Brailsford Should Stand Down

[Dr. Maserati]

He said it in a TED lecture

17.30 in. I grant you if you're being pedantic he says that the Castelli Speedsuit offers 75% of the benefits of blood doping (15/20W).

Total ****ing bull****.

I am pedantic - very pedantic, especially when it concerns the truth.
So JV did not say what DWiggo attributed to him.

Its "Total ****ing bull**** " to completely misrepresent what someone says.

 

[JimmyFingers]

How is dismissing people (yet paying them off) when you should not have hired them in the first place doing the "right thing"?

Because if you make a mistake, you should acknowledge it and attempt to correct it.

This is starting to feel awfully like school. Will there be a test?

 

[badboygolf16v]

I am pedantic - very pedantic, especially when it concerns the truth.
So JV did not say what DWiggo attributed to him.

Its "Total ****ing bull**** " to completely misrepresent what someone says.

It's not a "complete misrepresentation."

JV clearly states a skinsuit offers comparable benefits to blood doping. Undeniable. You're misrepresenting now.

I'm happy to call that as total ****ing bull****.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Because if you make a mistake, you should acknowledge it and attempt to correct it.

This is starting to feel awfully like school. Will there be a test?

So, what you're saying is, you believe that Brailsford is genuinely naïve and not at all disingenuous, and was genuinely lied to by the likes of Yates, Barry and Leinders, and he took them at their word that there was no doping ever involved ever?

I feel you credit Brailsford with very little intelligence, and if we can believe his approach to the sport has been clean and has yielded the results it has, then I think that would be at odds with this. To have achieved so much whilst this has been going on leads me to draw one of two conclusions:

- Brailsford is a highly intelligent but shady and dishonest character, who has developed a highly-trained and highly-skilled cycling winning machine, and has done so by picking up shady and amoral characters to help build this up, whilst paying lip service to their ostracization, and upon being found out, is carefully restating his aims while trying to reorganise the house to continue to operate whilst trying to avoid being picked up on having these shady and amoral characters around;
- Brailsford is a naïve manchild who believes everything he's told through smiling eyes and forced grins, who has somehow lucked his way into an unstoppable cycling machine both on track and road, and in the middle of his commitment to marginal gains the team were too busy focusing on installing the mood lighting on the bus to do background checks on the employees to make sure they actually fit the criteria for employment Brailsford was putting into the public sphere.

Which is it to be?

 

[Dr. Maserati]

It's not a "complete misrepresentation."

JV clearly states a skinsuit offers comparable benefits to blood doping. Undeniable. You're misrepresenting now.

I'm happy to call that as total ****ing bull****.

It is exactly that, a complete misrepresentation.
If DW said "comparable" then you (& he) might be correct - he didn't.

 

[badboygolf16v]

It is exactly that, a complete misrepresentation.
If DW said "comparable" then you (& he) might be correct - he didn't.

You are a pedant. And wilfully ignoring the point that JV is a bull****ter. I smell a man crush.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Because if you make a mistake, you should acknowledge it and attempt to correct it.

This is starting to feel awfully like school. Will there be a test?

Jimmy - this is the test.
I'm afraid you didn't spend the last few days not listening and being disruptive.

Brailsford didn't make "a" mistake - he appears to have made (at present) 5 mistakes.

Here is your homework - fill in this old saying:
"Fool me once, shame on you. Foll me twice shame on _____"

 

[Dear Wiggo]

He said it in a TED lecture

17.30 in. I grant you if you're being pedantic he says that the Castelli Speedsuit offers 75% of the benefits of blood doping (15/20W).

Total ****ing bull****.

Thanks for the ***ing link - saves me having to search for it.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

You are a pedant.

I know I am.
I am quite happy about that.
If you did not know then you were not paying attention.

And wilfully ignoring the point that JV is a bull****ter. I smell a man crush.

I have a mancrush on the truth - I don't see what is gained in exaggerating a position.

In the limited bit I saw of JV he is obviously stretching things - I don't see why anyone has then to exaggerate and misrepresent what he says.

If you want to discuss JV further with me- then take it to any of the numerous other threads on him - Jimmy will be getting upset that he is not derailing the thread.

 

[JimmyFingers]

So, what you're saying is, you believe that Brailsford is genuinely naïve and not at all disingenuous, and was genuinely lied to by the likes of Yates, Barry and Leinders, and he took them at their word that there was no doping ever involved ever?

I feel you credit Brailsford with very little intelligence, and if we can believe his approach to the sport has been clean and has yielded the results it has, then I think that would be at odds with this. To have achieved so much whilst this has been going on leads me to draw one of two conclusions:

- Brailsford is a highly intelligent but shady and dishonest character, who has developed a highly-trained and highly-skilled cycling winning machine, and has done so by picking up shady and amoral characters to help build this up, whilst paying lip service to their ostracization, and upon being found out, is carefully restating his aims while trying to reorganise the house to continue to operate whilst trying to avoid being picked up on having these shady and amoral characters around;
- Brailsford is a naïve manchild who believes everything he's told through smiling eyes and forced grins, who has somehow lucked his way into an unstoppable cycling machine both on track and road, and in the middle of his commitment to marginal gains the team were too busy focusing on installing the mood lighting on the bus to do background checks on the employees to make sure they actually fit the criteria for employment Brailsford was putting into the public sphere.

Which is it to be?

I don't know the man or am party to the inner machinations of the Sky team/British cycling, so anything I say is utter speculation anyway, as are both your suppositions.

Brailsford is clearly a very good sports coach and man-manager. He brings results. In the real world, rather than the (selective) hyper-moralistic world of the clinic, that buys you a certain leeway. Is results were more marginal, his position at Sky would be much more tenuous.

In his favour is the fact that he is not an experienced manager of a road team. I believe he did race for a while on the road but not at a high level. He is no Johan Bruyneel, Johnny Vaughters, Bjarne Riis, he is not deeply embedded in the European racing scene.

The irony is a lot of the accusations in the clinic towards Brailsford are contradictory: on the one hand he is is the manipulative, media-backed and contyrolling doping mastermind, a Bruyneel squared and yet on the other he's the manager that hired Leinders and Yates, trained at Teide, referenced US Postal and copied their race tactics. As I have said, and you have referenced, you could have not made it more open to suspicion and criticism. If you were doping you should be doing a much,much more sophisticated job, the likes of which we have seen already.

You also wouldn't be firing management staff.

I think Brailsford is a good sports coach who wasn't equipped for the intricacies and politics of the professional road race circuit. I think there have been plenty of bad decisions made, but the current policy isn't one of them. I think Brailsford has been and will continue to be a positive influence on cycling. And I don't even like him that much.

Lets face it, he's no Matt White

 

[skidmark]

I know I am.
I am quite happy about that.
If you did not know then you were not paying attention.


I have a mancrush on the truth - I don't see what is gained in exaggerating a position.

In the limited bit I saw of JV he is obviously stretching things - I don't see why anyone has then to exaggerate and misrepresent what he says.

If you want to discuss JV further with me- then take it to any of the numerous other threads on him - Jimmy will be getting upset that he is not derailing the thread.

Whoa, can I use 'I have a mancrush on the truth' in my signature? So good.

edit: and to play the pedant game, does that mean that you think the truth is of the male gender?

 

[Tinman]

I think this post is a good example of making 2 plus 2 equal 5, or at least trying to.

Mr Fingers, as there seems to be little substance anywhere on why Mr Brailsford is such an outstanding coach, incl. what methods make him so successful, many of us are looking for additional substance to the man. That seems to be missing also.

If you have any decent contributions to the missing piece (your 5-4) many of us would appreciate it. Until then you have no right to be questioning our questions.

Quite frankly with having been cheated out of a sport for close to two decades I think that's a reasonable request. As is a healthy bit of scepticism about yet another new messiah (including charity foundation) having arrived.

 

[JimmyFingers]

Mr Fingers, as there seems to be little substance anywhere on why Mr Brailsford is such an outstanding coach, incl. what methods make him so successful, many of us are looking for additional substance to the man. That seems to be missing also.

If you have any decent contributions to the missing piece (your 5-4) many of us would appreciate it. Until then you have no right to be questioning our questions.

Quite frankly with having been cheated out of a sport for close to two decades I think that's a reasonable request. As is a healthy bit of scepticism about yet another new messiah (including charity foundation) having arrived.

Clinic 101, you have a new graduate

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Clinic 101, you have a new graduate

No, your answer is Jimmy deflection 101.

The question is valid and deserves an answer - indeed it is the second pertinent question Tinman has asked - which I have included below, with your JD 101 answer.

I admit I haven't looked much at Brailsford & don't know anything much about him. So apologies if covered before in The Clinic. And apologies to question on someone so central and decorated to British cycling success (ahem). However.

Has it ever struck you how little info there is on Brailsford's early cycling & coaching career on the web? He is an ex marketing guy of late right? Has raced for 4 years as a pro (?) in France. Has an OBE for services to cycling. "Picked up" by Brian Cookson. Dropped out of school (?), completed an MBA. Maybe some older British pro cyclists can tell us more. Breaking Omerta anyone?

More than fishy to me. Ie. the lack of info on a guy so central to the British cycling success over the past decade. And the close connection to Shane Sutton & Sean Yates. Sutton still at Sky despite vicious early drug rumors; Yates gone "of his own accord, unrelated". Hmm...

Re info on the web - Reputation.com ring a bell? The company that was touting their services recently in a CNN article on LA.

I think this post is a good example of making 2 plus 2 equal 5, or at least trying to.

 

[Tinman]

No, your answer is Jimmy deflection 101.

The question is valid and deserves an answer - indeed it is the second pertinent question Tinman has asked - which I have included below, with your JD 101 answer.

What Jimmy hasn't yet realized that this is not about him . Suggest we keep it that way .

 

[Telmisartan new]

So, what you're saying is, you believe that Brailsford is genuinely naïve and not at all disingenuous, and was genuinely lied to by the likes of Yates, Barry and Leinders, and he took them at their word that there was no doping ever involved ever?

I feel you credit Brailsford with very little intelligence, and if we can believe his approach to the sport has been clean and has yielded the results it has, then I think that would be at odds with this. To have achieved so much whilst this has been going on leads me to draw one of two conclusions:

- Brailsford is a highly intelligent but shady and dishonest character, who has developed a highly-trained and highly-skilled cycling winning machine, and has done so by picking up shady and amoral characters to help build this up, whilst paying lip service to their ostracization, and upon being found out, is carefully restating his aims while trying to reorganise the house to continue to operate whilst trying to avoid being picked up on having these shady and amoral characters around;
- Brailsford is a naïve manchild who believes everything he's told through smiling eyes and forced grins, who has somehow lucked his way into an unstoppable cycling machine both on track and road, and in the middle of his commitment to marginal gains the team were too busy focusing on installing the mood lighting on the bus to do background checks on the employees to make sure they actually fit the criteria for employment Brailsford was putting into the public sphere.

Which is it to be?

Fabulous post,wanted to make comment further myself but you've already summed up all my points perfectly,accurate,on the money and truthful,i'd rather echo your comments than post myself,that good LS.

 

[Tinman]

Some more on Brailsford. Maybe the reason there is so little info on him on the web is that he truly was a nobody until his recent cycling successes...

"It is hard to imagine that in 2004, when he replaced Peter Keen as performance director, Brailsford was a relatively unknown name in cycling circles. Born in Derby and a keen amateur cyclist whose passion for the sport was ignited on family holidays to France, Brailsford studied sport science and psychology at university and later gained an MBA.

His early career saw him work as a business consultant in the perfume industry, before he got a foot in the door of cycling in 1993 as a soigneur – masseuse, handler and all-round dogsbody – for a small pro cycling club and later the British national team. From there he began his steady climb through the ranks to where we stand today."

http://election.theherald.co.uk/mob...99?_=2c8f75e6a1d41dba3e032adab0c39701d3d610e6

 

[Parker]

I feel you credit Brailsford with very little intelligence, and if we can believe his approach to the sport has been clean and has yielded the results it has, then I think that would be at odds with this. To have achieved so much whilst this has been going on leads me to draw one of two conclusions:

- Brailsford is a highly intelligent but shady and dishonest character, who has developed a highly-trained and highly-skilled cycling winning machine, and has done so by picking up shady and amoral characters to help build this up, whilst paying lip service to their ostracization, and upon being found out, is carefully restating his aims while trying to reorganise the house to continue to operate whilst trying to avoid being picked up on having these shady and amoral characters around;
- Brailsford is a naïve manchild who believes everything he's told through smiling eyes and forced grins, who has somehow lucked his way into an unstoppable cycling machine both on track and road, and in the middle of his commitment to marginal gains the team were too busy focusing on installing the mood lighting on the bus to do background checks on the employees to make sure they actually fit the criteria for employment Brailsford was putting into the public sphere.

Which is it to be?

He's neither. He is a man caught between the idealistic and changeable demands of his team owners (who fund him to the tune of 12-15 million euros a year) and the obvious recent history of the sport. He walks the line the best he can and he's committed to a clean team but BSkyB don't make it easy for him and sometimes he's going to cok it up.

Anyone who things that the zero tolerance policy is the brainchild of a man who has picked Millar for GB every year since his ban expired is an idiot.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Anyone who things that the zero tolerance policy is the brainchild of a man who has picked Millar for GB every year since his ban expired is an idiot.

Anyone who believes anything David Brailsford says is an idiot.

http://road.cc/content/news/69509-b...ftening-stance-doping-froome-fears-departures

"That's going to be part of the losses the team has to make to be able to go forward," he said, adding, "I've had my interview, it was very straightforward."

The 27-year-old revealed that he had been questioned as to whether he had "done anything" or was "likely to be linked to anything," and after replying in the negative, was given the statement to sign.

Done anything: nope.
Likely to be linked to anything: nope.

Sounds pretty exhaustive to me.

 

[Telmisartan new]

He's neither. He is a man caught between the idealistic and changeable demands of his team owners (who fund him to the tune of 12-15 million euros a year) and the obvious recent history of the sport. He walks the line the best he can and he's committed to a clean team but BSkyB don't make it easy for him and sometimes he's going to cok it up.

Anyone who things that the zero tolerance policy is the brainchild of a man who has picked Millar for GB every year since his ban expired is an idiot.

Touchingly naive,"walks the best line he can",that argument is full of holes,this is a man who changes his tune almost daily depending on how the wind is blowing,he's been found out,only an idiot would believe anything he says.

 

[Parker]

Touchingly naive,"walks the best line he can",that argument is full of holes,this is a man who changes his tune almost daily depending on how the wind is blowing,he's been found out,only an idiot would believe anything he says.

So you think it's all Braisford's ideas do you? He's calling all the shots alone and the the team owners, who have invested around 50m euros so far, aren't controlling things at all. How touchingly naive.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

So you think it's all Braisford's ideas do you? He's calling all the shots alone and the the team owners, who have invested around 50m euros so far, aren't controlling things at all. How touchingly naive.

Ah so it was the team owners that decided to relax the zero tolerance policy in 2011?

And the team owners that hired Leinders in 2010, before the relaxing of the ZTP was announced?

And the team owners that fire all the staff to date for doping in the past?

Where does Brailsford start to take responsibility for the things he says, and the things the team do?

So very convenient to deflect all that onto invisible "team owners" who cannot or will not be brought to account. So... convenient.

Do you believe in the boogie man as well?

 

[Telmisartan new]

So you think it's all Braisford's ideas do you? He's calling all the shots alone and the the team owners, who have invested around 50m euros so far, aren't controlling things at all. How touchingly naive.

His name is Brailsford.Yeah,my heart bleeds for him,he has to call all the shots alone,what a burden,the team owners phone up for a ride with Wiggo,take that how you will,James Murdoch does not decide policy,i reckon DB has as much power as anyone currently working in UK sport,your misguided notion that some media executive is pulling his strings is patently ridiculous.Your backing a man that is a proven liar,i dont see the point in continuing this discussion.

 

[Parker]

Ah so it was the team owners that decided to relax the zero tolerance policy in 2011?
Yes. Ultimately, they allowed it. Probably on Braisford's advice.

And the team owners that hired Leinders in 2010, before the relaxing of the ZTP was announced?
No. That was a mistake. Although it remains to be seen what Leinders actual involvement at Rabobank actually was.

And the team owners that fire all the staff to date for doping in the past?
Not personally, but they ordered it

Where does Brailsford start to take responsibility for the things he says, and the things the team do?
Generally he does. There have been no actual doping incidents at Sky yet, everything happened on other teams before Sky existed.

So very convenient to deflect all that onto invisible "team owners" who cannot or will not be brought to account. So... convenient.
The owners aren't invisible - they are one of the biggest TV companies in Europe. They are the complete opposite of invisible.

.........................

 

[Telmisartan new]

Sweet baby jesus,"it remains to be seen what Leinders involvement at Rabo actually was" That's it,i am out,your gullibility procludes you from being taken seriously anymore.Game over.