Tour de France -- Nobody Beats Cavendish

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New doping detection on Tour de France

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sourced by Barbara McPherson

Mark Cavendish chalked up another stage win today in the race to Nimes in southern France.  Today's feature to deal with was the heat with riders coping with 30+ degree weather.  It sounds like a lovely ride in the park with a relatively flat course, but that course was 113 miles long.

The next stages bring the riders to the Alps where the mountain climbers will shine.  The rumour has it that Cavendish will withdraw in order to save his body for the Olympic games in Beijing.  He will have only three weeks to recover from these 13 days of punishment.  He's one of the younger riders but coming off a three week stint in the Giro de Italia has got to hurt.

We received news about Leonardo Piepoli who rode (past tense) for Team SaunierDuval-Scott.  It was announced that he has been fired from the team along with drug cheater Ricardo Ricco.  The team manager said that he had lost confidence in Piepoli.  It looks bad for the Tour with these drug scandals, but the French authorities are making a big effort to eliminate the doping, for the sake of the athletes as well as the sport.  It is now a criminal offence in France to dope in the Tour.

It seems that the blood doping choice these days is a product produced by Roche Labs in the US.  It's called CERA and does have legitimate uses in the fight against disease.   It's been dubbed "super EPO"  by some.

On a  more positive note,  local cyclist Ryder Hesjedal riding for Team GarminChipotle is still in the race.  His hometown is in Langford on Vancouver Island.  It's an accomplishment that many do not achieve as spills and crashes are part of the race.  At under 10 km to go in this stage Sven Krause crashed into a traffic island and broke his bike in two.  He got up limping and mounted a replacement to try to rejoin the pelloton.  These men are tough!