This will hurt me...

So Bjarne Riis has confessed to what many long suspected: he was doping when he won the 1996 Tour de France. Coupled with Eric Zabel's admissions, some see it either as a sad day for cycling or a triumph for good over evil. I would have thought that winning the tour is a great achievement whether on the gear or not. Let's not fool ourselves, most of the top teams have had access to 'training aides' since the very beginning, whether it was ether to dull the pain at the beginning of the twentieth century, amphetamines in the 1950s or EPO today. The whole notion of a few bad apples is utter nonsense and reeks of 'head in the sand'. Open it up and let them go for it, I reckon.

Some time ago I posted BLee's test figures when broken down in 10 test blocks and found a pattern. It looked like: 1–10 : 48 w @ 19.37 11–20: 32 w @ 36.43 21–30: 32 w @ 40.09 31–40: 42 w @ 35.26 41–50: 42 w @ 31.95 51–55: 17 w @ 34.29 It has come to my attention that Steve Harmison has a similar pattern. His career breakdown looks like: 1 to 10 : 28 w @ 36 11 to 20: 59 w @ 19 21 to 30: 34 w @ 35 31 to 40: 34 w @ 32 41 to 50: 34 w @ 37 So it seems that they are as rubbish as each other.