Testing
After each stage, four riders are tested: the overall leader, the stage winner, and two riders at random. In addition, every rider is tested before the first day's stage, normally a short time-trial. Most teams are tested in their entirety at some point during the three-week race. Additional testing may take place during the off-season, and riders are expected to keep their national cycling federation informed of their whereabouts so they can be located. Many teams have their own drug testing programs to keep the team name clean. Teams, such as Quick-Step, have pulled riders before they compete in major competitions. Tom Boonen was pulled for cocaine before the 2008 Tour de France.
Read more about this topic: Doping At The Tour De France
Famous quotes containing the word testing:
“Today so much rebellion is aimless and demoralizing precisely because children have no values to challenge. Teenage rebellion is a testing process in which young people try out various values in order to make them their own. But during those years of trial, error, embarrassment, a child needs family standards to fall back on, reliable habits of thought and feeling that provide security and protection.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“Bourbon’s the only drink. You can take all that champagne stuff and pour it down the English Channel. Well, why wait 80 years before you can drink the stuff? Great vineyards, huge barrels aging forever, poor little old monks running around testing it, just so some woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma can say it tickles her nose.”
—John Michael Hayes (b.1919)
“No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10:13.