Seldom do cyclists get an opportunity to feel superior and lecture other sports on what they need to do to kick out the junkies in their midst. So seldom in fact that I had to go back to the 2008 Tour of Ireland to find out when last I said that. But in the schadenfreude stakes the last two weeks have been like hog heaven for cycling fans who wish the sports journos could find other sports to diss over doping.

First up there was soccerball and CSKA Moscow’s Sudafed-gate, when Sergei Ignashevich and Alexei Berezutsky were provisionally suspended after testing positive for a banned stimulant. The two were subjected to random drug tests after their team’s Nov 3rd match against Man Utd. For a brief moment, there was even talk of their team being dumped out of the Champions League, with UEFA rules applying a two-strikes-and-you’re-out policy to teams caught harbouring dopers. UEFA though were quick to pour cold water on that threat and point out the loophole that would stop that rule being applied to CSKA. Cause, like, you know, a final round of the Champions League without CSKA Moscow, well that would be like … oh, I don’t know … the World Cup without France?

More will be known on this one tomorrow, when a disciplinary hearing reviews the matter. Until then, we just have to keep our cynicism attached to a helium-filled balloon and watch it soar toward the ceiling as we tentatively accept that both players really had been using Sudafed – which, as everybody knows, contains pseudoephedrine, which used to be a banned PED, then became a monitored substance and will next year be back on the banned list – while battling man-flu and forgot to note this fact on their forms during the doping control. As you do when you’re a top-level athlete earning a shed-load of roubles and rely on your agent to do all the menial things in your life. Like fill in anti-doping forms properly.

Another substance which has been having an on-again off-again relationship with the banned list is Actovegin. Of all the drugs you’d have associated with Tiger Woods – Viagra, an excess of testosterone – it’s this calf’s blood extract which has leapt into the limelight.

This follows the disclosure that Canadian Mounties arrested Dr Anthony Galea away back in October after finding human growth hormone and Actovegin in the car of one of his assistants at a border crossing and then raiding the Institute of Sports Medicine Health and Wellness Centre near Toronto. While no longer on WADA’s banned list, using, selling or importing Actovegin is against the law in the United States. Galea’s clients have included Woods, Donovan Bailey, Dara Torres and a number of NFL players.

According to the NYT, where this story broke, Galea was treating Woods following his knee surgery last year. Galea was allegedly providing platelet-rich plasma therapy, in which blood is extracted, put through a centrifuge to separate out the protein-rich platelets from the red blood cells and then re-injected into the area of the injury. A practice which will be partly banned next year when WADA restricts its use on muscles but allows it for joints and tendons. Athletes resorting to this treatment will have to declare the fact to the relevant anti-doping authorities.(This treatment shouldn't be confused with Enrico Lazzaro's trick of sticking the extracted blood n a SodaStream and then adding a squirt of ozone to the blood before re-injecting it.)

While golf commentators and other sports journos have been busy Googling Actovegin since the NYT broke this story, cycling fans are all too familiar with it since it started to gain popularity among athletes in the run up to the Sydney Olympics in 2000, which will be remembered for the introduction of a test for EPO.

In 2000 it was Actovegin packaging – and the cloak and dagger manner in which US Postal staff disposed of it – which lead to a French investigation into doping at Lance Armstrong’s squad. Team manager Mark Gorski eventually admitted that the squad did have Actovegin but only for the use of a diabetic staff member, Julien De Vriese, and as a treatment for road-rash.

So abhorrent did US Postal find the allegations being made against them and their use of calf’s blood as a performance booster that Armstrong briefly threatened not to participate in the 2001 Tour. More helpful to the US Postal spin on the story was that Actovegin wasn’t on any banned list. It did eventually make it to the pre-WADA IOC list, where it lasted a year before it was decided that it was neither performance enhancing nor dangerous to athletes’ health and so was removed from the list.

If that decision didn’t seem a bit premature in 2002, when Actovegin was among the many products found in the car of Raimondas Rumšas’ wife following his third place finish in the Tour, then events at the 2003 Tour certainly called into question its un-banning. That was the year Jesús Manzano collapsed. In 2004, when he blew the lid on doping at Kelme, Manzano listed Actovegin as being part of a cocktail of drugs that brought about his collapse. Manzano’s allegations paved the way for 2006’s Operación Puerto where again Actovegin figured among the inventory of substances seized by the Guardia Civil when they raided Fuentes’ offices.

Earlier this year Het Nieuwsblad reported that two unnamed members of the Ukrainian national team in the Tour de l'Avenir were charged with "possession of and smuggling of products [including Actovegin] whose sale is banned in France." The father of one of the riders, along with the team’s soigneur were also arrested.

At heart, both cases here revolve around legalised doping - therapeutic use and a substance that is not considered to be a PED. In theory then, neither story should really be being reported. Despite this though, both stories seem to have caught the imagination of sports journalists. And while they have momentarily taken the heat off cycling's problems, maybe these two stories will encourage the UCI to follow up on AFLD claims that too much legalised doping is taking place within cycling.

It's another quiet day on the Guardian's sports pages and even they can't be bothered milking any more from the will-he-won't-he Wiggins-to-Sky story. So they're back to milking that other hoary old favourite, the LA story.

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Recently, someone asked why it is that there’s so many junkies who protest and protest and protest their innocence. The implication of the question was that if a lie lasts forever it’s probably true and we should just believe the lying cheating bastards and assume that the tests really don’t work. But what if the lying cheating bastards really are just lying after all? How many times would they have to fool us before we’d say shame on us and not just shame on them?

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DublinBikes, Dublin’s communal bike rental scheme, launched last month and is already claiming to be a  success, with more than 10,000 of the city’s citizens signing up for annual membership of the scheme.

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One of the weird things about being a cycling geek is how you have to get used to your sport being used as a whipping boy by other sports. I know we sometimes bring it on ourselves, by actually discussing the needle and the damage done but even so, it does rather grate a bit when you’re hearing the criticism being used simply as a distraction from another sport’s problem.

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Some of you may remember some of the promises made by The Most Controversial Cyclist In the Whole History Of The Ever Ever when He returned to the pro peloton last year. One of them, you may recall, was to host a Global Cancer Summit in Paris immediately after the Tour de France ended. Indeed, this Global Cancer Summit seemed at the time to the be the favoured reason-of-the-day as to why He was throwing his leg over a pushbike once more and gracing us again  with His luminous presence. But, as with the Most Rigorous And Transparent Testing Progranmme Ever, things didn't quite work out as planned. And His Global Cancer Summit yesterday kicked off in the main hall of the RDS in Dublin, which the previous week played host to some wedding fair or other.

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As everybody knows by know, the Team GB Reach For The Sky+ Box road team will be winning the Tour de France within a few years. Dave Brailsford has promised it so it must be true. But it seems that the Brits could face competition from an unexpected quarter ... or rather hemisphere. The Aussies want their own Tour team too. And Cadel Evans could be leading them, especially with it already looking likely that Silence-Lotto will fail to support his Grand Tour ambitions. Again.

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According to CN, Don Catlin has secured the contract to carry out Columbia and Garmin's independent testing programmes. Testing has already commenced. Catlin had been Columbia's original choice for their testing programme but ACE ended up getting the gig.

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It's cycling Sunday in the UK today, with the Absurder giving-over seven and a half thousand words, give or take, to Nicole Cooke, Mark Cavendish and British Cycling's management team. Three different journalists – Anna Kessel, Tim Lewis and William Fotheringham – looking at three different aspects of the sport in the UK. Not bad for a wet and miserable Sunday in November.

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Seven-time Tour de France loser Jan Ullrich has today won a court battle to secure €340,000 in salary owed to him since his 2003 sojourn with the ill-fated Team Coast.

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