If there are any doubts about the tenacity of the anti-doping effort, Fabian Cancellara can confirm otherwise. The four-time World Time Trial Champion received a visit from doping controllers the morning after Christmas.
"What a nice present I got this morning: doping control and this one at Christmas time," tweeted the native of Bern, Switzerland.
Cancellara, who challenged Contador as the marquee signing of the 2010-2011 transfer season with his late announcement to the Luxembourg Pro Cycling Project, celebrated arguably the best season of his career with the Tour of Flanders/Paris-Roubaix double to go along with the E3 Prijs and a rampant year on his time trial bike once again highlighted by time trial victories at the Tour de France and his fourth career time trial World Championship.
As one of the best riders on the planet, the question often comes: how many times does a rider like Fabian Cancellara get tested? Cancellara answers in his irritated tweet.
"Looks like they want to beat my record from last year. Had around 55."
That averages out to a little more than once per week. Is that a lot? Is it too little? It's an interesting point to make, especially if Cancellara is including in-competition testing with that. If that's only out of competition testing, that's a pretty fair tally, but considering how much success Cancellara enjoyed in 2010, if that includes in-competition testing, that's really not all that much.