2012 British Cycling held an investigation into the former Linda McCartney team following allegations that the team management had turned a blind eye to rider doping within the team...........I never heard of that investigation coming to any conclusion !

Stuart O'Grady has now confessed to doping too, always thought he was one of the few who was clean. Nothing surprises me from that era now though.

So his sudden retirement this week may not have been about Orica wining the TTT like he said as interestingly the 1998 re-test results go public this week.

It's time for cycling to accept a basic truth. For the last several decades its been Keyfabe.

I've watched cycling for 30 years. Back in the 80s, the 90s the 2000s, everyone was doping. And everyone know.

Think back to the Festina affair, the cyclists strike because of a proposed crackdown. Think of the phrases cycling fans happy used about their heroes, "he must have a great doctor" is my favourite. No-one was ever under any illusion.

Because of this, Armstrong is right. If cycling is to be clean, and I believe today it is as close to being clean as any sport, then its time for a Truth and Reconcilliation style process. The sport itself knows exactly who the (very few) clean riders were back then because they were the butt of jokes (Boardman, who else?).

But the fans knew it too. There was no illusion, it was accepted as "real", it was Keyfabe.

French fans still celebrate their own drugs cheats, but discredit others. The hypocrisy is today where Armstrong is stripped of 7 tours while others keep theirs despite the exact same evidence of long term systematic doping against them.

Its time for the line to be drawn, full disclosure, keep the titles but make the fresh start that should have happened in 1998. The sports already cleaned up but now todays riders are being tarnished by an association with the past. Let todays riders admit their past errors, let them continue with no ban if they renounce, life ban if they don't. And make them pay a bond they won't get back for 20 years if they want to keep riding.

This is the only way to make it clear that while the sport has a tarnished history, its still the sports history with achievements which are worthy of admiration and celebration. EPO didn't help Lance Armstrong on the Descent Into Gap, Riders that won in a 99% doped field would have won in an undoped field.

But the real benefit will be for riders today, who can claim they are clean and no longer have to fight allegations against riders from decades ago continually blighting the sport.

Even if someone less than tainted than Armstrong is saying it, it just isn't true that the whole field was doping. The Senate report on the 1998 Tour found 30 riders were doping and probably doping. That still leaves plenty of stage winners and others tested who were not taking EPO.

True - sadly everyone does get tagged with the same label if its the big high profile players/cyclists caught.

Bit like in athletics - how many are really on drugs.

Maybe a minority now but even 1-2 is enough to damage its reputation.

Christian Prudhomme has been in Yorkshire today and has just been interviewed on RUK at the York evening race meeting

He said that stage 2 of next year's tour would start on York racecourse, the Knavesmire............

The modern peloton is clean?
[LIST][*]It was revealed last week the winner of the Presidential Tour of Turkey 2013 has tested positive for EPO. The same feat as his teammate last year. It was televised on Eurosport with much muttering at the mountain top finish.[*]Santambrogio, and DeLuca tested positive for EPO in the Giro this year. Another rider was withdrawn for positive.[*]Three of this year's Tour riders, along with former world champion Allesandro Ballan, and 24 others, for were indicted last week for doping charges dating back to 2009. [*]Stuart O'Grady retired promptly after the Tour before it was revealed he used EPO in 1998.[*]The top Italian rider Michelle Scarponi was suspended during last winter for associating with disgraced Lance Armstrong's banned adviser Michelle Ferrari.[*]Last year Rabobank withdrew its brand from the team it was still funding for this season with the statement: "It is with pain in our heart, but for the bank this is an inevitable decision. We are no longer convinced that the international professional world of cycling can make this a clean and fair sport. We are not confident that this will change for the better in the foreseeable future."[*]AICAR and GW1516 are near impossible to detect if used correctly but their use is said to be wide-spread.[/LIST]While the peloton is being kept in check by the biological passport and the advanced detection down to pico-grams there is no room for complacency in the unending war against doping. Better detection, harsher sanctions, and low, or zero tolerance of returning riders/staff in team structures is the way forward.

Good luck to whoever is using these drugs because...


As for AICAR, i don't think anyone in any sport has tested positive.

The effects of it seem quite dramatic. 44% increase in performance.

I doubt it will ever be perfect.

Be like asking people not to dive in football..

Just the unfortunate nature of the sport.

Its up to the young riders and their teams to ensure they at least try to stay clean.

Coverage of Spain's premier one-day race, the San Sebastian Classic, is about t start on ES..............the riders are just approaching the category one climb which they have to go over twice

Most of the big climbers from the Tour are riding - Quintana, Rodriguez, Contador, Valverde..............and for GB and Sky we have Jon Tiernan-Locke and Josh Edmondson

After this has finished we move on to the Tour of Poland which is starting with 2 days in the Italian Dolomites before a rest day transfer to Poland for the rest of the week. Wiggo makes his comeback...............

Diving over-running...........it's just finished 15 minutes late

Maybe the cycling will come on soon, well obviously after 10 minutes of ads, plugs for other shows, funny clips of people people falling over................

Some things never change................

Profile for the race. Currently nearing the top of the Cat 1 climb second time around: http://www.diariovasco.com/clasica-s...ian/recorrido/

Tour of Poland trying out a couple of things to try and make the racing more open

Firstly it's 6 man teams instead of the usual 8 or 9 - should be more difficult for a team to control the peloton

Secondly big GC bonuses up to 30 seconds for riders who collects points on intermediate sprints and mountains.......to encourage breakaways

see how it goes.........

In the Tour of Poland, Wiggins and Nibali came in together 9mins down. Hushovd and Phinney were in the last group at 35mins.http://tdp.infocity.pl/en/etap1/

And now following that Wiggins has surprised no-one by announcing he won't ride the Vuelta.

Ok, he's working his way back from injury, but if he lacks motivation as much as he says he does, then surely there's a possibility he'll retire after the World Championships? If he can't be bothered trying for more Grand Tours, there's not much else he can do!

VFroom ya beauhtty

Before joining Sky, Wiggins suggested he was likely to retire after the 2012 Olympics. So perhaps he is now just looking at personal targets, like the Worlds ITT, after conceding team leader role to Froome: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/othe...ng/8275086.stm

In his autobiography, Charley Wegelius recounts his experiences riding for the team. Hilariously, the team insisted that their riders maintain a vegetarian diet during competitions. That worked out well.........