MarkvW wrote:ontheroad wrote:brownbobby wrote:ontheroad wrote:Alexandre B. wrote:http://www.petitbleu.fr/article/2017/12/25/81198-alexandre-geniez-ca-va-peter-un-jour.html (fr)
Interesting comments by Geniez following the news of the oncoming investigation.
"To me, at first, it can only concern one team, one of the best in the world, its leader and probably other of its riders, but also the UCI and the British federation."
"They never miss their goals, they're always ahead of the competition in the big events and they win what they have programmed. It's like the British on the track, we often believe that there is something. I think that it will blow up some day, that we will learn things."
"Electric bikes have existed for a long time and maybe more than you think but it has concerned, in my opinion, only four or five riders. We know the names."
I've watched the UK sports media over the last week and to the best of my knowledge I have seen absolutely no coverage of Geniez's comments regarding motor usage by Froome and Sky.
Are journalist's scared to even broach this subject, even some of the better journalists have been very silent on the subject of motors in the peloton. I'd be a bit more confident that might change since the defeat of Cookson in the presidential election. A proper investigative journalist would have a field day with this topic whch will blow up at some stage in the near future.
Walsh is working closely (or at least was until fairly recently) with Froome and Sky, why does he not pose Geniez's claims to Sky to see what they have to say. Walsh has been with Sky for 4-5 years but how many actual interviews has he published with staff where he asked the hard questions that a credible journalist might. All we got was puff propaganda pieces to sell the illusion.
In trying to figure out why Geniez would have broken the Omerta about a topic completely off limits (far worse than pharmaceutical doping) to date, I think we can go back to this season's Vuelta when Sky reported Geniez and Denz for holding onto the AG2R team car resulting in their eviction from the race.
Good link, i hadn't thought of this but seems obvious now you say it.
Does raise the question though; is someone with a vendetta, a score to settle,
more or less credible?
The question I always ask is why would he make this up, he has far more to lose than he has to gain from his career. The motive for him making the statement could well be the fact that Sky outed him and his team mate during the Vuelta, however whilst there is no hard evidence, it is certainly very believable to me. If it is not well then let them comment on his claims to refute the allegations. They have yet to make a comment on them to date afaik.
In any event, this is some real omerta-breaking spitting in the soup.
It's the concept of omerta applied to this topic, and Geniez statement in particular that raises more questions than answers for me.
Now Omerta applied to old school doping makes sense. Anyone is free to dope, if you choose not to it's your choice, but the opportunity is there for anyone to dope or become a better doper to keep the playing field level.
But if we indulge what Geniez is saying, it's Sky, and only Sky who are using motors. I don't buy this. I think Omerta only applies if the practice is rife through the peloton.
Let's look at the cases of Porte and Landa. Both riders who I think it's safe to assume would have been one of the chosen 4 or 5 riding motorbikes.
Yet they've both moved on from Sky supposedly due to ambitions to win their own GT's. This doesn't make sense. If they know that Sky, and only Sky have motorbikes, they surely know their chances of winning a GT are extremely low. And in Porte' s case in 2014, surely he'd have been given Froomes top of the range motorbike to easily cruise to a TDF victory following Froomes early bath.
So I struggle to believe that we have riders knowingly training their asses off all year then lining up against people on motorbikes and keeping schtum due to the old Omerta.
Maybe Sky just have better motors at the minute, but IF I were to accept that motors are in use, then the only way it makes sense to me is if most of the top teams were involved in the technological arms race, with riders like Porte and Landa heading for new teams hoping that their motors will be as good as the ones they leave behind.
That's why the whole motors thing at the top level remains a big IF for me.