Saturday update

The IOC wants the UK to make doping a criminal offense before the London Olympics.

Doping at the Vuelta a Uruguay.

Garmin's Timmy Duggan updates his blog: "Even with some hard rides I am recovering well and I feel like I am really recovered from my head injury." Good news.

This has just not been Boonen's week. First headlines about his positive hair test for cocaine, now he has crashed his car again. The good news is that he was not hurt, but you have to start to wonder whether he might be in need of an intervention.

Russian runner Julia Smirnova has been given a 2 year ban by the IAAF. This in itself is hardly news, considering that 16 assorted Russian athletes have tested positive lately. What is noteworthy and horrifying is that Smirnova tested positive for strychnine. A sort of retro-doping strategy? Can't get away with good-old EPO? No problem, try a bit of rat poison instead. Strychnine has a long and sordid history as a stimulant in endurance sports, and that certainly includes cycling. Just don't take too much or you will end up dying horribly of severe convulsions. Or you might be like Keith Richards and just end up comatose.

Very nice to see someone talking sense about the Second Coming. And kudos to VeloNews for printing this and perhaps risking the infamous blacklist...interesting that they list the author just generically as VeloNews.com.

IOC president Jacques Rogge has said that seven more positive doping tests are coming up from the Olympics. Let's just hope that there are no cyclists.

Sometimes cyclo-cross sponsors must just curse the mud. Not much advertising going on in that mud.

Remember how in the documentary Overcoming Bjarne Riis made a big deal out of teaching Ivan Basso how to swim and then tossing him off a cliff into the ocean? Well, all that preparation might just come in rather handy for Ivan considering the next Giro starts in Venice. Don't crash and end up in the stinking canal....I wonder if they will have rescue boats waiting to pull any unfortunate cyclists out of the deep? Makes me think of the movie Casino Royale, plenty of drowning in Venice canals going on in that movie. And poor St. Ivan may just need a Quantum of Solace considering that after all this time he is going to be stuck right back where he started, trying to beat his old nemesis Lance yet again. Sounds like a bad sequel if there ever was one...

The Science of Sport blog considers the end of ACE.

Interesting to note Valv.Piti's choice of mountain bike. Pic found here.

Andy Schleck interview (French). Don't worry, Google Translate is your friend.

Svein Tuft interview: "I have a crazy, obsessed side but it's important to be balanced enough in life to switch it on and off. You have to plan for those special moments which don't come along all the time. Doing a 40 plus km time trial, when I'm riding on the threshold and the only thing holding me back is my mind, I ask myself, 'How much are you willing to give?'"

Irish rider Philip Deignan talks about his new Cervelo team and his tough season this year.

Don Catlin interview. Quite a few non-answers in there. Raises more questions than it settles.

After his strangely quick exit from Cervelo Test Team, it seems that former CSC DS Scott Sunderland will be working for the new British road team, said to planned for 2010.

Swedish researchers have developed a promising new test for EPO.

I have been remiss not to mention the new book A Dog in a Hat by Joe Parkin. I have not read it yet, but all reviews seem glowing.

Ivan Stevic claims that he had no idea he was under investigation by CONI and is going directly to CAS. Novel excuse, I suppose, although hard to believe. Keep in mind that the Oil for Drugs investigation involved huge amounts of intercepted telephone calls and video surveillance by the NAS. It was a serious criminal investigation of a large-scale doping network. The actual police raids were carried out only after specific targets were determined based directly on the phone and video evidence. For CONI to be provoked to slap Stevic with as harsh a penalty as a life ban suggests that they had some pretty serious evidence beyond just the dope in the frig. And Ettore Torri lately has a rather high win rate at CAS. Just ask Di Luca or Petacchi about that. Stevic might be claiming lack of due process, which in theory might work to some degree (if true), yet would it stand up to possible recorded phone calls of him chatting with Santuccione? Thanks to Neal Rogers for following up on this story and linking back here. But to be fair, I should point out that I was not exactly the first to report this story, as it was previously mentioned in the Italian media and on CSC forums.

A recent emailer asked me what evidence exists that Fuentes worked with soccer players. As far as I know, the best information about this was in a Le Monde article published Dec. 8th, 2006 titled "Le Real Madrid et le Barça liés au docteur Fuentes" and written by Stéphane Mandard. This article detailed Fuentes' written doping plans for both Real Madrid and Barca (FC Barcelona) players, and the coded notations for various doping products in these documents matched the notation used in the similar doping plans found for cyclists who were members of Saiz's Liberty Seguros team. (Probably similar to this.) The soccer doping plans included notations for EPO, blood transfusions, IGF, and other anabolic steroids. FC Valencia and Betis Seville were also implicated. While Fuentes was not officially working for any of these teams at the time of the Puerto raids, Barca officials had tried twice previously to hire him as their team doctor in 1996 and 2002. Despite this, after the article was published Barcelona team officials filed a lawsuit against Le Monde, and won damages. You will have to excuse me for finding the verdict of this lawsuit laughable. Fuentes himself also stated in a separate interview with Le Monde that he worked with soccer players in the Spanish first and second division leagues, although he refused to say which teams due to death threats:

"Q. Have you worked with Real Madrid and FC Barcelona?

A: I can't answer. I was threatened with death. I was told that if I said certain things, me or my family could have serious problems. I was threatened three times. And they will not threaten me a fourth time."

And we wonder why Operacion Puerto is permanently stalled in the Spanish courts, and why the death toll in soccer becomes more and more alarming.

Thanks go to all my recent emailers. Please excuse me if I have not yet replied to you, but it grows more and more difficult for me to keep up as the volume of email grows. I do read and appreciate all the messages.