Showing posts with label tests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tests. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Drug testers take blood, sweat and tears - Armstrong's behaviour 'unusual'?

Just what constitutes 'unusual' behaviour when 'surprised' by the blood, urine and hair-sample-taking team I don't know:

Lance Armstrong's behaviour during his 24th anti-doping control since returning to the sport may have landed the American in hot water with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD). L'Equipe has reported that AFLD, which conducted the March 17 out-of-competition test, submitted a report to the International Cycling Union (UCI) and WADA on March 30. The report apparently details the abnormal behaviour observed before and during the surprise visit from the French agency.

Did he run away? Slam the door? Abuse them? Or is this L'Equipe beating things up? He is recovering from a broken collarbone, so maybe he was a bit tetchy... I would be. Later, Armstrong's rebuttal came and it was quite reasonable - someone turned up to take samples who simply didn't appear convincingly authorised to do so, so they checked on his credentials:

"I returned home that day after a long training ride to find a man chasing me as I rode up to the house. He stopped me and told me he was from the French laboratory and was here to test me. I had never heard of labs or governments doing drug testing and I had no idea who this guy was or whether he was telling the truth.

Despite all of that reasonableness, the "drug testing laboratory" in question was concerned about the 20 minute delay between turning up and actually getting the samples. Without wanting to get carried away about it, having a shower could have been a cover for time to take a masking drug, but then again it could just have been a shower. In any case 20 mins is not long enough to mask much, especially so when blood, urine and hair was taken. Surely he didn't get a hair transplant in 20mins?

Postscript: The UCI's Pat McQuaid wonders aloud what the AFLD is doing: "Normal proceedings between institutions such as national anti-doping agencies, the international federation and the World anti-doping agency (WADA) are normally done in a professional and confidential way until a decision or sanction has been taken," he continued. "In this case it was leaked to the press and I do find that disturbing."

Monday, January 22, 2007

Frames, wheels, handling - a conversation of sorts

A friend started a conversation about wheels. It all starts here with a whinge about the handling of his Lapierre.... but becomes more of a question of wheels and tyres than frames and angles. So what matters most?

The handling comment was: "Generally speaking though, I'm very happy with the new rig (a Cannondale Six13). It's very quick and nice and stable. It's much more evenly balanced, whilst the Lap was very rear heavy... or maybe front light? Either way, it (the Lapierre) didn't fill me with a great deal of confidence."

Sounds like understeer? Could be tyres. Or geometry. My old Saronni (Colnago) track bike runs wide when sprinting on low-banked tracks, but is fine on steep banking. Horses for courses.

Then he shows me this interesting link to a pretty comprehensive wheel test. Have a good look. Wow. Pretty impressive, eh?

Whilst I'm not sure I ride "power on" at 50kmh very often, it's nice to know all these tested wheels are better than a 36-spoker at doing just that - if only by 15-30W! If I was a TTer I'd be going Zipp, but I guess I knew that already. Ksyriums would be a bad choice in a TT or a fast breakaway, at least above 40kmh. I wonder what the power loss is like significantly below 50kmh - negligible, I suspect. And what forks did they use in the test, if any? You'd imagine an aero fork would smooth the flow. And tyres? There's probably a good compromise here but I don't think I can pick it... although they reckon the Shimano is good all round. I guess as they say, it depends on the "domain" you need to use the wheels in... TT, crit, road, training, a combo of events etc etc. And how much $$ you have!!