VeloNews | Boonen tests positive for cocaine

Paris-Roubaix winner and former world champion Tom Boonen has tested positive for cocaine, Het Laatste Nieuws reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper said that the 27-year-old Boonen tested positive for the drug three days before the Tour of Belgium on May 25, although anti-doping officials say the rider will not face suspension since use of the drug is not specifically banned except in competition.

Boonen and his Quick Step squad have scheduled a news conference for Wednesday at the team’s headquarters in Wielsbeke, Belgium, promising “an annoucement regarding the current situation.”

More on the Boonen situation on VeloNews here and here, Eurosport, and the Guardian UK.

Will be interesting to see what comes out of this. I can certainly understand the allure of cocaine … when I was younger, I did a fair amount of “experimentation” with various illicit chemical substances, cocaine amongst them … I know firsthand what the effects are, how it makes the user feel, and why someone would want to continue using.

Thankfully, after a really bad night in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco involving glass pipes, getting robbed (twice), and the offer of needles (with other substances, which I turned down), I wised up. I have been clean since August 1991; almost 17 years at this point.

This is not some huge confession that I’m putting out here … I’ve never really hidden this from anyone, and have discussed it fairly freely when the topic has come up. I’m certainly not proud of it, but nor am I ashamed of it.

To me, there is a huge difference between taking drugs to cheat, and taking drugs to escape. What I did, and what Brother Boonen has been doing was seek an escape from the pressures of our lives. Different pressures I’m sure, but not always easy to admit and seek help for.

Hopefully, this will be Boonen’s wake-up call, and he’ll seek the help he needs, rather than continue down the same path that Marco Pantani and Jose Maria Jimenez have traversed, to their unfortunate and tragic deaths.

And lest anyone worry, based on other posts on the blog over the past year or so, as bad as my life sometimes seems to me now, it’s not nearly as bad as it was in the last 1980s and early 1990s … I am in no danger of falling back into old habits.

I’m not even drinking really … a beer here and there, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a real cocktail. It certainly wasn’t at home. I still have the same 4 unopened bottles of vodka in the freezer that I’ve had since posting about the The Great Vodka Taste Test last fall.

From Cyclingnews.com:

Team CSC suffered a double blow on the Giro d’Italia’s third stage, losing Bradley McGee and Stuart O’Grady to injury. The team’s Australian duo were involved in a crash on the 221 kilometre stage to Milazzo.

Both Olympic champion McGee and 2007 Paris-Roubaix winner O’Grady suffered a broken collarbone as a result of the accident. While McGee immediately withdrew from the event, O’Grady continued on to finish the stage eight minutes behind but will not start tomorrow’s fourth stage.

“Today was a real downer for us,” admitted CSC sports director Kim Andersen. “First of all we had several riders involved in the crashes but mostly because of the two broken collar bones of course.

“It’s a great loss to have to do without Bradley and Stuart because they’ve both been extremely valuable for us in our fight for a good overall position in this race,” he added.

Does it matter if you race clean if you crash out?

Zabriskie out yesterday; McGee and O’Grady out today … Millar went down today as well …

I think the Italians are conspiring to remove either a) English-speakers or b) non-dopers (if not both) from this year’s edition of the Giro d’Italia. It must be the Mafia …

Liège-Bastogne-Liège is being broadcast live on Cycling.TV, and again I’m able to watch it without a subscription … much poorer quality video than a couple weeks ago for Paris-Roubaix, but I’ll take what I can get.

And even grainy/pixelated coverage of Phillippe Gilbert attacking hard on La Rédoute is pretty amazing.

And now Paolo Bettini pulls Gilbert back … and now Andy Schleck is taking a flyer … and Schleck is caught by Stefan Schumacher! With about 30km to go, this is going to be an exciting finish!

Definitely a lot Big Ring moves here.

Update, a few hours later:

Nice work by Valverde and Rebellin to reel the youngster in, with older brother Fränk on their wheel. It was too bad that Fränk didn’t have the snap in his legs to drop the two other riders after the great set-up that Andy gave him … but the brothers still managed to finish third and fourth.

I wonder how many times (if ever) that’s happened in a Classic?

Eurosport’s early coverage was of the Portuguese GP leg of the MotoGP tour … so I went looking for other sources of either audio or video coverage, hoping not to have to pay for coverage of Paris Roubaix.

But, I couldn’t find anything … so l got out my credit card, and pointed my browser to Cycling.TV, and I’m not exactly sure what happened, but there was Paris-Roubaix … live, and free. It’s supposed to only be part of their Premium (or higher) packages, but somehow I managed to grab an unrestricted feed.

So that’s two of the Monuments of cycling that I’ve been able to watch live, for free, thus far this season.

We’ll see if my luck holds out in two weeks, for Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the next major Belgian classic (albeit in Wallonia, rather than Flanders).

“A Paris-Roubaix without rain is not a true Paris-Roubaix. Throw in a little snow as well, it’s not serious.” — Sean Kelly

In just a few short hours, the 106th edition of Paris-Roubaix will depart the streets of Compiègne, heading north some 260 kilometers to the industrial town of Roubaix; along the way, encountering 28 sections of pavé (or cobblestones) covering about 53 kilometers of the overall course.

While the race itself is in France, Belgian riders have won 51 of the 105 editions run thus far; truly a race for the hard-men, the Flahutes.

Eddy Merckx won this race 3 times, as did Belgians Rik Van Looy and Johan Museeuw; and Roger de Vlaeminck won the race 4 times. Collectively, these 4 riders have accounted for fully one-quarter of Belgium’s wins in Roubaix.

Is it any wonder that the Vlaamse Leeuw flies as much along this course in France as it does the week before at the Ronde van Vlaanderen each year?

Oddly, to me anyway, the best quote I have ever heard about the race came not from a Belgian or a Frenchman, but from the Dutchman Theo de Rooy, after the 1985 edition:

“It’s a pile of shit, this race, it’s a whole pile of shit … you’re working like an animal, you don’t have the time to piss and you wet your pants … you’re riding in mud like this and you’re slipping and … it’s a pile of shit, you must clean yourself otherwise you will go mad …”

When asked by John Tesh, who was covering the race for ABC, if he’ll ever ride it again, de Rooy responds:

“Sure, it’s the most beautiful race in the world!”

Tesh, his crew and de Rooy then all burst out in laughter.

Thankfully, the forecast is for rain …

And people think that only Paris-Roubaix has nasty cobbles … De Ronde van Vlaanderen has cobbles AND hills … and it’s in Belgium instead of France.

And this what it’s all about.