Paco_P said:
All right, I'm prepared to believe he's as clean as Wiggins and Froome.
I do not. The history of cycling killed my good faith. Whether he doped, I don't know. I think, with or without doping, he is a decent rider and in a totally clean cycling world he may or may not reach this kind of performance in a grand tour. But we do not live in utopia, Cobo has an amazing comeback from nothing to top 5 in a GT. We should be critical of that and take a closer look.
He might be "as clean as" Wiggins and Froome, he might be dirtier, he might even be cleaner. As far as I'm concerned, we can't really tell definitively. We need research for that, and transparency about that research. I don't know how good the former is, because the latter, transparency, is lacking. As for now, all I can conclude is that he may be clean or he may be doped, but that he's pulling off some amazing work. Until we take some major steps in anti-doping, that's probably the most we are going to be able to say about any rider, performing or not.