Unhappy champions

Even in the absence of his leadout man Mark Renshaw, HTC-Columbia sprinter Mark Cavendish still won the 18th stage of the Tour de France. He not only won it, but did so in a very convincing manner- 5 bike lengths! In profession bike racing, sprints have been won by a pixel. In the 2005 Tour, Rabobank rider Peter Weening was declared the winner in a two-up spring against current Lance Armstrong teammate Andreas Kloden after a computer analyst showed that Weening was one pixel ahead of the German on the line. Taking that into consideration, winning by 5-bike lengths is just out of this world!

Today, defrocked 2006 Tour de France Floyd Landis said in an interview, “Rather than go into the entire detail of every single time I’ve seen it, yes, I saw Lance Armstrong using drugs.”Greg Lemond, a 3-time Tour champion, also wrote in his blog that if he was LA, he would have wilted under the doping scrutiny and would have quit the race.

Well, I guess that with two days to go before LA rides into the sunset and gone from cycling for good, they have to make a last ditch effort to make LA look bad. I wouldn’t easily believe a guy who made us believe that he won the Tour fair and square for four years, asked for financial help from the public for his legal defense and then claims that he has seen the light, no way.

As for Lemond, maybe it didn’t get into his mind that LA raced clean. As far as I know, the system used to catch cheats have been in place for a long time and has convicted a lot of cheats. But fact is, LA never failed any doping test. And until he tests positive, he is clean. If Lemond has all the goods, he should sue LA and let the court decide. Instead, both he and Landis are engaged in nothing but chismis!

Carlos Satre, the 2008 champion, is also another disgruntled champion, calling Alberto Contador “spoiled” when Contador asked him to slow down after 3rd overall Samuel Sanchez crashed on stage 17.Contador, the unlikely champion 2 years ago, was also angry with the media last year when he didn’t get the attention he thought he deserved as defending champion.