Recent content by vedrafjord

What was the title of the old thread? "The revenge of Rasmussen and the end of Rabobank"? Reminds me more of CSC 2008, domestiques, all-rounders, and sprinters shelling some of the best pure climbers in the world.

Re: Re: Every step up he takes on the world stage makes those who raced against him in Irish A3 as adults and watched him ride away from them (while he was still a 16/17 year old Junior) feel that little bit less bad for themselves and that little more proud of him too.

Great racing today and, as pointed out upthread, interesting to see Ineos trying more of a Quickstep numbers approach in the finale, although not holding out much hope of seeing it in bigger races. Good show by Dunbar but he still needs to learn more race craft. This isn't Minane Bridge, he...

Come on mods, fix the title. Everyone knows that this thread will contain not just tricots, but team kits, maillots, tenues and maybe even exotics...

It's possible that you have an advantage if you were already doping when the passport came in, because you can maintain those artificial levels and look normal. It's possible Valverde is a natural talent and has a higher undoped level compared to others, and has got relatively better as O2...

A decent race, cagey but the tension slowly ratcheted up over the last two laps til I was on the edge of my seat for the finale. I would have put the wall climb much earlier to break things up from further out - all the serious contenders knew they needed to keep something in reserve for that...

Surely the Occam's Razor answer is that he just kept doping - there's still no approved transfusion test, it's well-established that you can microdose EPO to performance enhancing levels and still not trip the passport, and new drugs have appeared in the last ten years that it's likely some...

I think he's a lot more believable than Froome and Thomas - there's been no donkey to racehorse (or 6ft cobbles rider to best climber in the world) transformation, instead there was early success (mountain stage in the Tour de l'Avenir age 19 and another two age 21), gradual, incremental...

Re: Re: And it wasn't even marginal - he scored an 8, meaning only three riders in the whole 2010 Tour peloton (Menchov, Barredo, Popovych) were considered more suspicious by the UCI. The list leaked in May 2011 and was widely reported, but it didn't stop Sky signing him a few months later :)

Re: Re: It means if a GC guy loses time it frees up his whole team to go for stage wins, as opposed to having them sitting in the bunch defending a 10th place.

Re: Another question is what was the Astana treatment? That 2015 Giro is as insane as anything I've ever seen. Were they told to cool it? Is that Sky's secret? Did they have protection for a few years until they were also told to cool it with Lappartient coming in? But by then were too rich to...

It's dirty in a different way. I don't think top riders are necessarily taking more drugs/drugs that give them a bigger advantage (just different drugs in some cases), but the chances of being caught now (where caught=ban) if you're a team leader with big resources seem basically zero. On the...

Re: Re: I think this quote about Riis from Fignon's autobiography is as good as any: So the riders and former riders themselves definitely formed their own opinions. The article I took that quote from is...

Wiggins' win in 2012 seems quaint in comparison now. He had an easy parcours with loads of TT km, Contador banned, Schleck injured, and the best climber in the race was on his own team. Thomas winning back-to-back Alpine stages against the best pure climbers in the world is on another level of...

Re: They're all scared of tomorrow.