http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_on_sp_ot/cyc_tour_de_france_125;_ylt=AnKgZb6DGlA0urFtNHr_ovkE1vAI

quote:

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Tour de France rider Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for a banned blood transfusion after winning last weekend's time trial, the French sports daily L'Equipe reported on its Web site Tuesday.

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I'm not a fan of Vino, but this is another swift kick in the balls for cycling. This **** is so out of control it's sickening.

I hope it is a good sign that the people cheating are now getting caught. There was a lot of talk about the whole team being dirty, so this hopefully sends a message.

If anyone here was interested enough to watch, I think a really good sign of the lack of doping this year was the pace of the race in the first week. It was much slower.

More bad news.

Cycling News Flash for July 26, 2007

Edited by Sue George
Rasmussen pulled out of Tour

Yellow jersey Michael Rasmussen (Rabobank) will not start Stage 17 of the Tour de France Thursday morning.

Team manager Theo DeRooy has withdrawn the maillot jaune from the Tour de France, allegedly because Rasmussen lied to the Rabobank team as to his true whereabouts when he missed his out of competition tests in June.

DeRooy will not withdraw the entire team, but will allow the riders to choose to start the stage tomorrow.

Stay tuned to Cyclingnews for more information as the story develops.

Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

Torbush. Just Torbush.

I wonder how close sponsorship of pro cycling is from caving-in. The TDF will always be around, but this will just push more marginally-supportive sponsors to drop their teams.

[This message has been edited by Nebules (edited 7/25/2007 10:02p).]