The other night I pulled out one of my older WCP DVD's and threw it on and settled back on the couch. The race was 2007 Flèche Wallonne, a race I had seen a couple of times before so knew the results.
But as the placings list was put up at the finish something grabbed my eye, this is the top ten:
1 Davide Rebellin (Ita) Gerolsteiner 4.48.06 (42.173 km/h)
2 Alejandro Valverde (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 0.06
3 Danilo Di Luca (Ita) Liquigas
4 Matthias Kessler (Ger) Astana 0.08
5 Riccardo Riccò (Ita) Saunier Duval-Prodir
6 Rinaldo Nocentini (Ita) Ag2r Prévoyance 0.13
7 Fränk Schleck (Lux) Team CSC 0.16
8 John Gadret (Fra) Ag2r Prévoyance 0.19
9 Robert Gesink (Ned) Rabobank
10 Tadej Valjavec (Slo) Lampre-Fondital
Can anyone see it??????
Yes thats right the top 5 have all been done for dope in the following two years,
Rebellin for Cera at the 2008 Olympics
Valverde for involvement in OPeration Puerto
Di Luca for the Oil for Drugs scandle, then for Cera during 2009 Giro
Kessler for testosterone
Ricco for Cera...and being a general douchebag
And the thing was watching these five go up the final climb of the Mur de Huy you could see that they were on something just the way they literally rode away from the others up a 20% climb.
Sad really.....
I think you're onto something here!!
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