Tuesday, July 24, 2007

transfusions of blood for make benefit glorious nation of kazhakstan

Another one bites the dust.

When Skerrit told me Vinokourov tested positive this morning, for a split second I thought "but he seemed like such a great guy!" Then I thought back on doping cases of the recent past:

Roberto Heras. Nice guy
Tyler Hamilton. Really nice guy
David Millar. Nice guy, and Scottish too
Stephen Alfred. Exceptionally nice guy
Ivan Basso. Quiet, but always looked nice
Floyd Landis. Funny looking, but nice
Alexander Vinokourov. Crowd favorite. Like cheering for a scrappy puppy in the middle of a huge dogfight.

How ironic that his road stage came at a very familiar point, and in a very similar situation as a memorable stage last year. He gets spooked by the testers on the TT stage so uses the same old blood he's had for the last 48 hours, gets stomped, recieves some fresh blood the next day and makes a miraculous turnaround. One day he rides like a cold turd and the next day he's a heroic pheonix soaring to victory on a flaming golden pillar of fire, burning to a crisp everyone in his magnificent wake. Didn't floyd do that? oh yeah. Tried to forget that one.

So I guess I'm bummed, but not surprised. It's like when you broke the glass vase on the mantle when you were a kid and your mom says "I'm not angry, I'm just dissapointed."

DT

5 comments:

Molly Cameron said...

Would you call me nice?

Walker said...

It is the way of the Kazhak! I'm ditching cycling and going for commonwealth games gold in lawn bowling. No other sport are you able to get fat, and be drunk the night before your "race" and still compete with the World's best, now there's a REAL SPORT!

Lego said...

Curling could definately be in that catagory!

Seriously though, is it a suprise? The biggest surprise is that the biggest doper has never been caught (L.A.) I would imagine if you tested him now he would still test +.

Anonymous said...

Can I get the title of "Dopest Asian Rider?"

DT said...

ping pong gets the DAR!