Teams & Riders Froome Talk Only

[Parker]

Re: Re:

Fastest evers ascents on Monte Zoncolan (2007-2018):

1. 39:03 Simoni
2. 39:03 Piepoli
3. 39:10 A. Schleck
4. 39:34 Di Luca
5. 39:40 Cunego
6. 39:58 Froome
7. 40:04 S. Yates
8. 40:21 Pozzovivo
9. 40:22 Cuapio
10. 40:23 M.A. Lopez

High level today!
Stratospheric!

The return of clean cycling!

I find it unbelievable that a rider who has won five Grand Tours could be 24 seconds faster than {goes to Google} Julio Cuapio

 

[Forever The Best]

Re: Re:

Fastest evers ascents on Monte Zoncolan (2007-2018):

1. 39:03 Simoni
2. 39:03 Piepoli
3. 39:10 A. Schleck
4. 39:34 Di Luca
5. 39:40 Cunego
6. 39:58 Froome
7. 40:04 S. Yates
8. 40:21 Pozzovivo
9. 40:22 Cuapio
10. 40:23 M.A. Lopez

High level today!
Stratospheric!

The return of clean cycling!

I find it unbelievable that a rider who has won five Grand Tours could be 24 seconds faster than {goes to Google} Julio Cuapio

Eh, the ascent of 2007 the conditions were perfect for extraterrestrial time. 142 km, second stage after the rest day (and the previous day to Lienz was won by a breakaway) and no difficulties before Zonc. Still, the 2007 ascent was jet-fuel, extraterrestrial.
And Froome was only less than a minute slower than Piepoli and Simoni and 25 seconds slower than Di Luca. And more than 40 seconds faster than the first non '07-18 ascent.

 

[Benotti69]

Vegni not allowing Froome to use his PinaVespa till now to make it a race...........

 

[vedrafjord]

Re: Re:

Ok...Just to state the obvious. If Froome doped to win today, why didn't he dope to at least be competitive last week?

If Floyd Landis doped to win on the ride to Morzine in the 2006 TDF, why didn't he dope the day before, when he cracked?

As Tyler H said, all the things that can go wrong for a clean cyclist can go wrong for a doped cyclist. Froome does seem to really suffer after crashes - once he crashed in the 2014 Dauphiné he soldiered on but was off the pace and never really recovered, and it seemed to affect him all the way through that year's Tour until he retired with further crashes. Also I presume the stress he's been under can't have helped his performances - maybe he's learned to deal with it better now.

Speaking of Floyd, if Froome really wants to win this race, as opposed to finishing 3rd/4th and pocketing his appearance fee, he needs to think about doing a Landis in tomorrow's stage. If he does then I sure hope this forum's servers can keep up...

 

[Parker]

Re: Re:

I find it unbelievable that a rider who has won five Grand Tours could be 24 seconds faster than {goes to Google} Julio Cuapio

Eh, the ascent of 2007 the conditions were perfect for extraterrestrial time. 142 km, second stage after the rest day (and the previous day to Lienz was won by a breakaway) and no difficulties before Zonc. Still, the 2007 ascent was jet-fuel, extraterrestrial.
And Froome was only less than a minute slower than Piepoli and Simoni and 25 seconds slower than Di Luca. And more than 40 seconds faster than the first non '07-18 ascent.

But only 24 seconds faster than a rider nobody can remember.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

I find it unbelievable that a rider who has won five Grand Tours could be 24 seconds faster than {goes to Google} Julio Cuapio

Eh, the ascent of 2007 the conditions were perfect for extraterrestrial time. 142 km, second stage after the rest day (and the previous day to Lienz was won by a breakaway) and no difficulties before Zonc. Still, the 2007 ascent was jet-fuel, extraterrestrial.
And Froome was only less than a minute slower than Piepoli and Simoni and 25 seconds slower than Di Luca. And more than 40 seconds faster than the first non '07-18 ascent.

But only 24 seconds faster than a rider nobody can remember.

If you were watching the Giro between 2000 and 2008 and you don't remember Julio Alberto Pérez Cuapio, you weren't watching very closely. If you weren't watching the Giro between 2000 and 2008, then sure you wouldn't remember him.

His being up there is not like Laurent Madouas' Ventoux time as an outlier. He was one of the Giro's best climbers for half a decade, but seldom raced outside Italy thanks to the calendar of the Italian Pro Conti teams he was mostly on.

 

[Parker]

Re: Re:

I find it unbelievable that a rider who has won five Grand Tours could be 24 seconds faster than {goes to Google} Julio Cuapio

Eh, the ascent of 2007 the conditions were perfect for extraterrestrial time. 142 km, second stage after the rest day (and the previous day to Lienz was won by a breakaway) and no difficulties before Zonc. Still, the 2007 ascent was jet-fuel, extraterrestrial.
And Froome was only less than a minute slower than Piepoli and Simoni and 25 seconds slower than Di Luca. And more than 40 seconds faster than the first non '07-18 ascent.

But only 24 seconds faster than a rider nobody can remember.

If you were watching the Giro between 2000 and 2008 and you don't remember Julio Alberto Pérez Cuapio, you weren't watching very closely. If you weren't watching the Giro between 2000 and 2008, then sure you wouldn't remember him.

His being up there is not like Laurent Madouas' Ventoux time as an outlier. He was one of the Giro's best climbers for half a decade, but seldom raced outside Italy thanks to the calendar of the Italian Pro Conti teams he was mostly on.

He had a decent 2002. He was hardly a superstar. His best GT finish was 19th. In 2007 he was ranked 986th by CQ Ranking. How the best current GT rider can be 24 seconds faster over a 40 minute climb than someone barely scraping into the top 1000 riders isn't suspicious.

 

[Merckx index]

IF he wins the Giro, he won't get banned. I think.

No relationship between the two whatsoever. Btw, thanks for the insight into Kerckhoffs/Telegraaf. I note that it's been about two weeks since he said he was very confident that Froome would be exonerated "within a few days".

This was nothing like PSM. Let's not forget on PSM - a one climb stage - he put in over a minute on Quintana, two minutes on Valverde, 3 minutes on Contador, 4 minutes on Nibali, 6 minutes on Purito. That was absurd.

Putting in 6 seconds on Yates, 20 seconds on Pozzovivo and 40 seconds on Dumoulin - on a far harder climb - is not remotely comparable.

Very much agree. This is his PSM after three years of decline. He gave it his best shot and took a total of ten seconds from someone he was trailing by more than three minutes.

And what happened right before the final climb on Wednesday? Could it be material to the time loss?

I’m flat-out astonished that absolutely no one has mentioned what happened right before the final climb on Zoncolan. Am I really the only one—with a feed that is off more than it’s on, no less—who saw him take a couple of puffs, then discard his inhaler, right before attacking?

Why am I mentioning this? Because it’s very germane to Heuberger’s model that claims much higher urinary salbutamol concentrations are possible within one hour of testing. I’m trying to get an idea of how many puffs Froome typically makes on a final climb. He also appeared to inhale before that attack, around :48 of this highlight video, though I'm not certain, because I can't see the inhaler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6BLChPgUCs

 

[Koronin]

Re:

IF he wins the Giro, he won't get banned. I think.

No relationship between the two whatsoever. Btw, thanks for the insight into Kerckhoffs/Telegraaf. I note that it's been about two weeks since he said he was very confident that Froome would be exonerated "within a few days".

This was nothing like PSM. Let's not forget on PSM - a one climb stage - he put in over a minute on Quintana, two minutes on Valverde, 3 minutes on Contador, 4 minutes on Nibali, 6 minutes on Purito. That was absurd.

Putting in 6 seconds on Yates, 20 seconds on Pozzovivo and 40 seconds on Dumoulin - on a far harder climb - is not remotely comparable.

Very much agree. This is his PSM after three years of decline. He gave it his best shot and took a total of ten seconds from someone he was trailing by more than three minutes.

And what happened right before the final climb on Wednesday? Could it be material to the time loss?

I’m flat-out astonished that absolutely no one has mentioned what happened right before the final climb on Zoncolan. Am I really the only one—with a feed that is off more than it’s on, no less—who saw him take a couple of puffs, then discard his inhaler, right before attacking?

Why am I mentioning this? Because it’s very germane to Heuberger’s model that claims much higher urinary salbutamol concentrations are possible within one hour of testing. I’m trying to get an idea of how many puffs Froome typically makes on a final climb. He also appeared to inhale before that attack, around :48 of this highlight video, though I'm not certain, because I can't see the inhaler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6BLChPgUCs

So what happens if it doesn't show adverse finding like the one from the Vuelta? Wouldn't that just kill the entire argument?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

He had a decent 2002. He was hardly a superstar. His best GT finish was 19th. In 2007 he was ranked 986th by CQ Ranking. How the best current GT rider can be 24 seconds faster over a 40 minute climb than someone barely scraping into the top 1000 riders isn't suspicious.

No he wasn't a superstar, but this is a case where CQ only tells you half the story since he barely raced outside of Giro build-up, after all it was the super-peaking era. He was routinely among the best climbers in the Giro, but he was inconsistent as all hell and would usually lose a truckload of time and go stagehunting as a result. He won three serious mountain stages at the Giro, and was almost always up in the top 5-6 in major mountain stages for years. He was very visible in the Giro's mountains for the best part of a decade and on his day he could climb with the very best - it's just that those days were infrequent and his skillset was such that he absolutely sucked almost everywhere else, so he was always stagehunting. Pérez Cuapio has climbing pedigree, dismissing his climbing time as irrelevant because he wasn't a superstar does him a disservice.

Besides, after pointing out that Froome was only 24" faster than Pérez Cuapio, maybe you could point out that he was only 24" slower than the most doped of all Danilo di Luca's Giri, or that extrapolating from Froome's time in relation to 2007, he's therefore 45" faster than Pellizotti, 1'16" faster than Riccò and 1'31" faster than Mazzoleni, which doesn't look as clean, now, does it? You see, these name vs name comparisons can prove almost anything you want, as some riders may have just been on a bad day, and just using the fact that you didn't remember Pérez Cuapio as a reason to dismiss any suggestion of Froome's time being suspicious is just as worthless as claiming that him being faster than other known doping climbing specialists who weren't riding that race for GC, like Rasmussen, Mayo and Sella, is proof that his time IS suspicious. I'm not a fan of using pure climbing times as a comparative measure unless it's an MTT on a consistent route, because the rest of the stage, and the GC position and how it's set up, affects how hard people ride it, weather conditions aren't consistent etc.. But at the same time, the 2018 stage was harder than the 2007 one, and putting a time close to some of the heavy chargers of that era is always going to raise eyebrows.

I'm not going to pretend that Froome doesn't get more stick directed at him because of who he is and his current circumstances, but given how willing you've been to pursue avenues by which Froome could possibly not have been playing every card he possibly could to get an advantage, and continuing to defend Sky's integrity even after the team that claimed it would hold itself to higher standards than anybody on anti-doping failed to match the anti-doping stances of teams like Lampre and freaking Vacansoleil when it came to handling riders under investigation, I got the impression your intent was to use belittling Pérez Cuapio as a means by which to absolve Froome of criticism, rather than any fair comment on the Mexican's real or perceived talent levels, which I felt needed more colour adding.

 

[vedrafjord]

Re:

I’m flat-out astonished that absolutely no one has mentioned what happened right before the final climb on Zoncolan. Am I really the only one—with a feed that is off more than it’s on, no less—who saw him take a couple of puffs, then discard his inhaler, right before attacking?

Look at it this way: the whole peloton has access to salbutamol if they want - they don't even need a TUE, they just have to stay under the limit, so how does that account for Froome a) destroying them and b) suddenly coming good right now? To paraphrase Thomas Dekker a couple of weeks ago: "salbutamol is not a game changer". Salbutamol (and tramadol for that matter) is a marginal gain compared to corticosteroids, for example. Froome (and others) could be on 30 different drugs and supplements for all we know. Salbutamol is just the one that happened to eventually trip the alarm.

 

[Merckx index]

Re: Re:

So what happens if it doesn't show adverse finding like the one from the Vuelta? Wouldn't that just kill the entire argument?

No, not at all. Even if one buys this theoretical model, Froome has to establish that he took 800 ug within one hour of the finish just to have a long-shot possibility of exceeding the threshold. Still not likely, but maybe not beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that he might take this much within one hour of the finish on some other stage and not exceed the threshold doesn’t hurt that argument, because most of the time the threshold wouldn’t be exceeded.

A simple theoretical model suggests that if you flip a coin four times often enough, you will occasionally get four heads. Getting four heads is not evidence that you were using a weighted coin; that can be explained by chance. But if you don’t get four heads most of the time, that doesn’t affect the conclusion of a fair coin; most of the time you would expect not to get four heads.

Basically, Froome needs to argue that the only time he takes salbutamol is near the end of a stage. That’s consistent with his “only in great efforts claim”, but the question is whether he really takes that much at that time. My guess is that he will be claiming he took 4-5 puffs in the final climb in the Vuelta stage, then 2-3 more after the stage (as was reported earlier). Even if he can establish all that, the weight of evidence is still very much against him, IMO, but a door that before seemed firmly shut is now open a crack.

Look at it this way: the whole peloton has access to salbutamol if they want - they don't even need a TUE, they just have to stay under the limit, so how does that account for Froome a) destroying them and b) suddenly coming good right now? To paraphrase Thomas Dekker a couple of weeks ago: "salbutamol is not a game changer". Salbutamol (and tramadol for that matter) is a marginal gain compared to corticosteroids, for example. Froome (and others) could be on 30 different drugs and supplements for all we know. Salbutamol is just the one that happened to eventually trip the alarm.

You obviously didn't read the last paragraph of my post. The point of my post was not that Froome was getting an advantage from inhaling salbutamol. It's that when and how much he inhales is very relevant to his case.

 

[zlev11]

it looked like he was just eating a gel to me (on the climb). in that video he was talking on his radio, i believe that was on the descent of the Duron after Sky split the field.

 

[Tonton]

... in the meantime, one rider has no Clinic thread, probably delivered his best ever, thank you Dumoulin for pacing, 40'40"is awesome, yet Pinot is seen as a loser today. FFS, he deserves better. I'm sick to my stomach.

The lack of activity on the PRR side shows how uneasy many are: rationalize and be an hypocrite, say something be banned, The elephant in the room. Any reasonable member today is stunned. I don't believe in miracles, Terminator was like Froome but he wasn't human, Yates today was Ricco, maybe I'm bitter but there's something that stinks. After the '90s, LA and Floyd, been burned, been there, that's too much.

 

[CTQ]

Re:

IF he wins the Giro, he won't get banned. I think.

No relationship between the two whatsoever. Btw, thanks for the insight into Kerckhoffs/Telegraaf. I note that it's been about two weeks since he said he was very confident that Froome would be exonerated "within a few days".

This was nothing like PSM. Let's not forget on PSM - a one climb stage - he put in over a minute on Quintana, two minutes on Valverde, 3 minutes on Contador, 4 minutes on Nibali, 6 minutes on Purito. That was absurd.

Putting in 6 seconds on Yates, 20 seconds on Pozzovivo and 40 seconds on Dumoulin - on a far harder climb - is not remotely comparable.

Very much agree. This is his PSM after three years of decline. He gave it his best shot and took a total of ten seconds from someone he was trailing by more than three minutes.

And what happened right before the final climb on Wednesday? Could it be material to the time loss?

I’m flat-out astonished that absolutely no one has mentioned what happened right before the final climb on Zoncolan. Am I really the only one—with a feed that is off more than it’s on, no less—who saw him take a couple of puffs, then discard his inhaler, right before attacking?

Why am I mentioning this? Because it’s very germane to Heuberger’s model that claims much higher urinary salbutamol concentrations are possible within one hour of testing. I’m trying to get an idea of how many puffs Froome typically makes on a final climb. He also appeared to inhale before that attack, around :48 of this highlight video, though I'm not certain, because I can't see the inhaler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6BLChPgUCs

he was talking in his micro. Did you already watch a video on How to use an inhaler? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdb3p9RZoR4
nothing like what Froome does, and it would be useless i think

 

[JosephK]

... in the meantime, one rider has no Clinic thread, probably delivered his best ever, thank you Dumoulin for pacing, 40'40"is awesome, yet Pinot is seen as a loser today. FFS, he deserves better. I'm sick to my stomach.

The lack of activity on the PRR side shows how uneasy many are: rationalize and be an hypocrite, say something be banned, The elephant in the room. Any reasonable member today is stunned. I don't believe in miracles, Terminator was like Froome but he wasn't human, Yates today was Ricco, maybe I'm bitter but there's something that stinks. After the '90s, LA and Floyd, been burned, been there, that's too much.

I thought Pinot rode a strong race, today. He was on his limit and stayed there for a very long time. Got everything out of himself, nothing left in the tank -- pretty much the same as Dumoulin. I will admit to using the term "miraculous" in the PRR forum when referring to Froome's Giro comeback. I'm actually hoping for Yates to ride a strong TT, now. Lesser of evils.

 

[Robert5091]

The man has a dodgy knee that's still taped up, punches out a T-Rex on the way, but still wins the stage - phew! cyclin'.

I await the time-trail miracle ...

(If Pinot learned how to wrestle dinosaurs whilst cycling, you'd not be so bitter, Tonton )

 

[gillan1969]

Re: Re:

He had a decent 2002. He was hardly a superstar. His best GT finish was 19th. In 2007 he was ranked 986th by CQ Ranking. How the best current GT rider can be 24 seconds faster over a 40 minute climb than someone barely scraping into the top 1000 riders isn't suspicious.

No he wasn't a superstar, but this is a case where CQ only tells you half the story since he barely raced outside of Giro build-up, after all it was the super-peaking era. He was routinely among the best climbers in the Giro, but he was inconsistent as all hell and would usually lose a truckload of time and go stagehunting as a result. He won three serious mountain stages at the Giro, and was almost always up in the top 5-6 in major mountain stages for years. He was very visible in the Giro's mountains for the best part of a decade and on his day he could climb with the very best - it's just that those days were infrequent and his skillset was such that he absolutely sucked almost everywhere else, so he was always stagehunting. Pérez Cuapio has climbing pedigree, dismissing his climbing time as irrelevant because he wasn't a superstar does him a disservice.

Besides, after pointing out that Froome was only 24" faster than Pérez Cuapio, maybe you could point out that he was only 24" slower than the most doped of all Danilo di Luca's Giri, or that extrapolating from Froome's time in relation to 2007, he's therefore 45" faster than Pellizotti, 1'16" faster than Riccò and 1'31" faster than Mazzoleni, which doesn't look as clean, now, does it? You see, these name vs name comparisons can prove almost anything you want, as some riders may have just been on a bad day, and just using the fact that you didn't remember Pérez Cuapio as a reason to dismiss any suggestion of Froome's time being suspicious is just as worthless as claiming that him being faster than other known doping climbing specialists who weren't riding that race for GC, like Rasmussen, Mayo and Sella, is proof that his time IS suspicious. I'm not a fan of using pure climbing times as a comparative measure unless it's an MTT on a consistent route, because the rest of the stage, and the GC position and how it's set up, affects how hard people ride it, weather conditions aren't consistent etc.. But at the same time, the 2018 stage was harder than the 2007 one, and putting a time close to some of the heavy chargers of that era is always going to raise eyebrows.

I'm not going to pretend that Froome doesn't get more stick directed at him because of who he is and his current circumstances, but given how willing you've been to pursue avenues by which Froome could possibly not have been playing every card he possibly could to get an advantage, and continuing to defend Sky's integrity even after the team that claimed it would hold itself to higher standards than anybody on anti-doping failed to match the anti-doping stances of teams like Lampre and freaking Vacansoleil when it came to handling riders under investigation, I got the impression your intent was to use belittling Pérez Cuapio as a means by which to absolve Froome of criticism, rather than any fair comment on the Mexican's real or perceived talent levels, which I felt needed more colour adding.

the false premise here from Parker is that in becoming, nay transforming (overnight), into the "best" GT rider is the suspicion....everything else flows from that including these performances...you need to transport yourself back to Poland '11 and then advise SDB that he should be getting rid of the the "best" GT rider........

and whilst seconding LS's brush strokes on Cuapio I would add that this performance comes after a very 'off' week fro our hapless hero...rather than at his alleged best...,....once again smashing it in the face of adversity......

 

[DanielSong39]

There's no limit to how badly you can smash your competition when you're armed with an e-bike.

So he gains more time today, then smashes Dumoulin and Dennis to win the ITT?

He could name his winning margin at this point, LOL.

 

[samhocking]

Interesting that yesterdays top 20 at the line was the closest ever since Giro began using Zoncolan MTF. If Froome, Doumilin and Yates were that extra-terrestrial yesterday, why was the top 20 so much closer to them this year compared to 2007, 2011 and even 2014?

 

[Blanco]

Re: Re:

I find it unbelievable that a rider who has won five Grand Tours could be 24 seconds faster than {goes to Google} Julio Cuapio

Eh, the ascent of 2007 the conditions were perfect for extraterrestrial time. 142 km, second stage after the rest day (and the previous day to Lienz was won by a breakaway) and no difficulties before Zonc. Still, the 2007 ascent was jet-fuel, extraterrestrial.
And Froome was only less than a minute slower than Piepoli and Simoni and 25 seconds slower than Di Luca. And more than 40 seconds faster than the first non '07-18 ascent.

But only 24 seconds faster than a rider nobody can remember.

Yeah, but also almost a minute faster than Basso 2010, who destroyed the field back then, and certainly wasn't clean. And are you aware of the level of doping in the peloton in 2007? There were blood bags all over the place! Froome (or anybody else) if clean shouldn't came nowhere near Basso, let alone Simoni and Piepoli!

 

[CTQ]

Re:

There's no limit to how badly you can smash your competition when you're armed with an e-bike.

So he gains more time today, then smashes Dumoulin and Dennis to win the ITT?

He could name his winning margin at this point, LOL.

Some bikes have been scanned including the Froome bike after Zoncolan https://video.gazzetta.it/giro-d-italia-raggi-x-contro-doping-bici/6f6fb990-5ba0-11e8-b83c-f8f7eca6125f?cmpid=shortener_62da5b7dxt

https://twitter.com/faustocoppi60/status/998140752294285312?s=21

 

[PhiLiz]

Re: Re:

There's no limit to how badly you can smash your competition when you're armed with an e-bike.

So he gains more time today, then smashes Dumoulin and Dennis to win the ITT?

He could name his winning margin at this point, LOL.

Some bikes have been scanned including the Froome bike after Zoncolan https://video.gazzetta.it/giro-d-italia-raggi-x-contro-doping-bici/6f6fb990-5ba0-11e8-b83c-f8f7eca6125f?cmpid=shortener_62da5b7dxt

https://twitter.com/faustocoppi60/status/998140752294285312?s=21

Oh, they were scanned? Everything is much more transparent now...

 

[Mamil]

The clinic is relentless in its hunting of Froome...

 

[red_flanders]

Re: Re:

Fastest evers ascents on Monte Zoncolan (2007-2018):

1. 39:03 Simoni
2. 39:03 Piepoli
3. 39:10 A. Schleck
4. 39:34 Di Luca
5. 39:40 Cunego
6. 39:58 Froome
7. 40:04 S. Yates
8. 40:21 Pozzovivo
9. 40:22 Cuapio
10. 40:23 M.A. Lopez

High level today!
Stratospheric!

The return of clean cycling!

I find it unbelievable that a rider who has won five Grand Tours could be 24 seconds faster than {goes to Google} Julio Cuapio

It would seem what you find is any way to convince yourself that Froome isn't doping.