Ricco Comes "Clean"

Pun intended.

It looks like Tour de France doper Riccardo Ricco has admitted that he used EPO. I'm glad he admitted it - why is it only Europeans who are willing to admit it?

The two highest profiled American dopers still maintain their innocence: Tyler Hamilton tested positive for blood doping after the 2004 Olympics (which didn't stick because they messed up his B sample) and the Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain), but denies to this day that he had any blood other than his own in his body. Now that his suspension is over he rides for Michael Ball's Rock Racing. Which is basically like admitting he doped. (I mean, why would you ride for Rock Racing if you weren't on drugs?) (Oh, and his name turned up in Operation Puerto...tsk, tsk, tsk.)

Then there's Floyd Landis. Do I really need to go into Floyd Landis?

So this headline on Bicycling.com shouldn't surprise me: Vande Velde is Clean. Yep, folks that's right. It is now officially news when an American rider doesn't dope. This headline really isn't news, since Christian Vande Velde, who finished fifth in this year's Tour de France, rides for the very transparent Garmin-Chipotle team (formerly Team Slipstream).

Actually, the reason that this is a headline at all is that Garmin released it's internal testing records to the media and Bicycling was able to review them. Try to get Rabobank to do that!

Garmin is on the forefront of doping controls, so in future races I'm not rooting for an individual like Lance Armstrong or George Hincapie (who rides for Team Columbia another team with excellent internal doping controls). Nope, I'm just pulling for Garmin-Chipotle, because then I can know that the guy who wins today, will still be the winner tomorrow.

...oh and in case anybody cares, Spaniard Carlos Sastre of Team CSC won the tour this year.