Two Wheel Blogs

It's been two long years, but today is the day the suspension ends. Let's all join in and welcome Tyler Hamilton and his chimera twin back to the peloton.

How's that for an understated title? The real news today is that at least two of them have not admitted it voluntarily. Who? Frankie Andreu and an unnamed US Postal Service teammate. Seems the postal boys were doping to keep up with Lance in preparation for the Tour de France that year.

Or was it during the Tour? They won't say. Nor will they say who else was using.

[Frankie] Andreu said he was introduced to drugs in 1995 when he and Armstrong were teammates for Motorola, saying some riders felt they could no longer compete with Europeans whose rapid improvement was rumored to be aided by EPO.

Andreu's wife Betsy told the Times she found a thermal container with EPO in her refrigerator before the 1999 Tour and became angry but bowed to her husband's plea to take EPO to help finish the race and then never use it again.

Betsy Andreu told the Times she blames Armstrong for pressuring teammates to use drugs, saying her husband "didn't use EPO for himself, because as a domestique, he was never going to win that race.

"It was for Lance," she said.

Today should be a fun one for armchair GC contenders. The forums will be alive with rants and raves today.

Word on the street is Dick Pound is in the process of preparing a statement for the press.

Miyazato aces 2 holes in same round

Japan's Yusaku Miyazato became the first golfer to make two holes-in-one in the same round of a PGA Tour tournament when he aced a pair of par 3s Friday at the Reno-Tahoe Open.

Miyazato accomplished the feat on the 230-yard, downhill seventh hole and then the 173-yard, uphill No. 12 at the Montreux Golf and Country Club.

Bob Tway had two aces in the same tournament at the Memorial in 1994 and Glen Day did the same at the Greater Hartford Open the same year, but PGA Tour officials said they could find no record of any golfer on tour who pulled it off the same day.

Miyazato, 26, who lives in Tokyo, speaks only a little English so his caddie served as a translator for reporters after the round. But he knew how to answer directly when asked how he planned to celebrate Friday night.

"Drink much beer. Big party," he said with a wide smile.

OK so it's not cycling. Sue me. Funny too, because I don't think the Pounder is the type who prepares for anything.

Once again victory eludes George Hincapie. Is this guy ever going to catch a break? Sure, that's bike racing. The take-no-prisoners competitor in all of us says that's just tough. Show us how tough you are. Pick yourself up and race again tomorrow.

How many tomorrows does George have left to win one?

Party boy Jan Ullrich's problems keep getting worser and worser. Now his former team, Coast, is turning on him. They want to look into those Operación Puerto records to see if Ullrich was doping while on their payroll. If so they want their money back.

Jan's got to like them apples.

Disgraced German rider Jan Ullrich may be forced to pay money back to his former team Coast, who he rode with in the 2003 season, with former team sponsor Gunther Dahms accusing him of a breach of contract.

The 32-year-old former Olympic champion was barred from competing in this year's Tour de France after being implicated in a doping scandal when he was accused of collaborating with a doctor organising a blood-doping network.

Dahms is now keen to discover whether Ullrich breached his contract when he rode for the Coast team and could seek financial compensation if evidence is forthcoming.

"In the Coast team contract we reached an agreement with Ullrich that doping was prohibited," Dahms said in Spiegel magazine. ... Read more

Makes you wonder about whiney boy Floyd Landis. Mr. no-Credibility himself might lose his yellow jersey, but that might only be the beginning of his problems. The International Association of Professional Cycling Teams (The pro teams themselves have their own organization. Who knew?) is threatening to sue Floyd for the damage he's done to the image of cycling.

He's a big fish hooked solid and deep folks. Floyd's got nothing but whining in response to the charges against him.

Read through this Reuters story and see if you can find any reasonable defense strategy. Not much left other than the possibility of alien abduction on the eve of Stage 17. Who knows, maybe he'll throw that one out too, just to see if it sticks.

Disgraced Tour de France winner Floyd Landis said on Tuesday his positive drugs test was fatally flawed as he continued his media campaign to prove his innocence.

The American rider tested positive for excessive levels of testosterone after his remarkable comeback stage 17 victory but claims the test was not carried out correctly.

"There are extraneous circumstances that indicate there's some strange things going on with this test," Landis told BBC radio.

"You will see that they clearly broke the rules and their excuse was pathetic. The only explanation I can come up with is that there is some agenda here."

Landis said it was wrong for the International Cycling Union (UCI) and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to release details of his failed A test before his second "B sample" had been analyzed.

Read more...