- Sep 29, 2012
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As I mentioned previously, precedence is an ideal source for evidence.
And has just been demonstrated, Lance Armstrong's USPS team and the way it did things is trotted out by Sky disbelievers as evidence that something dodgy is going on.
And in reply, pro-Sky posters rightly point out the flaws in this evidence, namely that there were murmurs and rumours floating around constantly. You can even go further, saying, "there are no rumours or mumurs" and suggest this is evidence against the claim Sky are doping.
For me, the problem with the "no rumours or murmurs" evidence is the fact that despite looking like UK Postal, Sky are, as indicated above, not only very new, but if you lineup their winning time, it has only been since 2012 when they were in the spot light for winning the Lance race.
So instead of rumours and murmurs, we have the most ridiculous drop in performance ever seen by a rider in Bradley Wiggins.
Further, there have been no scenarios in the Sky timeline providing the same impetus for revelations.
To clarify:
+ Lance dropped the doping products bombshell because he was lying in a hospital bed potentially dying from cancer, trying to help the doctor work out what was wrong to save his life
vs
- neither Wiggins nor Froome have been in a similarly life threatening situation
+ testers knew about EPO, but were still working on the test. handy when it was finaly ready that they had old samples available.
vs
- as far as we know there may be new drugs on the market, but the testers certainly don't seem to know about them, and hence do not appear to be developing tests for them. If anything, we're still going around the mulberry bush making the current tests for old drugs more sensitive.
+ it was a team doping program, so at all times there was a small cadre of riders privy to the doping practices of each other
vs
- I really do not think there is any team doping these days, but more riders doing their own thing (see below), so noone is going to know what the other guy is doing.
+ Landis got royally shafted and then some, leaving him with nothing to lose if he went public.
vs
- Rogers is closest to this example, but at a guess he was paid out handsomely and let go to another team. Sure he went positive later, but he's not getting shafted and losing everything like Landis did.
For my money, it's no wonder there is none of the evidence Lance had, cropping up in the Sky narrative. But that's not because it's not there, but more because it has had no opportunity to get out into the open. Yet.
For a more relevant precedent of a rider doping and getting caught, I'd like to discuss someone who doped non-stop for 7 years and only got caught because he was trying to generate a good TdF result, probably for a fat contract. Again, he was using a drug that was known, and the test was being developed, and they did not catch him for months after the test, through retroactive testing.
IMO, Bernard Kohl is a better example if you want to point to someone and say: this guy doped, and got caught. True.
But!
Where was the suspicion surrounding him? His performance at that 2008 Tour was certainly suspicious, ridiculously so IMO, but otherwise, there was nothing.
And he doped for 7 years before getting caught.
Now show me all the Austrian influence in the cycling hierarchy of the day.
And has just been demonstrated, Lance Armstrong's USPS team and the way it did things is trotted out by Sky disbelievers as evidence that something dodgy is going on.
And in reply, pro-Sky posters rightly point out the flaws in this evidence, namely that there were murmurs and rumours floating around constantly. You can even go further, saying, "there are no rumours or mumurs" and suggest this is evidence against the claim Sky are doping.
For me, the problem with the "no rumours or murmurs" evidence is the fact that despite looking like UK Postal, Sky are, as indicated above, not only very new, but if you lineup their winning time, it has only been since 2012 when they were in the spot light for winning the Lance race.
So instead of rumours and murmurs, we have the most ridiculous drop in performance ever seen by a rider in Bradley Wiggins.
Further, there have been no scenarios in the Sky timeline providing the same impetus for revelations.
To clarify:
+ Lance dropped the doping products bombshell because he was lying in a hospital bed potentially dying from cancer, trying to help the doctor work out what was wrong to save his life
vs
- neither Wiggins nor Froome have been in a similarly life threatening situation
+ testers knew about EPO, but were still working on the test. handy when it was finaly ready that they had old samples available.
vs
- as far as we know there may be new drugs on the market, but the testers certainly don't seem to know about them, and hence do not appear to be developing tests for them. If anything, we're still going around the mulberry bush making the current tests for old drugs more sensitive.
+ it was a team doping program, so at all times there was a small cadre of riders privy to the doping practices of each other
vs
- I really do not think there is any team doping these days, but more riders doing their own thing (see below), so noone is going to know what the other guy is doing.
+ Landis got royally shafted and then some, leaving him with nothing to lose if he went public.
vs
- Rogers is closest to this example, but at a guess he was paid out handsomely and let go to another team. Sure he went positive later, but he's not getting shafted and losing everything like Landis did.
For my money, it's no wonder there is none of the evidence Lance had, cropping up in the Sky narrative. But that's not because it's not there, but more because it has had no opportunity to get out into the open. Yet.
For a more relevant precedent of a rider doping and getting caught, I'd like to discuss someone who doped non-stop for 7 years and only got caught because he was trying to generate a good TdF result, probably for a fat contract. Again, he was using a drug that was known, and the test was being developed, and they did not catch him for months after the test, through retroactive testing.
IMO, Bernard Kohl is a better example if you want to point to someone and say: this guy doped, and got caught. True.
But!
Where was the suspicion surrounding him? His performance at that 2008 Tour was certainly suspicious, ridiculously so IMO, but otherwise, there was nothing.
And he doped for 7 years before getting caught.
Now show me all the Austrian influence in the cycling hierarchy of the day.
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