Lovedawg mentioned this link in an earlier post, but damn. In case you missed it, the Vuelta is swinging yard on this one:
Grand tours seek a dope-free ‘promised land’
When the director of the Vuelta a España, Victor Cordero, unveiled the route of next year’s race at a ceremony in Madrid on Wednesday, he said in a fiery speech: “We must stop the unending suspicions and conflicts. We share the same ideas as our colleagues at the Giro and Tour de France. Next year, there will not be more than 20 teams at the start. And they will have to respond to our impeccable ethical criteria. Only riders holding biological passports will be invited. And we will count on the sporting quality of the prospective teams.”Cordero, claiming the 2008 Vuelta will be less hard and more vibrant, added, “After all the blows we have taken, this will be the Vuelta of expectation, representing a new cycling. It will be clean and spectacular, a sort of Promised Land.”
Source: velonews.com
Aside from shortening the thing to three days and running blood tests every 20 minutes, I don’t know what in the hell the expect to do.
But, in all honesty, I wish them nothing but the best. Good luck with it. It’s going to be a fucking mess.
…”aside from shortening the thing to three days & running blood tests every 20 minutes”…i’m beginning to think yer right about that approach…
…i wanna be comfortable w/ the idea that teams like jonathon vaughters ‘slipstream’ & the revamped stapleton & riis squads are now doing the right thing, but fuck, what can you really believe ???…
? Fucking mess is an understatement.