Dumb and Dumber

It has been brewing for a while – a venting session against the dopers (another against the prepatore is to follow). My vexation this time is squarely reserved for the Teutonic pixie – Stefan Schumacher.

Not only because of his dumb and dumber antics of attacking in back-to-back mountain stages, but also for taking two stage wins while doped up to the gills. Add to this the fact that he still wants his Quick Step contract honoured for 2009! Does this man not know his own intellectual limits?

Now Bernard Kohl, his awkwardness apparent on the podium and in just about any social gathering, was a slightly more tolerable cheat. He didn’t go on a day-to-day blitz session like his Prussian counterpart. The Austrian was seemingly contrite and made a number of heart wrenching public apologies.

We will probably find Herr Schumacher and Kohl in a few years time delivering the post or selling DB railway tickets in Dresden. That is where all bad pros spend their post-cycling careers.

Last year on July 15th, Stage 8 to Tignes, Stefan Schumacher was struggling up the 20 km Cormet de Roselend climb.

I was positioned just 5km into the climb. Papa was some 60km’s away near the finish at Tignes.

Schumacher was behind the main group - alone and soundly dropped. And this is where I gleefully beat a rival fan to a keepsake that the German discarded. And now I can’t believe that I have a talisman of his – a jettisoned Gerolsteiner water bottle from his cage (probably where he belongs).

Prepatore - doctors or preparers who help cyclist's to dope