[JaredL]

cbloom,

I get your point about tomorrow, but Vino was a very popular rider. On top of his own fans, for loads of people he was their second-favorite after whoever their favorite local rider was. Of the prerace favorites I'm sure he was the most popular.

I think for him it was a bad move from an EV standpoint. Even doping he had pretty much no chance to win the overall. I could have seen him making up the 8 minutes on Rasmussen who is notoriously bad at the ITT and will no doubt lose a lot of time on the last one, but there were a number of guys that aren't bad time trialists on whom he would have had to make up tons of time. Crashing nearly out of the race and fighting back and winning a stage would have increased his reputation. I think Vino was a sure thing as either some sort of commentator (not sure how good in the booth he would be or what languages he speaks) or even a team director. I think the Astana team was a big success largely thanks to him and he would have had some position with them after retiring.

So basically he had not a lot to gain from getting a bit of an edge and a lot to lose. Even if you are cynical enough to think that 100% of guys dope or blood dope, it seems like in his situation it was clearly very -EV to do so. These guys have a strange mentality though. My personal favorite cyclist, Roberto Heras had won the Vuelta and got caught doping for the final stage which was a flat road race stage. The race wasn't close and there is pretty much no chance that he would have lost. Pretty bizarre.