tough talk.

perusing cyclingnews.com today, shows alot of tough talk.

let's explore.

"i'm not blind. you know who hides themselves, who disappears for three months and all of a sudden can fly. i have always been told that you can't question the performances of others. but now i am starting to do that. even if it makes me crazy." -tom boonen.

and further;

""vino is a dirty cheat who they ought to suspend for his lifetime." -tom boonen.

hard to argue with that logic.

"i am fed up with this. they make our life difficult and complicated. through their obvious stupidity, they risk the existence of the teams, including soigneurs, mechanics, bus drivers and so on." - jens voigt, argues not only for himself, but for the working class. (typical european).


"there are a lot of riders in his team whose contracts will expire at the end of the season, thanks to him they may also be living on the street. if a rider like him was in my team, i wouldn't hesitate to punch him in the face." -jerome pineau (bouygues telecom)

he was refering to moreni of cofidis, but i'm sure the sentiment applies to all dopers.

i was happy to see some of the teams rotesting doping/dopers at the start of the stage yesterday, they were cofidis, ag2r, agritubel, bouygues telecom, crédit agricole, française des jeux, gerolsteiner, and t-mobile. cofidis is, of course ironic, but if you were doping and your team stayed at the line, would you have the balls to roll away? moreni didn't.

in his defence, the testosterone probably shrunk them.

of course, not everyone thought the protest was cool.

"[the stage was] a bit of a mess at the start, with some riders trying to protest. i thought we were here to race our bikes, not to make political statements." -cadel evans.

well, cadel, it seems we may also be here to sue the pants off people.

the predictor-lotto protour team is planning on filing a claim against alexandre vinokourov and his astana team for loss of publicity.

it is interesting that cadel would have that opinion.

tom boonen himself thinks cadel is the only clean gc contender.

"i have given up my belief in most of the rest," he said, "it is possible to ride the tour without doping. and to ride and win, too. and cadel evans proves in my eyes that you could win it without doping."

maybe cadel knows something we don't.

and the chicken?

well, "we are not scared to talk about rasmussen, only your grandmother would believe that you missed four doping controls by accident." sebastian hinault (crédit agricole).

they aren't scared of him.

"i don't want to think about it. this is a disaster, man. i hadn't held it for possible." - michael boogerd.

no possible? to get caught? cuz it seems to me that everyone knew all about rasmussen.

yep, lots of good gossip today.