Another incident of cheating has resulted in the abandonment of Team Cofidis from this year’s Tour de France. Just a day after Alexandre Vinokourov’s tested positive for an illegal blood transfusion and the departure of his team, Astana, this new incident of poor judgement only adds to the fact that drugs and illegal methods of boosting performance is still running rampant in the peloton.
This new incident involves Italian cyclist Cristian Moreni, who tested positive for testosterone. He was arrested by French police and this resulted in the abandonment of Team Cofidis.
In a sense, I’m glad to see that teams are taking responsibility by leaving the Tour rather than continuing and leaving a certain doubt in the air about their riders. For the sake of the sport, I hope the word is strong enough to ultimately deter individuals/teams from methods of cheating.
I’m so disheartened to hear that one of my Tour de France favorites, Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for an illegal blood transfusion. The test was performed after he won the individual time trial this past Saturday in dominating fashion.
Update: French gendarmes raid Astana Team hotel. (
Michael Rasmussen continues to wear the yellow jersey after finishing second in today’s stage 14 in the Pyrenees mountains, thus ending the second week of the Tour. The next two stages remain in the mountains and will prove to be difficult for many who want to catch the leader.
Alberto Contador won today’s stage with great support from his Discovery teammates and continues to wear the white jersey for best rookie rider. It looked like Team Discovery was up to something when George Hincapie, Yaroslav Popovich aided Levi Leipeheimer and Contador up the last climb to 
The first week is usually a feeling out process. As with previous installments of the Tour, there were many crashes in the early flat stages and now things have gotten very interesting as the peloton entered the Alps a few days ago.
