Re:
Fergoose said:
The one that lasted all too briefly after 2007 and saw major TdF contendors caught out in a way they hadn't done previously and hadn't done since. Would you deny that antidoping had a more effective period in 2007/08 (if we include Kohl and his Geralsteiner teammate whose name escapes me) perhaps due to a temporary breakthrough in their investigative options that has since been countered by the likes of Vino (2012) and Horner?
Personally I can't think of another period of 12-24 months when antidoping in cycling had such successes against riders so high in their classifications. No other time when, if I was a rider, I'd have been so nervous about doping. This coincided with the rise of UK cycling. Whether that is a coincidence or not, I think it is as valid an interpretation of that graph as saying that it indicates UK cyclists started doping post 2004 but that their rowers have always doped (or never doped).
While I agree that 2008 was the cleanest year in recent memory (at least in terms of profile of riders caught, scale of doping you could get away with), there we are talking almost specifically about the road, because a lot of it was to do with AFLD and the secrecy with which they shrouded the CERA test. It also has a lot to do with the extremely long half-life of CERA compared to first- and second-generation EPO, so that once the test was known, many riders had several weeks of hoping they wouldn't get tested. In addition to this, you had two fairly high profile busts where the riders who were caught talked, helping the anti-doping authorities to make further inroads - Sinkewitz in 2007 and Sella in 2008. As an endurance drug, CERA is of limited use to track specialists anyhow - yes for Points/Scratch/Madison racing, less so for sprints.
Also, the issue is that saying 2007-8 is where the British cycling successes took hold is a little simplistic a view; it may be where the attention paid to the development of British riders took hold, with the success of Cavendish in GT stages for the first time followed by the gold rush at the Olympics, but at that point Wiggins was still in the autobus on the road, focusing almost entirely on the track, Thomas was a mere prospect, and the only success on the road in Beijing came from the women, with Nicole Cooke who had been an established pro for five years before that, so hardly a sign of Britain 'emerging'.
Wiggins' breakthrough as a road rider came in 2009. Unfortunately for him, the return of Lance Armstrong and the not-strictly-related-but-quite-easy-to-join-dots situation with Pierre Bordry and AFLD not having the same control of testing at the Tour coincided with that; given what we now know, it would in fact appear that Wiggins' rise actually coincides with a period where doping became worse, not better. By that point Cav is well established and Millar is in his post-suspension niche, but even then the British riders are hardly at the forefront. They qualify six riders for Mendrisio, but only Cummings and Hammond - neither of whom can be classed as "emerging talents" - can finish the race. At the start of Team Sky in 2010, the claim that they will win the Tour with a British rider within five years is scoffed at, seemingly rightfully so, with only Wiggins - at that point a 29-year-old one hit wonder - an even remotely reasonable shout. In order to create a sufficient British identity at the start of the team, they have to pay over the odds to break contracts for Ben Swift as well as Wiggins and promote Continental-level journeymen to the World Tour, and yet apart from Cav they still have every single high profile British man at that level. They only qualify 3 riders for the Worlds, and all of them pull out.
On the road, realistically, 2011 is the rise of British cycling, with Wiggins Mk III emerging with his victory in the Dauphiné, Cav finally getting that maillot vert then the World Championships race, and the emergence of Froome.
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