Now that our velodrome is renovated a nice group of 15-20 guys showed up tonight to both learn a little about riding the track and to re-introduce the experienced trackies. When I first arrived people seemed to be doing their own warmup laps but before long a nice paceline of about eight settled in with the lead rider taking one lap pulls. That was fun and kind of hard. Everyone gathered and listened to Bill talk about the different markings on the track and explain their meaning. We warmed up again with another paceline before doing a series of scratch races and a couple miss-and-outs. There is learning curve on the track and I spent my time trying to get a feel for the track. Crit racing is an acquired to taste for some in terms of feeling comfortable in a pack. Track racing is whole other level. Put yourself in a pack and remove the brakes. The nerve-o-meter definitely goes up. One thing is certain. I was undergeared with my 42x14. There was no top-end, but rather just hanging on for dear life. I'll have to look into getting something like a 48 to be more competitive.
News Item of the Day: Organizers of the Tour de France plan to use the same test for illicit blood transfusions first employed at last year's summer Olympics in Athens, the French national drug screening laboratory (LNDD) announced on Thursday.
The test, approved for use last summer, is at the center of two appeals being brought before the international Court of Arbitration for Sport by American Tyler Hamilton and his former Phonak teammate Santiago Perez after both were found to be positive for so-called homologous blood doping.
Blood doping is a means of enhancing endurance by increasing the amount of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, using one's own blood or that of a donor of the same blood group. Both practices are prohibited under UCI rules and the World Anti-Doping Code, but the test developed in Australia is only capable of detecting foreign blood cells and not those that an individual might extract, store and reinject.
Hamilton tested positive at the Vuelta a España last September for an illicit transfusion of what testers said were donor blood cells. The Vuelta test was ordered after a sample Hamilton submitted at the Olympics was deemed positive by a review panel, but could not be confirmed by a B-sample that had already been destroyed. Hamilton was then sacked by his professional team, Phonak, and given a two-year ban by the United States Anti Doping Agency.
Perez, also a member of Phonak, was found positive in a test after the Vuelta. He, too, was suspended for two years by the Spanish Cycling Federation. The two remain the only athletes to ever have tested positive using the method developed in Australia. "It's this detection technique that caught Tyler Hamilton out," said the laboratory's director, Jacques de Ceaurriz. Hamilton and Perez have adamantly proclaimed their innocence and have appealed their suspensions to the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Other doping tests on the Tour will mirror last year's, with some 150 blood and/or urine tests, and around 100 tests for EPO (Erythropoietin), the banned red-blood-cell booster, de Ceaurriz said. However the doctor added that the LNDD still did not have the means to be able to detect growth hormones. "The technique already exists," he added. "But we can't yet apply it because it requires a large amount of anti-bodies which we just don't have at our disposal yet."
News Item of the Day: Organizers of the Tour de France plan to use the same test for illicit blood transfusions first employed at last year's summer Olympics in Athens, the French national drug screening laboratory (LNDD) announced on Thursday.
The test, approved for use last summer, is at the center of two appeals being brought before the international Court of Arbitration for Sport by American Tyler Hamilton and his former Phonak teammate Santiago Perez after both were found to be positive for so-called homologous blood doping.
Blood doping is a means of enhancing endurance by increasing the amount of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, using one's own blood or that of a donor of the same blood group. Both practices are prohibited under UCI rules and the World Anti-Doping Code, but the test developed in Australia is only capable of detecting foreign blood cells and not those that an individual might extract, store and reinject.
Hamilton tested positive at the Vuelta a España last September for an illicit transfusion of what testers said were donor blood cells. The Vuelta test was ordered after a sample Hamilton submitted at the Olympics was deemed positive by a review panel, but could not be confirmed by a B-sample that had already been destroyed. Hamilton was then sacked by his professional team, Phonak, and given a two-year ban by the United States Anti Doping Agency.
Perez, also a member of Phonak, was found positive in a test after the Vuelta. He, too, was suspended for two years by the Spanish Cycling Federation. The two remain the only athletes to ever have tested positive using the method developed in Australia. "It's this detection technique that caught Tyler Hamilton out," said the laboratory's director, Jacques de Ceaurriz. Hamilton and Perez have adamantly proclaimed their innocence and have appealed their suspensions to the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Other doping tests on the Tour will mirror last year's, with some 150 blood and/or urine tests, and around 100 tests for EPO (Erythropoietin), the banned red-blood-cell booster, de Ceaurriz said. However the doctor added that the LNDD still did not have the means to be able to detect growth hormones. "The technique already exists," he added. "But we can't yet apply it because it requires a large amount of anti-bodies which we just don't have at our disposal yet."
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home