Dave Brailsford - cycling genius

[hfer07]

quite frankly, I kind of agree with the DB "genius" status, simply because he is currently the only one able to turn donkeys into race horses with such grace, that nobody in cycling can deny it.

Wiggins, Fromme, Porte- and now G, are irrefutable prove of his "genius"

 

[The Hegelian]

Re:

quite frankly, I kind of agree with the DB "genius" status, simply because he is currently the only one able to turn donkeys into race horses with such grace, that nobody in cycling can deny it.

Wiggins, Fromme, Porte- and now G, are irrefutable prove of his "genius"

It is genius for sure, independent of quotation marks.

I can't recall ever seeing a team just churn out GC riders like this.....except perhaps Gewiss-Ballan. Berzin, Gotti, Ugrumov, Bobrik. I remember reading bike magazines as a teenager thinking 'where the hell do these riders keep coming from?' They got a Giro and four GT podiums in quick time. Brailsford ahead even of this though.....

 

[onetofifteen]

Re: Re:

quite frankly, I kind of agree with the DB "genius" status, simply because he is currently the only one able to turn donkeys into race horses with such grace, that nobody in cycling can deny it.

Wiggins, Fromme, Porte- and now G, are irrefutable prove of his "genius"

It is genius for sure, independent of quotation marks.

I can't recall ever seeing a team just churn out GC riders like this.....except perhaps Gewiss-Ballan. Berzin, Gotti, Ugrumov, Bobrik. I remember reading bike magazines as a teenager thinking 'where the hell do these riders keep coming from?' They got a Giro and four GT podiums in quick time. Brailsford ahead even of this though.....

Hey, don't forget US Postal! Armstrong, Hamilton, Landis, Heras.

 

[Lyon]

Re: Re:

quite frankly, I kind of agree with the DB "genius" status, simply because he is currently the only one able to turn donkeys into race horses with such grace, that nobody in cycling can deny it.

Wiggins, Fromme, Porte- and now G, are irrefutable prove of his "genius"

It is genius for sure, independent of quotation marks.

I can't recall ever seeing a team just churn out GC riders like this.....except perhaps Gewiss-Ballan. Berzin, Gotti, Ugrumov, Bobrik. I remember reading bike magazines as a teenager thinking 'where the hell do these riders keep coming from?' They got a Giro and four GT podiums in quick time. Brailsford ahead even of this though.....

You forgot Riis...

 

[Lyon]

Re: Re:

quite frankly, I kind of agree with the DB "genius" status, simply because he is currently the only one able to turn donkeys into race horses with such grace, that nobody in cycling can deny it.

Wiggins, Fromme, Porte- and now G, are irrefutable prove of his "genius"

It is genius for sure, independent of quotation marks.

I can't recall ever seeing a team just churn out GC riders like this.....except perhaps Gewiss-Ballan. Berzin, Gotti, Ugrumov, Bobrik. I remember reading bike magazines as a teenager thinking 'where the hell do these riders keep coming from?' They got a Giro and four GT podiums in quick time. Brailsford ahead even of this though.....

Hey, don't forget US Postal! Armstrong, Hamilton, Landis, Heras.

It is simply the way the sport has become. Islands of pure genius. Now here, now there.

 

[vedrafjord]

Said this in the all-encompassing black hole that is the Sky thread, but does Brailsford not care about the impression the Landa signing gives to the general public? 2015's Ricky Ricco outclimbing Contador while riding for the dirtiest team in the world tour?

I don't mean that Sky haven't hired plenty of dopers before, just that to the casual British fan who thinks Johnny Foreigner is up to no good, this is the worst signing they could have made bar I dunno? Zakarin?

 

[wendybnt]

Re:

Said this in the all-encompassing black hole that is the Sky thread, but does Brailsford not care about the impression the Landa signing gives to the general public? 2015's Ricky Ricco outclimbing Contador while riding for the dirtiest team in the world tour?

I don't mean that Sky haven't hired plenty of dopers before, just that to the casual British fan who thinks Johnny Foreigner is up to no good, this is the worst signing they could have made bar I dunno? Zakarin?

I think we all suspect that Brailsford is operating in the same environment with the same conditions as all the other main teams, don't we? (ie. no doping means no chance of anything)

This means that it really doesn't matter what the general public think because not enough of them either know nor care. Think about it..... Contador, Valverde both up there and highly supported podium contenders. Both caught doping. Nibali....defending champion, from a team that was very pubically taken as close as it is possible to an outright accusation of teamwide doping, without actually saying it. They are all still there, massively supported. Froome is acting as the lightening conductor for public angst about cheating, but he is surrounded by fellow cheats. A huge part of the public won't believe the accusations against him, and they will dissipate anyway.

Nobody gives a to$$.

 

[The Hegelian]

Re: Re:

quite frankly, I kind of agree with the DB "genius" status, simply because he is currently the only one able to turn donkeys into race horses with such grace, that nobody in cycling can deny it.

Wiggins, Fromme, Porte- and now G, are irrefutable prove of his "genius"

It is genius for sure, independent of quotation marks.

I can't recall ever seeing a team just churn out GC riders like this.....except perhaps Gewiss-Ballan. Berzin, Gotti, Ugrumov, Bobrik. I remember reading bike magazines as a teenager thinking 'where the hell do these riders keep coming from?' They got a Giro and four GT podiums in quick time. Brailsford ahead even of this though.....

Hey, don't forget US Postal! Armstrong, Hamilton, Landis, Heras.

I suppose so, but I thought of them more as hiring GC riders to ride as superdomestiques for the one major GC rider....rather than converting pursuit riders/no names etc into GT winners.

 

[42x16ss]

Re: Re:

quite frankly, I kind of agree with the DB "genius" status, simply because he is currently the only one able to turn donkeys into race horses with such grace, that nobody in cycling can deny it.

Wiggins, Fromme, Porte- and now G, are irrefutable prove of his "genius"

It is genius for sure, independent of quotation marks.

I can't recall ever seeing a team just churn out GC riders like this.....except perhaps Gewiss-Ballan. Berzin, Gotti, Ugrumov, Bobrik. I remember reading bike magazines as a teenager thinking 'where the hell do these riders keep coming from?' They got a Giro and four GT podiums in quick time. Brailsford ahead even of this though.....

Hey, don't forget US Postal! Armstrong, Hamilton, Landis, Heras.

At least Heras was already established prior to USPS, same as Rubiera. I'd say Savoldelli, Hincapie and Livingston instead.

 

[simoni]

Re: Re:

quite frankly, I kind of agree with the DB "genius" status, simply because he is currently the only one able to turn donkeys into race horses with such grace, that nobody in cycling can deny it.

Wiggins, Fromme, Porte- and now G, are irrefutable prove of his "genius"

It is genius for sure, independent of quotation marks.

I can't recall ever seeing a team just churn out GC riders like this.....except perhaps Gewiss-Ballan. Berzin, Gotti, Ugrumov, Bobrik. I remember reading bike magazines as a teenager thinking 'where the hell do these riders keep coming from?' They got a Giro and four GT podiums in quick time. Brailsford ahead even of this though.....

Hey, don't forget US Postal! Armstrong, Hamilton, Landis, Heras.

At least Heras was already established prior to USPS, same as Rubiera. I'd say Savoldelli, Hincapie and Livingston instead.

Savoldelli was well established as a giro winner/contender pre discovery, Livingston did a solid Dom job for cofidis in '98 also.

 

[ppanther92]

Re: Re:

At least Heras was already established prior to USPS, same as Rubiera. I'd say Savoldelli, Hincapie and Livingston instead.

Savoldelli didn't even have his best season at USP. Why not the obvious ones? Hincapie, Landis, Hamilton, Vaughters, ...

 

[Lyon]

Re: Re:

At least Heras was already established prior to USPS, same as Rubiera. I'd say Savoldelli, Hincapie and Livingston instead.

Savoldelli didn't even have his best season at USP. Why not the obvious ones? Hincapie, Landis, Hamilton, Vaughters, ...

Yes, it is the homegrown ones that seem to benefit the most. Tight groups. Pockets of organized, highly sophisticated dopers as Ashenden said.

 

[B_Ugli]

What I find difficult being in the UK is that all over Facebook people that should know better (who have been following cycling many years and know the history) are seriously drinking up the Team Sky Kool-Aid. There was a post the other day from somebody in my extended network going on about how great it was to see a clean win. To me the similarities between Sky of 2015 and USPS of 2001 are negligible.

My gripe is people declaring CF to be clean. How do they know? They are not drugs testers, they have no inner knowledge of the medical preparation of any riders on team Sky. The only reason they say CF is clean is because that is the message put out by Sky and the cycling fraternity. We are all cleaner, that was a different era, this is one yellow jersey that will stand the test of time. Ultimately they are all soundbites and "beliefs".

Contrast it with the BBC journalist who was able to micro-dose with EPO recently and go undetected under current BP methods and you have a problem. The BBC journalists evading the BP was a fact backed up by evidence. A fact shrugged off by WADA. And he did it easily, very easily with little guidance and medical supervision.

I am not going to lambast the believers. Not least as I believe in innocent until proven guilty so I prefer to watch Pro Cycling in the knowledge that it is still a circus and that the vast majority I believe are still micro dosing at the very least. Only time and history will prove whether the current era is clean (emotion and spin says it is, logic says it isn't).

The only saving grace you can take is that if they are all still on it, then it is indeed a level playing field.

You can be a healthy sceptic and still watch cycling but watch it with open eyes without blind declarations which cannot be verified.

 

[wendybnt]

I saw that british documentary about the man beating the passport by micro-dosing, and feeling the amazing effects of the drugs on his performance. It did kind of occur to me that maybe WADA and all the other testing agencies are well aware of this. Of course, if you are a drug testing agency and you are aware of the fallibility of the tests but they are the best tests available, what do you say in public?

 

[Brian Butterfield]

Re:

I saw that british documentary about the man beating the passport by micro-dosing, and feeling the amazing effects of the drugs on his performance. It did kind of occur to me that maybe WADA and all the other testing agencies are well aware of this. Of course, if you are a drug testing agency and you are aware of the fallibility of the tests but they are the best tests available, what do you say in public?

"We have the best testing available, moreover we are working continously to improve and refine our testing abilities to make them the most stringent and accurate ever."

Will this do?

 

[wendybnt]

"but they still can't catch cheats"

 

[TheSpud]

Re:

"but they still can't catch cheats"

Unless they randomly test people everyday at different times they will be behind the curve ...

 

[B_Ugli]

Re: Re:

"but they still can't catch cheats"

Unless they randomly test people everyday at different times they will be behind the curve ...

So in a roundabout way we are back to square one as it was in the late 90's early 2000's when they couldn't test for EPO. Clearly its not as full *** as back then but their is a ceiling and everyone is pushing it.

A level playing field.

 

[wendybnt]

We only ever find out what is going in way after it has gone on. EPO was a game changer but it won't be the last one.

 

[The Carrot]

Large dose of BS coming to book shops near you soon.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-3179129/Sir-Dave-Brailsford-set-release-autobiography-following-latest-Tour-France-triumph.html

 

[The Carrot]

Re:

Large dose of BS coming to book shops near you soon.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-3179129/Sir-Dave-Brailsford-set-release-autobiography-following-latest-Tour-France-triumph.html

Digger's gonna have a heart attack when he reads the book I guess

 

[ebandit]

...........imagine how much we would pay to read........... the whole truth and

nothing but........the real truth....................................

Mark L

 

[thehog]

Looks like Landa is about to become an ITT ace along with his other lightweight Sky riders...

CN: One of the big question marks this year will be how your time trialling has progressed. [Landa lost four minutes to Alberto Contador in the 2015 time trial at Valdobbiadene last year - ed.]

ML: We’ve been working on it a lot, the aerodynamics and so on and I’ve been riding on the TT bike a lot over the winter. I hope there will be an improvement in the Giro d’Italia. The team has helped me a lot to adapt to my new environment and has been very supportive.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/landa-youve-got-to-keep-your-eyes-on-the-ball-all-the-time/

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Looks like Landa is about to become an ITT ace along with his other lightweight Sky riders...

CN: One of the big question marks this year will be how your time trialling has progressed. [Landa lost four minutes to Alberto Contador in the 2015 time trial at Valdobbiadene last year - ed.]

ML: We’ve been working on it a lot, the aerodynamics and so on and I’ve been riding on the TT bike a lot over the winter. I hope there will be an improvement in the Giro d’Italia. The team has helped me a lot to adapt to my new environment and has been very supportive.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/landa-youve-got-to-keep-your-eyes-on-the-ball-all-the-time/

WINDtunnel. AERO AERO is something the other teams just don't do....Marginal gains folks.

 

[thehog]

Re:

Large dose of BS coming to book shops near you soon.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-3179129/Sir-Dave-Brailsford-set-release-autobiography-following-latest-Tour-France-triumph.html

Only just re-saw this link... the Brailsford book didn't actually come out! Even he might not be able to stomach his on BS in 350 pages... or maybe Walsh is busy?

Sir Dave Brailsford, the mastermind behind three Tour de France triumphs in four years, has finally agreed to publish his life story.

The book, What It Takes, is about Brailsford's extraordinary cycling success with Sky and also Team GB, who enjoyed multi-medal hauls at the Beijing and London Olympics.

It was due to be released by Penguin last year but Brailsford had been nervous in 2013 — after his Team Sky rider Chris Froome had won his first Tour de France — about going public too early in his career. He cited 'personal reasons' for the delay but also had reservations about working with a ghost-writer with little cycling knowledge.