I promise to get to Lance real soon, but I wanted to lead off with a bit of a tribute. Simon Lessing announced last week that he retiring from full-time competition. He raced this past weekend in Austin at the Steelhead 70.3 (finished 4th) but at age 37, he decided that fighting off nagging injuries and racing against guys 15 years younger just wasn't enough to keep him going. But Lessing will always be remembered for what he did before short-course triathlon became an Olympic sport. He won the short course (Olympic) World Championships in 1992, 1995, 1996, and 1998, plus the Long Course World Championships in 1996. After a disappointment 9th place finish in the Sydney Olympics, he started doing more and more long distance triathlons, moving up to the Ironman in 2004 when he set a course record in Lake Placid (8:23). However, Lessing struggled with his nutrition at future Ironman races, and after two DNFs in Kona, he stopped doing Ironman races and has mainly raced 70.3 races the last few years. He did finish second at Ironman 70.3 Worlds in 2006, and the last few years he has still showed the ability to compete with numerous wins. However, the grind of 23 years of competition have taken a toll, and he is retiring on his terms. Slowtwitch did a nice interview with him this week. Congrats Simon, and good luck with retirement!!
Back to cycling, where an old fave appears to be coming back. Yep, Alexander Vinokourov might be coming back from cycling. Ok, this is fairly confusing. When he tested positive for blood doping at the 07 TDF, he retired from the sport but still received a 1-year ban from the Kazakh Cycling Federation. Normally, the UCI requires a 2-year suspension but for whatever reason decided to not pursue a longer ban. This lead to Team Astana basically folding before being resurrected by Johan Bruyneel this year. Anyhow, Vino is still well-connected with the owners of Team Astana, and it is expected that the team owners could force Bruyneel to accept Vinokourov. This could create a team that includes Lance, Leipheimer, Kloden, and Contador. However, Vino did confirm last night that his goals were now the Giro d'Italia and the World Championships. Wow. This saga is just beginning, but stay tuned as cycling continues to make more legal headlines...
Speaking of Lance, he too made non-bike headlines when he got into a war of words with the president of ASO (race organizer of Tour de France) last week. After the ASO president stated that "We cannot say that he (Lance) has not embarrassed the Tour de France", Lance came back by claiming that he "never was found guilty of doping despite seven years of intense scrutiny". Regardless, Lance does have to tread carefully since his new team (Astana) was banned from this year's Tour. But keeping the biggest name out of the sport's biggest event would probably not be a great idea for anyone. So let's hope this back-and-forth ends sooner than later.
Also last week, one of the French doping labs volunteered last week to re-test some of Lance's 1999 urine samples. Predictably, Lance denied this request, since he claims that the storage problems and procedural errors mean that his 1999 samples could not provide any new evidence. Ummm, okay. Anyhow, the French appear to want nothing more than to catch Lance, while the Lance side must continue to show ample evidence that he's clean. It's guilty-until-proven-innocent. Crazy.
What was i just saying about dopers vs anti-dopers? As expected, the fallout on the Frank Schleck Affair (which i talked about last week) was quick. He was suspended by Team CSC as the Luxembourg Anti-Doping Agency figures out what to do. They are not having a good week, as it was discovered that Luxembourg's Beijing flag-bearer also tested positive for a banned substance at the Junior World Championships. Whoops. Anyhow, Schleck has maintained his innocence, and since the only "proof" is the money transfer to Dr Fuentes, it remains to be seen what will happen.
Oh yeah...we are now 5 days and counting from a big triathlon in Hawaii. I will do some investigating and maybe come back tomorrow with an update...
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