This is the biggie, the queen stage that also decides the race, ending in a mountaintop finish at Snowbird. Best thing, we're getting video of the entire stage, including the early attacks. Before we get to Snowbird we have two other major climbs.

Video: Tourtracker

So many words that I need to write just to get this stupid thing to publish.  I still need one two three four five six seven eight nine more.

Yesterday, Gerard Vroomen used his blog to raise some questions about the BioPassport (here, and with follow up here).  Specifically, Vroomen is worried that *he* hasn't heard of any testing being conducted on any riders this year.  This is, as he admits, anecdotal, but he is worried.  To add to his worries, he outlines a concern that court costs might be swallowing the testing budget.

This was mentioned in the Utah thread yesterday, but that wasn't the right place for a discussion.  Given the appearance of a long article by Daniel Benson in Cyclingnews covering Vroomen's claims, Michael Ashenden's support of them, and a detailed UCI response, it seems that this now has legs.  Since no fanpost has appeared to provide a space for the discussion, I figured I'd put one up.  

So have at it.  Links to the original pieces are above. 

According to Shane Stokes at Velonation, there has apparently been a massive raid in Italy, involving among other things the offices of one UCI ProTeam, rumored to be Katuysha.  The linked story is just a very preliminary report, and there is no mention of how or whether this is connected to other investigations.  Oddly, the targeted riders are supposed to be Russian riders living in Spain, but their records are apparently in the team's Italian offices. 

Since much more is likely to develop on this, it seems worthwhile to have someplace to collect information as it becomes available. 

Edit:  Tuttobici story here.  Not really any more info. 

Edit 2:  Cyclingnews have more details, and moderate things considerably.  

Since nobody seems to be making a thread for this, I'll step up.  The women go off at 12:30 PST (about 35 minutes from now) and the men at 2:30.  

Even better one can watch these things online here. 

Updates:  Direct link here seems to work better than the one above.  Also, following Lyne of Podiuminsight's twitter updates makes it much easier to keep track of the race for anything but first. 

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I had an Astana breakup question to ask, but one that's not necessarily related to Team Radio Shack, and realized that, in fact, there is no terribly appropriate place to ask such a question right now. So I'm making one.  So there.  You are all very very welcome to join me is speculating about what's coming next, and next after that, in the soap opera that shall be called...

...The Decline and Fall of The Astana Cycling Team! (ooooo, literary allusion...several of them acutally!)

Oh, my question:  Presumably Johann Bruyneel will remain employed as the DS of Astana for the rest of the season, and their current roster will remain more or less intact until then too.  The exception being Vino is coming back tout de suite.  Thus my question:  is there any reason why JB can't more or less tell the sponsors to go suck eggs and not take Vino to the Vuelta, thus assuring that he has an invite to the Vuelta?  He's surely cheeky enough, no?  

Aside from that, think of this as an open thread. 

Given that it's Tour de France time, and the recent history of the race almost naturally leads people to wonder about almost any rider who's doing well, it seems appropriate to try to lay out some rules about when it might or might not be justified to be suspicious that something fishy is going on based on a rider's performance.

This, I think, becomes especially pertinent given that we are trying not to be a clearinghouse for baseless rumor about doping, which hurts everyone.

That said, determining standards for this sort of thing is difficult, and I'm sure that the collective wisdom of the Cafe will outstrip anything I can come up with on my own. So I'm going to make a suggestion, and hope that discussion improves it.  

Here's my proposed rule:  A remarkable or unprecedented performance by a rider would justify suspicion of doping only if there do not seem to be ordinary, legal factors that could adequately account for that rider's good or significantly improved performance.

A good test case for this rule would be Brad Wiggins performance in this year's Tour, and today especially.  

Wiggins has never before this season approached anything like a top ten finish in the Tour, or any three week stage race.  He has also never demonstrated extraordinarily climbing ability of the sort that we saw flashes of in the Giro and clear evidence of today.  So what gives? Can we reasonably suspect that perhaps, as some in the press have already suggested, he's doing something fishy?  

Only the testers can tell us for sure, but based on the above rule, there doesn't seem to be any real reason to be concerned. Wiggins has changed his focus, his training, and most importantly his physiology (lost 6kg compared to his Olympic weight) considerably over the past year, in ways that should, all things considered, lead to vastly improved performance as a climber.  So if he does better than he has previously as a climber, we don't have to worry, since it can be explained by known factors that do not involve doping.

I'm hoping that the rule above would be useful for other cases as well.  But I'm sure it can be improved, which task I leave up to you dear Cafe readers.

edit:  Just to be very clear, I meant rule as in standard or criterion, not rule of conduct.  I'm not trying to suggest that some sorts of topics should be off limits or anything, or some views should be barred from getting expressed.  But I thought it might be useful to try to formulate a standard to help us distinguish what may and may not be suspicious. 

one more edit, in honor of bradBordeaux:  As far as I'm concerned, the takeaway of using the standard is that no rider, so far, has done anything that is inherently suspicious in this Tour.  It looks clean, and we should all be happy about that.  I probably should have said that before, to avoid giving the impression that I'm trying to stir up speculation that otherwise wasn't going on. 

According to this cyclingnews story the UCI is going to inform teams of suspicious results next week and leave it up to them whether to take action.  

Relevant section:

"The riders will be informed early next week," said UCI president Pat McQuaid, according to AFP. "We will inform their teams and national federations. We will [then] name the riders and will start disciplinary proceedings against them."

McQuaid did not reveal the names of the riders involved nor the teams effected. Sources within the UCI have indicated that the names of riders could emerge on Monday of next week.

McQuaid went on to explain that the UCI would not itself be suspending the named riders, instead leaving it to teams to decide what action should be taken immediately against their riders. "There will be no provisional suspension. It will be up to the teams to decide what they do," said McQuaid.

So 'disciplinary action' is actually going to be limited to letting the teams decide what to do?  Needless to say, those three paragraphs don't entirely sit well with one another.

Edited to to add:  Jens actually beat me to posting this here.  Discussion ensued.  Leaving this up because it's probably worth discussing under its own heading rather than in a race thread. 

It gets worse:  majope also beat me.  And more discussion.  I didn't read the race thread, silly me.

The article in the New York Times today on the time trial and everyone's relative position is one of those masterpieces of current journalism where the title is all about LA even though he's not really the story.  For non-cycling press, its pretty good.  But like any journalist with sense, the author found Dave Z irresistible.  He must be to journalists as shiny objects are supposed to be to fish. Anyway, the last lines of the article are priceless:

He said there was a reason for his success, and Zabriskie — known for his dry wit — may or may not be serious in his explanation.

“I truly believe I can manipulate the earth’s forces and use them to my advantage,” he said.

I respect Levi, the other nominal subject of the article, but compared to that he has all the personality of a Land's End sweater.