Re: Re:
Armchaircyclist said:
Discgear said:
Armchaircyclist said:
kosmonaut said:
Discgear said:
I don’t know, but either EOS is completely stupid or he managed to – in a quite clever way – to raise questions that wouldn’t have been possibly to raise in a direct way.
It's the first one.
Other great comments from him:
Praising Katusha for bringing in Stein Ørn to save them from having to dope to cope. Now the whole team can succeed with his magic training formula like Kristoff. (
http://www.dagbladet.no/2015/10/16/sport/sykkel/stein_orn/alexander_kristoff/41535178/) Not going well so far, though.
Praising Edvald for "giving away his silver" to help Kristoff in Richmond because he will benefit from it in the long run. (
http://www.dagbladet.no/2015/09/28/sport/sykling/sykkel-vm2015/alexander_kristoff/edvald_boasson_hagen/41260056/)
Sundby is the greatest of Norwegian sports. (
http://www.dagbladet.no/2015/01/11/sport/langrenn/tour_de_ski_2015/martin_johnsrud_sundby/37120440/)
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Here is where you hit the nail: " EOS is completely stupid ". His commentary on football is maybe even worse and more moronic than in endurance sports..
You know Armchaircyclist: Being stupid, EOS still managed to raise extremely relevant questions that wouldn’t have been possibly to raise in a direct way. As an example, he points out that your and many others explanation about Norwegian dominance due to being the biggest ski nation, vast economical resources, number of skis sold etc. is dead wrong. Russia is bigger and still can't be competitive. And so on. It was actually quite funny to see how this stupid man (in your opinion) unintentionally managed to address
all the usual Norse explanations with a devastating blow.
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If somebody means one thing and you interpret it as the opposite, and hold the opposite to be true, well I'm hard pressed to see how this makes the original statement any clever or smart. EOS can be a good clown, but it's not his intention, so really, I still think he is of the worst commentators in the Norwegian press. He has gone on endlessly raving about the bad morale of foreigners etc etc, so I hold it as higly unlikely that he is suspicious of the Norwegian skiers.
Every question is possible to raise if one wants to, the normal answer would be that cross-country today is clean, and dominance by Norway is caused by a great training culture and many outstanding athletes over the last years. The most talented russians seem to be in other sports, athletics for instance. Russian women are so far behind that it is obvious they are not training right. Russian men are quite close to the top. Germany seems to have problems With biathlon being way more popular, and the best skiers go to that sport instead.
I dont know if foreigners really can understand the popularity of cross country in Norway, and how it draws in the best athletes. For instance we have separate series of tv-shows, both about the best women, and about Northug. Nobody knows who is Norway's best 10.000m runner, everybody recognices the names of all the world cup skiers from norway.
Anyway, if Northug or somebody else gets busted, you can all laugh at me, but even as I'm usually sceptic, the idea of team wide doping on a national Level, and no leaks, no rumours nothing, seems highly unlikely to me-
I've been to Norway. I've raced there. I skied for a few weeks in several different places and competed at the Scandinavian Cup. This was when Sundby, Joensson, Brandsdal, Jespersen, etc weren't quite regulars on the national team. Northug was, however. I skied there with one of the bigger Norwegian clubs and saw first hand how popular skiing is. Before I even went to Norway, I knew how big skiing was. I saw how many kids the club that I skied with had. I don't think anyone disputes that cross country skiing is a national sport in Norway. I've followed skiing for a while, and I love the sport. It has some of the smartest, nicest people you'll meet, involved in it. People work hard and they do so (most of them, anyway) that they are not gonna earn a great living in it, unless of course they are mainstay on their national team and/or they win WC's, championship medals which in turn will help them get more and better sponsorship. I don't need to go into great details about that, because I am sure everyone here is well aware of that. In that regard, skiing isn't so different from other professional sports.
There are a number of other elements, besides good training and preparation involved. Unlike running, for example, equipment is a big part of skiing. Nobody disputes that. The Norwegians, have, traditionally, had some of the best equipment available. Daehlie had the luxury of top notch Fischer's starting in the lat 80's when he started winning. So too Ulvang, so too Alsgaard with Madshus, and Skari with Fischer a little later on, now it's Bjoergen and Johaug and Weng, Northug, Sundby, Hattestad, etc. That said, the others are not some gypsies from the street. They too, get top notch skis, poles, boots, and while they may not have the service team the size of Norway's most teams don't screw up their ski preparation too often. That advantage might be long gone. The now infamous trouble that the Norwegians had at Sochi as due to not being in good enough shape, except the sprinters and the women, while teams like Russia (their men), Sweden, Cologna, and the Finns hit their peak, more or less.
What I don't understand from the Norwegians and their way of thinking about foreigners, is that they feel that if they get beat by any foreigners, it's doping or the Norwegians had bad skis, or whatever. When the Norwegians win, it's because of better preparation, better equipment, skiing is popular, everyone else needs to stop complaining about us winning and needs to start training like us, etc, etc, etc. When Skari was beating talented skiers that worked hard and had team camaraderie like the Russians, but they were proven dopers, isn't it strange that the Norwegians think that's possible to do being clean? It's like when I was telling some friends that Armstrong was doping, they laughed it off and said that was unlikely. So he was beating other top racers, talented racers like Basso, Ullrich, Hamilton, Landis, Valverde, Kloden, Zulle, Mancebo, Mayo, Zubeldia, Vinokurov, etc..while being clean? Highly unlikely. Like the Norwegians, he had access to top notch equipment and funding, more so in fact, but again, the guys I mentioned had access to top equipment as well. Ok, Ullrich was his top rival, he was widely regarded as the top talent in the pro peloton at the time, but was not always serious about training and racing. In 2001, he was pretty close to his shape of 1997, where he crushed guys like Virenque, Pantani, Riis, Casagrande, etc, he lost like 6 minutes to Armstrong at the end of the tour. He was beaten by 90 seconds in the last time trial by Armstrong. This was supposed to be Ullrich's strength. Same thing in skiing. Kowalczyk, although coming to the sport late, was a super talent. With hardly any coaching, she was quickly making inroads at the international level. She was caught using a substance, but her suspension was reduced because it was for something she took for a knee injury in 2005. That seems very likely because as we all know, she's had various problems and procedures done on the knee. The latest one being after Sochi. Where was Bjoergen? She made quite leap after SLC. She was not old, obviously, but made the jump fast, winning sprints and ultimately the 2003 spring at the Val Die Fiemme World's. That was her big breakthrough. She continued to dominate sprints but then in her mid twenty's started winning distance races, against people that were later caught for doping, suspended, and/or suspected of doping: Finns, Germans, Italians, Russians. Sundby, the first three attempts at the Oslo 50k, he dropped out, all three tries. He went 4 years from his 1st to his 2nd WC win, then he won the kuusamo triple (his hardest tour win, as he barely edged Legkov and Vylegzhanin by less than a second) and since then hasn't lost a mini tour or tour de ski. That's pretty remarkable. So if Sundby, who didn't particularly have spectacular junior results (though in fairness, neither did Legkov and Vylegzhanin, before Legkov won a couple titles at U23 in 2006), and going 4 years without winning a world cup race, (2008-2012) starts off 2013/2014 winning in Finland and the rest is history. Nobody's touching him this year. If we suspect the other top guys of doping, why shouldn't they suspect Sundby of doping? Why shouldn't the Norwegians? Oh, it's because skiing is 'so huge?' Running is huge in Kenya and Jamaica. Look at how many have been caught over the past 5 or 6 years. There is a chance that those two countries might not be in Rio because of this problem, certainly Kenya has a chance not to be allowed to participate.
Or plain dumbness.
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