Is this the cleanest Tour ever?

[Globalti]

Admittedly I'm fairly ignorant about all this but it seems to me that there's nobody this year who is really outstandingly faster than the rest - I'm thinking of Contador vs. Schleck last year when the smarmy Spaniard put in a burst on a climb then looked over his shoulder at Schleck with a look that said "I could leave you for dead...."

Before the Tour I read that the organisers had warned Contador not to ride, which I took as meaning "Don't dope and ride; we're onto you!" His mediocre performance this year tells me he might even be riding clean and determined to prove to the doubters that he can survive the Tour without pharmaceutical assistance. There isn't really anybody else who seems to be dominating the tour; the riders look pretty evenly matched this year.

What do the more experienced commentators on here think?

 

[biking_fox]

The BBC have a story up about how it is or is not affecting sponsors at the moment. Nice line about the UCI not demanding a clean sport!.


Re derty bertie I don't think you can say he's had a mediocre performance so far - he was unlucky in a crash early on. Other than that he's held the time gap. Which not all of the GC riders can say. We'll see maybe today but maybe not until the Alps how he is doing.

 

[cisamcgu]

Bertie rode impressively in the Giro, and that wasn't too long ago and would have had the same doping controls (I guess). So maybe he is biding his time ...

 

[Holy Warrior]

Today is the day to see how the riders are feeling. I am quite dissapointed that the likes of Wiggins, Vino and Brajovik are out already. The team lineups at the start did make it look like a very strong tour but with a couple of favourites (at least top 10 favourites) out already it looks like it may be similar to last year in that it's going to be fought out by a handful of riders. Saying that though there's the Schlecks, Contador, Basso, Sanchez, Cunego then quite a few in a slightly lesser mould.

 

[iAmiAdam]

Let's be fair, the giro was hard and would of taken form out of anyone and bertie won it.

 

[adscrim]

Let's be fair, the giro was hard and would of taken form out of anyone and bertie won it.

I may be overly cynical here but if you knew you couldn't use your normal routine to prepare for a race, competing in a hard event before hand would be a pretty good excuse for a mediocre performance.