Looks clean...

[Update: Floyd says warrant? What warrant? One suggestion: You might want to lose the shades, my man.]

The warrant stipulates that Landis can be arrested if he touches foot in France. It might well be possible for a rider of Landis’ abilities to stay on his bike the entire time, including track stands in staging areas, but for practical purposes Floyd will have to stay out of France if he wants to avoid a court appearance.

Twisted Spoke muses over a Landis-Polanski straight-up trade, the problem (for our purposes) being that Polanski, whatever his cinematic accomplishments, can’t climb Alpe d’Huez and the kind of rehab he needs has nothing to do with doping. Still, we’re not opposed to the idea…

And it looks like Michael Rasmussen won’t be able to make the Tour either. Drat. The cheats are dropping like flies. It’s hard to know who, when you put doping in the mix, you can really count on in professional cycling these days.

Meanwhile, Italian cyclist Eddy Ratti has joined the ranks of the fallen.

The Tour de France 2010 is shaping up as the biggest Dopers Reunion since the Lebowski Fest! Now if we can only get Floyd Landis back into the peloton, we’d be tempted to sponsor Team Rehab. And what’s Tyler Hamilton up to these days???

“The report also outlined a new blood doping practice which evaded current testing protocol which monitor blood parameters. About 200ml of blood is extracted, mixed with an anti-coagulant, and re-injected. The practice does not alter blood values and is all but undetectable, the report said.”

And the UCI, whose efficacy anti-doping authorities continue to question, emerges with another black eye:

“Earlier efforts to back-test Giro samples for CERA were squashed by the UCI, but now Italian officials in Padua have taken up the case.”

The Chicken is back! Michael Rasmussen, who was on track to win the 2007 Tour de France before his team suspended him for deceiving it re his whereabouts before the race began, has picked up a new team following his two-year ban.

Rasmussen’s case bears some investigation, because he essentially beat the doping system. He never actually tested positive. He was put on ice simply out of suspicion of cheating.

Which means the system must be pretty easily beatable, because they suspected Rasmussen well before the Tour began and one would assume must have tested him rigorously during the race. So what went wrong? How could this happen? They’re so convinced he doped that they barred him, but nothing in their vast array of testing procedures could prove it?

Euskaltel-Euskadi on the comeback trail from doping scandals? Can they stay clean? And with this kind of money involved, will they get reported if they aren’t clean?

“As part of continued 1 million euro commitment to the team’s total 6.5 million euro budget, the government has included a clause in the sponsorship contract that would end the deal if more doping cases pop up. Reports in Basque Country media also point to an early exodus of title sponsor Euskaltel – the regional telephone operator – if there’s another doping case.”

Floyd Landis got caught and paid the price. Now he’s saying “politics” will keep him from ever competing in the Tour again.

Here’s an idea: Floyd and the Chicken and Tyler Hamilton and Bernhard Kohl and Vinokourov and a bunch of other banned cyclists get together and form a Tour team sponsored by BigPharma companies that make methadone. They could call it Team LiveClean.

World Champion Cadel Evans now wants to finally win the Tour, a prime motivator for his move from Silence to BMC Racing. We wish him luck. Cadel is one of the few pros who proactively says he does not dope. We trust he’s telling the truth and admire him for taking a stand. We also like him because he’s a former mountain biking champion. (So is Rasmussen, but we don’t admire him because, as with a lot of big names in cycling, there’s too much evidence he’s a cheat, even though he never actually got caught.)

Rasmussen by the way is claiming he’s been blacklisted, which the UCI says is not true.

Riccardo Ricco is appealing his two-year suspension. “The rules almost don’t exist in cycling,” he says, somewhat opaquely. He’s not denying doping but trying to get out on a technicality. I guess public sympathy isn’t the goal here.

BikePure: “We acknowledge that it is the air of secrecy behind such testing whose results are rarely disclosed that has the rumor mongers shouting. Openness is the future…” Right on.

France’s anti-doping agency, which has had a spat or two with the UCI over thoroughness of testing, says it will re-analyze 2008 samples from the Tour. About 15 riders will be affected, although they are not yet being named. (Thanks to BikePure.org for the link.)

The Science of Sport: Can scientific analysis tell if Contador juiced? A detailed look at the VO2 max issue in relation to Contador’s time trial win. Fascinating even though ultimately too many variables (especially wind direction and velocity) impede an accurate consideration:

There are people (experts in the sport) who believe that the upper limit of performance should lie around 5.6 to 5.8 W/kg on a longer climb. This is well below what is being calculated for the current Tour, particularly the Verbier. However, if the wind speed is not controlled, then the calculated power output may well fall below that “ceiling”. The point is, we just don’t know what the wind is doing and so the margins are currently too large. Therefore, you cannot use isolated performances, lacking control over variables, to infer doping.

Thanks to Cyclelicio.us for the link.