This ‘Tour’ is in fact a sort of Brittany → Lake Geneva straight line in 9 stages.

22 teams of 7 riders are engaged, including all top riders I believe.

    • Deschanel2017OPM
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      2 months ago

      Actually, she’s not extremely well regarded. I don’t mean among the masses or the officials, but among cycling followers. Her profile (isolation, training methods) has always looked rather suspicious, so the whole picture is so-so. A J. Labous, for example, has a better image among this specific public (but she will probably never win anything).

      • EvilCartyen@feddit.dkM
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        2 months ago

        Well, that’s a shame, and I hope it’s unfounded suspicions of course. It’s hard to gauge where we’re at in the doping cycle of the sport, but it’s been a wild 5 years after corona.

        • Deschanel2017OPM
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          2 months ago

          Well, in a general manner, I have a hard time believing that there is something really hardcore going on for the last few years and nobody is ever caught red-handed (except a few Portuguese and a couple of South-Americans doing it the old way). Beside anti-doping controls which can come late compared to the use of a new product: not a ‘oops’ moment in the background of one of the millions of videos and photographs published nowadays; not a disgruntled or gossipy employee among the ton of people who now work with/around riders, not a vengeful WAG publishing information; not a random police or customs car control. Nothing. So we’ve got a whole bunch of people involved (much bigger than in past times) which are not on average the cleverest in the world, and yet none of them ever makes a mistake… hmmwell…

          Beside a few top amateurs to which not a single team wants to give a pro contract because the professional milieu has little doubts about them doing something very wrong, I reckon the whole rest must be microdosing, and at present I don’t see much difference with several practices which are officially allowed and yet already beyond any definition of normality in my opinion.