27 October 2012: Yates

Sean Yates tells Bradley Wiggins how to correctly bowl an off-break during this year's Tour De France

The Sunday Telegraph reports that Sean Yates has left Team Sky due to unspecified past doping stuff. Sky have had a zero-tolerance policy introduced and it appears that Yates and a few others are the victims of the cull. (Use of the word 'victim' only in the sense of the image of a cull, those who have left have left because of links to drugs, which is entirely their own fault).

Two things.

Firstly, the Telegraph reports that "the exact nature of the doping has not been revealed" before going on to detail the fact that Yates rode with Lance Armstrong for several years in the early part of Armstrong's career. Sounds like a red herring to me, all you have to do is look at Yates' wikipedia page and there's a link to his little-publicised-but-I-certainly-remember-it doping failure in 1989 - have a look at the bottom of this page. And then translate it into English:

"Sean Yates, the British, winner runner of the Belgium Tower and the GP Eddy Merckx, suffered a doping control was positive at the end of half first step of Torhout - Werchter Classic held August 9 between Geel and Verviers. Yates had won the stage before re-offending, the afternoon in Charleroi, endorsing at the time of the race leader's Jersey."

Not fantastic translating, but you get the idea. I remember seeing it reported in The Times when it happened, and I remember the feeling of deflation as I realized that one of the very very few British world-class cyclists at the time had doped.

Second thing is the one that doesn't need translation. The headline for the version of this (2012) story in L'Equipe, the French publication, reads as follows:

"Cyclisme - Dopage : Yates quitte Sky"

Glorious how similar all our languages really are, isn't it? All together now, "fetchez la vache!"