John Doe and Slipstream to the Giro

So, its been a week now and guess who's in the news again!! That's right, our boys over at Rock Racing.

So here's the deal; a couple of days ago a story comes out that a rider identified as "John Doe" is suing the USADA in order to stop the test of a "B" sample, after the "A" sample came back clean. Everybody's first question is "why" and the second question is of course "who is John Doe". Now why is the USADA testing a sample that has already been deemed negative. That's a fair question, especially when taken with the fact that teams need to submit their rider list to the Tour of California by Mon. and one of the new rules is no riders allowed who are even under investigation. Could this second test be viewed as an investigation?? And how many times should a rider have to pass screening with the same sample?? Are they testing for different agents?? Then again, if you've already passed the screen and you havent been doping, because we all know that cycling is all cleaned up now with the new attitude going around and all the testing being done, what are you afraid of?? So that is Thursday's news.

Friday's news?? Rock Racing's Kayle Leogrande is John Doe. Shocker Huh?? Kayle is probably literally the most colorful man in the peleton. He owns a tattoo parlor and is completely covered neck down in tats'. Dont get me wrong I like tattoo, I've got a couple and will be getting more and I think we need more people out there with tattoo so it ceases being some sort of discriminative choice. But between that and Michael Ball's antagonistic tirades you gotta know something like this is gonna happen. I do really hope the guy is clean. He's fun to watch, and I'm not ready for Rock Racing to implode quite yet.

In other happier news; Slipstream got an invite to the Giro in May!! Yay!! Go Slipstream!! And today was the start of the Tour of Qatar. An 8k team time trial was used as a prologue. I like team TT's and I wish ASO would put them back in the TdF. Anyway, Slipstream was holding on to the top spot with only one team to go. Quickstep, last years Tour of Qatar ended up finishing with the day's best time by just 2 seconds. But Big Maggie and David Millar drove the team to quite the impressive first showing. Beating 15 other teams including 7 pro tour teams. Way to go guys. Oh yeah, who runs the tour of Qatar?? ASO. Who was in the stands?? Tour Boss Christin Prudhomme. And while Mr Prudhomme hasnt actually said the Slipstream will be invited, he has said that he wants an American team there and that Slipstream's doping policy's and controls are in line with what he wants to see at the tour this summer. The ASO are really tired of scandal and are hoping for a comparatively quiet July.

Go Slipstream!!

Oh yeah and I got to haul my fat ass out for a ride today. 39 miles and my legs were starting to soften. Its gonna be a long early season at this rate.