Tomorrow’s Giro di Lombardia, the last big race of the 2010 cycling season, risks being overshadowed by a rider protest against recent comments by Ettore Torri, chief anti-doping prosecutor of CONI, the Italian Olympic Committee, that all riders dope and performance enhancing substitutes in the peloton should be legalised.
Although CONI and Torri sought to distance themselves from his remarks the following day, as reported last week on road.cc, the damage was already done, with his comments attracting widespread condemnation throughout the sport, although some conceded that Torri has done more than most to fight doing, including his determined pursuit of the now banned Alejandro Valverde.
Yesterday, after winning the Giro del Piemonte, Omega Pharma-Lotto’s Philippe Gilbert, favourite for tomorrow’s race in which he is defending the title he won 12 months ago, confirmed that he had been approached by Roman Kreuziger of the Liquigas-Doimo team regarding the protest, according to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
"We will probably leave Milan ten minutes or so late,” said the 28-year-old. “It's a good idea that we take action,” he added, “because we cannot accept this situation."
The proposed action doesn’t have universal support within the peloton, however. HTC-Columbia’s Marco Pinotti, had been one of the first riders to condemn Torri’s statement last week.
“If you interrogate rider connected with doping, what did you expect them to say?” he asked, adding “They prefer to hide behind the belief "everyone is doping" instead admitting they are losers, wanckers [sic], cheaters, liars.”
This morning, the Italian rider used the same medium, his Twitter feed, to say: “According to Telegraph [sic]’? I personally don't know about any delayed start,” adding “And I personally don't agree with it.”
@Bungle_52 As a society we have been asking / expecting that enforcement for decades and decades. It has never happened and quite frankly will...
"There is a tiny bit of lateral play if you wiggle the cradle from the top, but it's not noticeable when riding at all."...
Lots of interesting comments, but surely we should be asking how these systems are allowed onto the road, since they clearly are extremely...
I guess that in moving the joint along the tube (away from the angle) means that they can't disguise the weld by smoothing the bead over the angle....
Shame. I'd been very interested in the rollr as seemed like a great option to just plop your race bike on when you can't keep it permanently set up...
I think I need to take another bath...
I suspect as well part of the problem is their not understanding what a foetus actually is... There seem to be a lot of anti-choicers who think...
It can be very dangerous as some drivers will feel the need to brake check the cyclist and/or tell them what they're doing wrong.
Wonder what their badge number is
I guess you could argue given how we've done so far - and our future plans - this is still realistically impossible for any given likely future. ...