Allen Lim interview

[Digger]

This does not fill me with confidence, especially the way he downplays the value of EPO and talks about the importance of technology as another big reason for the increase in speeds from the early 90s. Same as JV in that regard.

http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2009/allen-lim-clean-perspective

 

[Epicycle]

This does not fill me with confidence, especially the way he downplays the value of EPO and talks about the importance of technology as another big reason for the increase in speeds from the early 90s. Same as JV in that regard.

http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2009/allen-lim-clean-perspective

Wow. He forgot to mention Powerbars.

Does he entertain the notion that a doping doctors have actually used scientific methods to track their rider's performances and tailor their programs? There's a reason certain products and methods are common, because they have been shown over time to be effective.

 

[blackcat]

Wow. He forgot to mention Powerbars.

Does he entertain the notion that a doping doctors have actually used scientific methods to track their rider's performances and tailor their programs? There's a reason certain products and methods are common, because they have been shown over time to be effective.

unfortunately, Lim, JV, and I will even add Prentice Steffen have crossed to the dark side. They are not a bunch of naifs, they are wilfully ignorant, very much a "look no evil, hear no evil" operation.

Was it Aqua Sapone that called the team "a pack of ar$eholes"?

This American exceptionalism is wearing thin. And wearing thin fast. If I was a clean rider, and told by some team engaging in such a specious PR campaign that these results were possible, I would be damn angry. This is all their marketing with the strategic positioning of their brand. Don't they have "100% clean" slogans on their bidons? One writes it, axiomatically deigns it true?

I am sorry, but it is too much.

All the justifications he mentions have very marginal (declining) rate of return. Rolling resistance, drag coefficient, and sweat wicking kit, does not explain how some of his riders have transformed from mediocre professionals who never won a prestigious race, to being in the top 10 riders in the peloton.

I think Armstrong should outsource his PR contract to Garmin, this is a new revenue stream for them. When Armstrong next tenders his communications brief, I think Garmin can beat Public Strategies for the remit. Get some back office synergies there, <wink wink, if ya know what I mean>

 

[afpm90]

Apparently what a rider needs to win races are confidence, believe, faith and positive thinking. This way you can beat riders who are using PED's.

BULL****!

 

[I Watch Cycling In July]

...They are not a bunch of naifs, they are wilfully ignorant, very much a "look no evil, hear no evil" operation...This American exceptionalism is wearing thin. And wearing thin fast...This is all their marketing with the strategic positioning of their brand. Don't they have "100% clean" slogans on their bidons? One writes it, axiomatically deigns it true?

I automatically distrust "hear no evil, do no evil" behaviors but I'm not sure this is exactly the pattern we are seeing form Garmin. Running a clean team almost certainly means accepting fewer wins, so it makes sense to try and counteract the likely reduced media coverage with some positive spin. At the same time it's important to believe that it is possible to win any given race, otherwise riders are mentally defeated before they start. The belief structure Lim is describing would be a useful tool for this. I'm not saying I agree with all of it factually, just saying it's a useful tool.

As an anglophone, what Garmin are doing and saying makes some sense to me, although I have yet to form an opinion on whether or not the team actually is clean. My question for you is, what actions and public statements would you expect from a European team that was determined to be clean? Would it look any different? If not, it's the American exceptional-ism argument that's wearing thin...

 

[blackcat]

I automatically distrust "hear no evil, do no evil" behaviors but I'm not sure this is exactly the pattern we are seeing form Garmin. Running a clean team almost certainly means accepting fewer wins, so it makes sense to try and counteract the likely reduced media coverage with some positive spin. At the same time it's important to believe that it is possible to win any given race, otherwise riders are mentally defeated before they start. The belief structure Lim is describing would be a useful tool for this. I'm not saying I agree with all of it factually, just saying it's a useful tool.

As an anglophone, what Garmin are doing and saying makes some sense to me, although I have yet to form an opinion on whether or not the team actually is clean. My question for you is, what actions and public statements would you expect from a European team that was determined to be clean? Would it look any different? If not, it's the American exceptional-ism argument that's wearing thin...

I do not think they are in the least bit credible. And ultimately, branding and strategic position, must be underpinned by credibility. This will come back and bite them.

My criticism is primarily based on their disinformation. Armstrong deserves harsh criticism, because he is a pathological lier. Well, Slipstream have pulled all their communication strategy from the Bill Stapleton/Armstrong example. They may not run a systematic medical program with Spanish doctors yet plausible deniability is pure commercial expedience. How is there a practical difference with riders pursuing some plan on their own, as long as they keep their limits within the biological parameters.

The continental teams are realist, or outright dirty.

 

[hfer07]

Apparently what a rider needs to win races are confidence, believe, faith and positive thinking. This way you can beat riders who are using PED's.

BULL****!

100% agreed
I'd love to see the research from this Allen Lim proving to the world how is possible to raise your HCT, TT leves, performance, recovery & cycling skills by "having big confidence, positive thinking & clean methods".....
but hey- some cyclist claims to the world that "you have to believe in miracles"

 

[red_explosions]

It's the usual smoke and mirrors stuff. If advances in psychology/nutrition/bike technology make the difference, how come guys on today's carbon wonder machines still can't beat Pantani's records for Alpe d'Huez, Mortirolo etc., set by a guy on inferior equipment, a crappy diet and with some pretty interesting psychological issues? It's because all these things are smallfry compared with increasing oxygen delivery to the cycling muscles. In the court of cycling, oxygen is king. All else is small change.

 

[blackcat]

It's the usual smoke and mirrors stuff. If advances in psychology/nutrition/bike technology make the difference, how come guys on today's carbon wonder machines still can't beat Pantani's records for Alpe d'Huez, Mortirolo etc., set by a guy on inferior equipment, a crappy diet and with some pretty interesting psychological issues? It's because all these things are smallfry compared with increasing oxygen delivery to the cycling muscles. In the court of cycling, oxygen is king. All else is small change.

and everything that Garmin does, can be neutralised. Using the free market model, if all these gains are possible, it stands to reason all other teams will enact such operations.

But the sport has been professional for a while, and many teams have dialed in those variables. Lemond, Banesto, Telekom, Saiz, Riis, Armstrong. All peripheral tinkering, has very marginal returns. No doubt they should be pursued, but stop spinning the public.

All this spin just reinforces the status quo, not actually a reform, and improvement. Smug self-satisfied disposition. Not helpful.

 

[red_explosions]

As our Lord and Guru once said, 'It ain't about the bike'.

Put it this way, if I went out and did a 40k TT clean on an all singing, all dancing carbon wunderbike; had a course of EPO and came back and did the same TT jacked at 60% on a run of the mill steel road bike, I'd bet my life savings (not that I have any) that the latter time would clock in easily faster than the first. But hey, it's all about aerodynamics, nicht wahr?

 

[unsheath]

That interview is unbearable. I gave up after the first couple of paragraphs. All fluff and ideology. Lim needs a reality check or even better and couple of backhanders to knock him out of this daze.

 

[Anonymous]

That interview is unbearable. I gave up after the first couple of paragraphs. All fluff and ideology. Lim needs a reality check or even better and couple of backhanders to knock him out of this daze.

Yea, he lost me at:

AS: I guess I should clarify, you believe that doping simply helps the rider achieve his true potential, and that true potential is also achievable with ethical methods.

AL: That would be a fair point

 

[Race Radio]

Yea, he lost me at:

AS: I guess I should clarify, you believe that doping simply helps the rider achieve his true potential, and that true potential is also achievable with ethical methods.

AL: That would be a fair point

As much as I like Lim and JV this kind of $hit sucks. I have heard the same excuse for 25 years....."I am just restoring my natural levels with recovery therapy"

 

[Izoard]

W ... T ... F

 

[pedaling squares]

Yea, he lost me at:

AS: I guess I should clarify, you believe that doping simply helps the rider achieve his true potential, and that true potential is also achievable with ethical methods.

AL: That would be a fair point

So... I guess Lim figures that many of the world's most naturally gifted cyclists have paid hundreds of thousands of euros to obtain PED's simply because they are too lazy to adopt a gluten-free diet?

 

[BikeCentric]

How funny is this quote from Lim:

"I also believe that doping deters performance, the culture of doping is quite an ironic one."

LOL. It's all a placebo at best, but really EPO actually deters performance! What a crock of shi!

 

[blackcat]

Lim, can you remind me how much Landis' hematocrit went up at the Tour in 06? Come on doc, it aint too hard for you.

Lim, Steffen, Vaughters, Ellis, time to own up.

 

[Digger]

Allen Lim quotes from an interview last year.

"What I learned out of that experience was that it wasn’t physiology; it was a lot about your mind and mindset."

On Floyd's positive: "I was just very surprised, because it was totally unexpected. It would be the last thing I could ever dream of. I don’t think I’m naïve, I just like to believe in the best of people and stay focused on the positive and do the best that I can. There is so much that we cannot control.”

“You didn’t feel disappointed or betrayed?”

“No, because I didn’t know what was true or not true. I would have to make a lot of assumptions to feel betrayed.”

“No, you don’t have to make any assumptions,” I argue. “He used drugs. He tested positive. It’s in the urine.”

“You know, the bottom line for me is that I love cycling and I’m very easy to believe in people, and see the best in people, not ignoring the truth or ignoring the facts. I mean, that’s the whole basis of what we started here with this programme.”
“I felt badly for Floyd and . . . I would be really selfish or self-centred to make it about me - it wasn’t happening to me. Yeah, I had this experience but it wasn’t about me; and for me to think, ‘Oh, I feel sad or betrayed or upset’ would have been self-centred. I didn’t leave the 2006 Tour de France hatching some business plan to open up some coaching service or whatnot.

“Given your knowledge of physiology, I would imagine you were interested in the effects of doping in sport?”
“Not at all,”

The typing in bold is the interviewer. In this case, Paul Kimmage.

 

[Cerberus]

As our Lord and Guru once said, 'It ain't about the bike'.

Put it this way, if I went out and did a 40k TT clean on an all singing, all dancing carbon wunderbike; had a course of EPO and came back and did the same TT jacked at 60% on a run of the mill steel road bike, I'd bet my life savings (not that I have any) that the latter time would clock in easily faster than the first. But hey, it's all about aerodynamics, nicht wahr?

I’m not entirely sure that's true, depending on what you mean by "road bike". The difference between a normal, internal gear road bike and a Tour bike is quite large, possibly even larger than the difference between EPO and not-EPO. The difference between a good quality racing bike bought in a regular shop and a Tour bike on the other hand is probably not that large, though still large enough that only an idiot would try to ride the Tour on the regular racer.

 

[Epicycle]

Allen Lim quotes from an interview last year.

“Given your knowledge of physiology, I would imagine you were interested in the effects of doping in sport?”
“Not at all,”

The typing in bold is the interviewer. In this case, Paul Kimmage.

I just can't believe he really holds that attitude or is really naive enough to say in the NY Velocity interview..."for example, when Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, guess what? Everyone started breaking the 4 minute mile barrier. Was that because everyone found a new drug?".

Here's a homework assignment for Allen Lim. Go to IAAF.org and check the top times in history for different men's distance running events. There is no time achieved before 1992 anywhere near the top of any all time list for the common distances. Said Aouita, the incredible runner from the pre-EPO era is not even in the top 50 men all-time for the 5,000 meters. So why did the times begin to get so much faster in the early 1990's? Did their shoes get lighter or did the tracks get faster or was it EPO?

 

[rhubroma]

The continental teams are realist, or outright dirty.

EXACTLY and one could place such a notion into a wider socio-anthropological analysis of that which distinguishes Euro-Kultur from Americana.

What Bob Roll had to say about a Belgian seven-year-old knowing how the cycling game is played, as supposed to most American adults back in the day was not an exaggeration.

Now I don't want to lapse into pedantry here but the article's perspective immeditaely brought to mind a comparison with the 1951 film Quo Vadis? The MGM production portrays the burning of Rome in 64 AD and the subsequent follies and sadisms of Emperor Nero at the expense of those rightious Christians, with the same high moral standards and wholesome position of Lim's analysis. In Quo Vadis? the assimilation between the ancient Christians, a young and free people, and the Americans, they too a young and free people, who had recently defeated nazism and fascism during WWII is totally evident. And the fire scene in the film was realized with the same commitment and zealousness as the embarkment on the beaches of Normandy just six years before. In the plot's sequence, Nero is played by the great British actor Peter Ustinov, whereas the good hero is interpreted by the American actor Robert Taylor, with all consequnet British and American pronunciations. The message is subtle though inequivocable: the language of tyranny and despotism, even if spoken by the recent ally Great Britain, is the language of a monarchy against which the United States had to combat to obtain its independence. That language, in addition, pertains in any case to Europe where the Nazi-Fascist dictatorships had recently threatened liberty, which naturally the Americans were able to overcome by virtue of the nations higher moral ground, where justice is severe with the proud and the criminal and clement with the needy and the weak.

It is a myth which the film so sucinctly expresses, namely that of a morally degenerate Roman-European society symbolized in the corruption and violence of paganism, vs. that of an apparently meek, brotherly, pure and democratic American society associated with the early Christian community. Ancient Roman society is thus presented as corrupt, decadent and despotic and finds its reincarnation in Nazi-Fascist Europe, wereas the early Chrisitians are portrayed as pius, intrepid, forthright and morally uncorruptable victims of despotism who have been reborn in the US people; who, like them, will perservere in their just causes to overcome even the new threat against libery, Soviet comunism.

Now we know that the myth and the reality do not coincide, but it is one which has conditioned the American people (and as we see in Role's analysis) to really believe that they are just a bit more wholesome than the rest of the world, especially in matters of "fair-play" and when under fire from the outside. In this sense Mr. Armstrong is simply more cyncial than the rest in being able to make a tool of the myth and manipulate the naive US public opinion about his persona, and is no less cynical than what Cheney et all did in their fear mongering tacticts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein really was a threat to (their) world order.

Europeans, by contrast, know that "fair-play" doesn't exist and never has....Thus the different perceptions and approaches in the rhetoric of Lim vs. the world view of any hardened seven-year-old Belgian in regards to cycling.

 

[elapid]

I just can't believe he really holds that attitude or is really naive enough to say in the NY Velocity interview..."for example, when Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, guess what? Everyone started breaking the 4 minute mile barrier. Was that because everyone found a new drug?".

Here's a homework assignment for Allen Lim. Go to IAAF.org and check the top times in history for different men's distance running events. There is no time achieved before 1992 anywhere near the top of any all time list for the common distances. Said Aouita, the incredible runner from the pre-EPO era is not even in the top 50 men all-time for the 5,000 meters. So why did the times begin to get so much faster in the early 1990's? Did their shoes get lighter or did the tracks get faster or was it EPO?

LOL - good analogy.

Lim obviously has his head buried so deep in the sand that an ostrich would be jealous. Gross generalizations, but I always thought neurologists were a bit wacky in general, but I am getting the impression from discussions on this forum that physiologists are way up there for having a screw loose.

 

[Izoard]

LOL - good analogy.

Lim obviously has his head buried so deep in the sand that an ostrich would be jealous. Gross generalizations, but I always thought neurologists were a bit wacky in general, but I am getting the impression from discussions on this forum that physiologists are way up there for having a screw loose.

I used to have a lot more respect for Lim. Now ... not so much. I would equate this with having his head so deep that it wraps around the world and then goes straight up his own ass. It defies reason.

 

[drfunk000]

I just can't believe he really holds that attitude or is really naive enough to say in the NY Velocity interview..."for example, when Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, guess what? Everyone started breaking the 4 minute mile barrier. Was that because everyone found a new drug?".

Here's a homework assignment for Allen Lim. Go to IAAF.org and check the top times in history for different men's distance running events. There is no time achieved before 1992 anywhere near the top of any all time list for the common distances. Said Aouita, the incredible runner from the pre-EPO era is not even in the top 50 men all-time for the 5,000 meters. So why did the times begin to get so much faster in the early 1990's? Did their shoes get lighter or did the tracks get faster or was it EPO?

I think you're wrong. Look at the best Marthon times.. where's your EPO performance jump???

2008 2:03:58.2 Haile Gebreselasie-4 28 Sep Berlin GER
2007 2:04:26 Haile Gebreselasie-3 30 Sep Berlin GER
2006 2:05:56 Haile Gebreselasie-2 24 Sep Berlin GER
2005 2:06:19.5 Haile Gebreselasie (ETH) 16 Oct Amsterdam NED
2004 2:06:16 Evans Rutto (KEN) 10 Oct Chicago IL USA
2003 2:04:55 Paul Tergat (KEN) 28 Sep Berlin GER
2002 2:05:37.8 Khalid Khannouchi-3 14 Apr London ENG
2001 2:06:50 Josephat Kiprono (KEN) 22 Apr Rotterdam NED
2000 2:06:36 Antonio Pinto (POR) 16 Apr London ENG
1999 2:05:42 Khalid Khannouchi-2 24 Oct Chicago IL USA
1998 2:06:05 Ronaldo daCosta (BRA) 20 Sep Berlin GER
1997 2:07:10 Khalid Khannouchi (MAR) 19 Oct Chicago IL USA
1996 2:08:25 Martin Fiz (ESP) 24 Mar Kyong-Ju KOR
1995 2:07:02 Sammy Lelei (KEN) 24 Sep Berlin GER
1994 2:07:15a Cosmas Ndeti (KEN) 18 Apr Boston MA USA
1993 2:08:51 Dionicio Ceron (MEX) 05 Dec Fukuoka JPN
1992 2:08:07 David Tsebe (RSA) 27 Sep Berlin GER
1991 2:08:53 Koichi Mori****a (JPN) 03 Feb Beppu JPN
1990 2:08:16 Steve Moneghetti (AUS) 30 Sep Berlin GER
1989 2:08:01a Juma Ikangaa (TAN) 05 Nov New York NY USA
1988 2:06:50 Belayneh Dinsamo (ETH) 17 Apr Rotterdam NED
1987 2:08:18 Takeyuki Nakayama (JPN) 06 Dec Fukuoka JPN
1986 2:07:51a Rob deCastella-3 21 Apr Boston MA USA
1985 2:07:12 Carlos Lopes (POR) 20 Apr Rotterdam NED
1984 2:08:05 Steve Jones (WAL) 21 Oct Chicago IL USA
1983 2:08:37 Rob deCastella-2 09 Apr Rotterdam NED
1982 2:08:52a Alberto Salazar (USA) 19 Apr Boston MA USA
1981 2:08:18 Rob deCastella (AUS) 06 Dec Fukuoka JPN
1980 2:09:01 Gerard Nijboer (NED) 26 Apr Amsterdam NED

 

[poupou]

I think you're wrong. Look at the best Marthon times.. where's your EPO performance jump???

Do you believe that marathon is a good support to show EPO use?

I do believe that marathon runners are trying to preserve their bodies all the race long, they never are pushing their VO2 limit. Shorter distances are probably better to use .