Chasing wheels

Brian Smith tweet has got me quite excited:

"arranged an interview with Robert Millar for ITV's Tour de France show....25 yrs ago 'Bob' finished 4th and won the KOM...friend and legend!"

That would be the first interview in years and would be a great way to mark the 25th anniversary of his King Of The Mountains title.

Five riders named as having produced values irregular enough to warrant sanction was never going to be enough to meet expectations that had built up over months. I think my initial reaction on twitter summed it up pretty well:

"@stephenfarrand Not even enough to qualify as anti-climatic. at least Fofanov had the decency to be on a team that made it newsworthy"

Perhaps the problem lies in how the blood/biological passport has been explained and perceived. Lack of information and a the desperation of fans to see an end to the latest phase in the arms race have led to it being forced into a place it was never meant to be.

Was it ever going to bust everyone? Probably not and maybe some were wrong to hope it would.

Was it allowed to grow a reputation to be feared as the ultimate weapon against doping? Almost certainly, but who is responsible for that is more difficult to define. One person who certainly shouldn't be blamed is Anne Gripper who has resurfaced now that the first results are out and perhaps shed some light on it how it works:

"The passport software actually interprets the raw blood results and it provides information for the experts to review. It also requires the human touch and knowledge of an expert to look at the data and interpret it. Just because a profile exceeds certain limits we're looking at doesn't mean that the rider is doping. The experts then decide if the results can't be explained by anything pathological or physiological or if the rider has been doping through manipulation of his blood."

Read the Anne Gripper interview on Cyclingnews.com

I don't think these first cases will be the last but whether it becomes an effective weapon against doping remains to be seen.

Way back in 2006 I made my most successful tip on the race ever: I told a friend who does a fair bit of betting to take Flooyd Landis to win on Betfair at around 70/1. He might well have put a hundred quid on him while I didn't, not wanting to jinx his bet. Regardless of what happened after the race, it paid out in July.

It was probably a month or two out from the start when he placed his bet and that's when the market tends to be at its ripest for picking. But there's still some pretty good prices to be had, even on some of the most obvious favourites you can still make a reasonable return on a 5 quid fun bet if it comes off.

For me the obvious value is currently in the sort of riders who don't get the sort of talk up that Armstrong, Contador and Evans will. They tend to be a bit longer odds until the race starts to shake out.

Most striking is the price on the defending champion, Carlos Sastre, who can still be picked up at the equivalent of 27/1 and last year's 4th place rider, Christian Vandevelde, at monstrous 129/1. Denis Menchov, 3rd last year and winner of the Giro D'Italia 2009, at 15/1 looks decidedly short odds by comparison.

Perhaps it's a case that the money going into the market isn't as smart as it should be. Vandevelde's price probably reflects his injuries at the Giro but if he has a good Tour de Suisse, then it could come in pretty quickly.

If you are an experienced gambler and know how to balance your books, I imagine that there's good money to be made in lay betting, something which I've never been able to get my head round. Looking down the list there's plenty of riders who are unlikely to even start (Alejandro Valverde, Andreas Kloden, Ivan Basso) so it might be worth checking what the policy is. Betting on them not to win would seem to be all too easy, so obviously I've missed something.

Closer to the time you should see head-to-head bets appear (ie X vs Y) which are usually fun and frequently poorly chosen meaning that a bit of cycling knowledge can go a long way, for example in sprints.

We're into the first week of June and the clouds of war gather ever faster around the Tour De France. There's three stories that you should read to understand where cycling is heading between now and July.

1. Bernard Kohl's doping confession in L'Equipe and his claim "The first ten should have been positive"

via Cyclingfansanon's twitter. While we're on the subject: CFA, isn't it hypocritical to refuse to write your blog until the UCI deliver something from the blood passport scheme while berating others for their complicity in the omerta? Making a sound case isn't something you should rush into to please the gallery, just ask those who are familiar with miscarriages of justice.

Jonathan Vaughters counters Kohl on Cyclingnews

2. Antonio Colom positive for EPO being less than surprising to anyone.

Coupled with the dispute with some of their riders over what constitutes a fair and binding contract, it looks like there's trouble ahead for the Russian Katusha team. Robbie McEwen has denied there's a rift but it seems there is a sticking point. I've seen the suggestion that the management wants 5 years salary for "discrediting" the team, not necessarily testing positive. If that is the case then I fully understand where the riders are coming from.

3. Anne Gripper is alive and the blood passports are set to be tested. Conference today in Paris and the headline is "Riders face action over passport data - UCI".

We'll know names next week and then you can all start filling in your Panini sticker albums for July and marking which pages are going to have gaps in them. There are those who say it's taken too long, I am not one of them. Good investigation takes time, ask any journalist of note. People like John Ware and Peter Taylor don't come up with their work in a matter of months, it takes years of research, experience and blind alleys before they come to a conclusion.

Lance in France, originally uploaded by Bike miscellany.

With a nod to the excellent Competitive Cyclist for uploading this. It's a work of strange beauty and genius.

Now I'm running through a list of other "legendary moments from Le Tour" that I would love to see rendered in this fashion. I'm quite tempted to track down this (unintentional?) work of brilliance.