Enjoying it a lot so far. Thanks for starting the thread.
My questions are about cycling,
Who is your all time favourite cyclist from any era you have watched?
How has the widespread use of drugs amongst many top riders past (and perhaps present) impacted on your enjoyment of the sport? - For me knowing that almost all of my favourite riders from the 1990s and early 2000s were doped in some way has unfortunately tainted my view of the sport. How can I get around this and start enjoying watching these great athletes on their bikes again?
Have you visted any of Kazakhstan's neighbouring countries?
- I see occasional poker tournament series in Kazakhstan and I really would like to go!
Wow what a question about cycling. I'll be honest. I grew up idolising Marco Pantani, I mean who couldn't love the guy? The antithesis of the metronomic riders like Indurain and Armstrong, a really cool dude and just fantastic to watch riding a bike. They everyone got busted and I was like you, how can you trust anyone? You can't and I still don't.
It's implausible to me that during the 90's and 2000's that if, a conservative estimate, one third of the peloton were doping how could any clean rider ever win a race? So in my eyes for two decades anyone who won a race was doping.
Now I don't care for any riders except the ones I've backed, I assume everyone is doping and factor that into my gambling.
A little anecdote about doping and gambling...
April 2013 and I'm watching the Giro Del Trentino and I see some journeyman Italian riding blasting away from some top climbers and finishing second behind a breakaway winner.
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Mauro Santambrogio is a name that will live with me forever. I just knew he was doping, absolutely 100% with his little fat face flying up the steepest climbs Italy had to offer.
Literally before he crossed the line I was on Oddschecker looking up odds for the Giro D'Italia. 300/1! 300 to f***ing 1!
A quick check to make sure he was going to ride the race and I loaded up with a bet big enough to buy half a house.
Fast forward a few weeks and it's stage 14 of the Giro, the first real mountain stage. Nibali looks very strong but Wiggins has crashed and Santambrogio is hanging around the top 10 with a shot at making top 3 and banking me a 75/1 place winner.
I remember stage 14 vividly, well the last 200m because the fog was so bad that there was no live coverage except for a camera at the finishing line. Visibility was about 100m and I waited and waited watching an empty road until suddenly...
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I saw the luminous yellow before I saw his fat face but I just knew. Trying to contain my excitement sat watching it with my wife was difficult to say the least.
When all was done and dusted Santambrogio was in 4th place overall just 1 second behind 3rd, he was clearly the strongest climber along with Nibali and a place was in the bag, hell Nibali could have a bad day or a crash and I'd be looking at a 300/1 winner.
A teammate of Santambrogio's was Danilo De Luca, a former Giro winner but a bit long in the tooth now, still a great teammate to have in the high mountains except he wasn't helping, he was attacking every day, in breaks, being a nuisance, I couldn't figure it out.
Then it happened, De Luca caught doping and thrown out of the race. The same day Santambrogio cracked on the mountains and struggled for the rest of the race finishing 11th or 12th or whatever.
A few weeks after the race Santambrogio was caught doping and banned.
Obviously the whole team was at it and when De Luca was caught, they stopped as the authorities were sniffing around the team.
If only De Luca hadn't been such a prick, Santambrogio would have kept doping until the end of the race, I'd have been paid out and then he'd still have been caught later but cycling is settled on the people who stand on the podium and I wouldn't have cared a jot.
Still hurts.
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