Has anyone been following the latest developments?
After first Vinokourov and his Astana team left the tour because of doping, now the yellow jersey Rasmussen has been put out of the Tour because he lied about his whereabouts
wat’s happening to this sport? 
Re: Tour de France
Tour de Farce, indeed.
Re: Tour de France
some spanish guy won it :D
also the Danish cyclist who was winnin' and was drawn back by his team, because it was believed that he lied about his training sessions....and he is now dead :(
Re: Tour de France
Summer mystery: who killed Michael Rasmussen?
Was Michael Rasmussen the victim of a trial by media and strong arm tactics by the Tour de France’s organisers or did he simply stumble on his own ambitions?
The plot of a Danish summer sleeper playing out on sports pages around the world took an unexpected turn last week.
Last Wednesday night, just hours after the story had reached its climax on the summit of Col d’Aubisque, the hopes of the unlikely star of this year’s Tour de France, Michael Rasmussen, were declared dead after his team announced that it had withdrawn him from the competition.
Rasmussen’s chances of winning the three-week circuit around France had been slowly strangled by mounting doubts over his explanations of where he was in the weeks leading up to the race’s start. But although the ordeal unfolded in front of our eyes, just who was responsible for it is less clear.
International rules require cyclists to inform officials of their whereabouts for possible unannounced doping tests. After it emerged that he had received a total of four warnings for not reporting where he was, Rasmussen countered with the explanation that he had been training in Mexico during the time in question, and that he had forgotten to tell cycling officials where he would be.
But on Wednesday, the statements of one Davide Cassani, a cycling commentator for Italian television, damaged Rasmussen’s story beyond all repair. A man whom many call reliable, and who had nothing to gain by cooking up a story, Cassani said he saw Rasmussen in Italy during the time in question.
The statements toppled the shaky defence Rasmussen had been putting up ever since the first questions about his pre-Tour training began to arise the week before. His Rabobank team said it could no longer trust him, and pulled him out of the race.
But while it was Cassani’s statements that sealed Rasmussen’s fate, he is seen simply as an unwitting accessory in his demise.
Ask Danes who’s responsible, and it’s easy to see that while many believe that Rasmussen got what he deserved for not being forthcoming, the majority blames the press for casting enough doubt on his explanations that the only possible conclusion we could come to was that he was doped.
According to a Webpol/Politken poll, 70 percent of Danes believe Rasmussen had likely used performance enhancing drugs. The same amount, however, said the Danish media had conducted a witch hunt against their countryman.
Many also point out that even though his story had become increasingly hard to believe, Rasmussen has never tested positive for controlled substances. As soon as the media cast doubt on his efforts, Rasmussen found himself all but convicted.
Niels Christian Jung, a veteran reporter for public broadcaster DR who was one of the first to report that Cassani had seen Rasmussen in the wrong place at the wrong time, told Berlingske Tidende newspaper that even he had been surprised by the media’s power to form public opinion.
‘I didn’t think the story would become so large and wind up having such serious consequences. I thought it was important to expose what Michael Rasmussen was doing in June. I knew it was incriminating, but I hadn’t foreseen that it would have such drastic consequences.’
That the media did Rasmussen in is a theory many of his supporters angrily maintain in internet chat rooms. But still others say the reporting only served to incite the real villain to act.
Or, as Torben x from Odense wrote on Politiken.dk: ‘The race ended as soon as a herd of meddling Danish journalists had to begin practicing what they call "critical journalism" against the only Dane in the field. As soon as these idiots found just one person who would say that MR was in Italy at a time when he said he had been in Mexico, the Tour’s organisers finally had the pretext they needed to force a nervous Rabobank to fire MR.’
The Tour de France is currently in the midst of an uphill battle to distance itself from the ghosts of its doping past. Strict new regulations mean that riders can be banned from participating even if they are only suspected of being doped, and such rules would have applied to Rasmussen if news of his warnings had been made public prior to the race.
Race organisers, already displeased with what they considered Rasmussen’s disregard for the rules, continued to grow more suspicious with each weakening of his explanation. Once the report about Casani’s Rasmussen sighting emerged, they approached Team Rabobank’s management to ‘let them know’ their ‘point of view about Rasmussen’.
‘We spoke with Rabobank,’ said Christian Prudhomme, the Tour’s director, the day after Rasmussen was eliminated from competition. ‘We told them that Rasmussen should never have been permitted to enter the Tour de France.’
Shortly after the exchange, Rasmussen was packing his bags.
But while many of the clues leading up to that point suggest Rasmussen’s demise was orchestrated by someone else’s hand, psychologist Jørn Beckmann suggests an alternative theory: Rasmussen’s drive to win was his fatal flaw.
‘Michael Rasmussen in my judgement resembles your typical fanatic,’ Beckmann told Jyllands-Posten newspaper. ‘He lives for his sport. Just like Bjarne Riis, it appears that he feels that the end justifies the means. He needs to be number one, and that exceeds all else. Only victory matters.’
The plot of the Tour de France this year didn’t include victory for Rasmussen, but in an interview with TV2, he promised that he’d make his best effort to ride in next year’s race. We’ll have to wait and see whether summer sequels play just as well on the roads of France as they do at the box office.
Re: Tour de France
Marco somethin' won
Alberto Contador from the Discovery Channel team :D
Re: Tour de France
was it...hehe..i knew it was some spanish - latin kinda name hehe....just glanced it in newspaper other day...:D (but i knew the origin....name doesnt matter....:D hehe
PS: i edit ma previous post.....contains wrong info... thanks for correcting me 0)
Re: Tour de France
some spanish guy won it :D
also the Danish cyclist who was winnin' and was drawn back by his team, because it was believed that he lied about his training sessions....and he is now dead :(
He is now dead? I don't know where you're getting your news from but that is a blatant lie.
Re: Tour de France
He is now dead? I don't know where you're getting your news from but that is a blatant lie.
:(
Please do check sports section! I have posted this article for you to read. Rest is up to you !!