Teams & Riders Froome Talk Only

[brownbobby]

Re:

Well, the problem is hyperbole. Even the most cynical people in this forum who describe Froome as having "zero talent" are meaning "relative to competition", in this case meaning the elite pro péloton. I'm not about to argue that he doesn't, or didn't, know how to ride a bike, even if his style of doing so may be among the ungainliest ever, along with the likes of Fernando Escartín, Juan Mauricio Soler and Francisco Mancebo, all of whom were great climbers. Soler was even the team leader at Froome's own team back in 2008-9.

Similarly, when we've looked at the performances and the power outputs, there has always been this debate over what's plausible, but it neglects the most important question, which is "is it plausible coming from that particular rider?" We can look at the climbing records on Mont Ventoux for an example. Nobody is going to argue away somebody matching Iban Mayo or Marco Pantani unassisted without serious cognitive dissonance, but at 58'31 you have David Moncoutié's best time, a rider who has been generally perceived as clean. Even if we add a bit to that, and say that there's a race with a summit finish on Mont Ventoux and the winning time is 1'00'00" on the money, if you have somebody like Marcel Kittel trail in at +1'00" it's going to raise eyebrows - a 61 minute ascent of Mont Ventoux is not in and of itself suspicious, it's a good 5 minutes slower than Iban Mayo's time from the Dauphiné, but if somebody like Marcel Kittel pulls it off, people are going to call BS, because that's quite simply not what Marcel Kittel is born to do (with apologies to Marcel, I just picked him as a pre-eminent sprinter who is known as a pure power guy, just for an extreme example).

Saint Unix has their list of the immediate success stories (there are many others you can add, take for example Darya Domracheva in the biathlon, competing as a youth she had to race against the boys, because she was regularly pasting the girls not only in her age group but in ALL age groups; Alejandro Valverde is always a good example to point to here because he's a rider nobody is going to call clean, but his indomitable record as a cadet which led to his "El Imbatido" nickname speaks for itself as to there being a special natural talent level from an early age also). Froome is something of an exception to that in that he didn't come to the sport via a traditional route, but nonetheless, it is worth noting that other late converts have been successful far more quickly - at the elite level there's Michael Woods, Primož Roglič and Richie Porte in recent years, for example (Porte came from triathlon so at least had some cycling background, but Woods came from distance running, and Roglič even came from a sport where explosivity is more important than endurance). But Froome didn't come to cycling with an established sporting background already there, nor did he come to the sport at a fully physically grown stage like them, so they're not fair direct comparisons either. Somebody like Bauke Mollema is a better comparison point, having taken up cycling at 19, and won the Tour de l'Avenir at 21. That stands in stark contrast to Froome's records from South African domestic events that was once publicised, which showed him not to have been especially out of the ordinary there either.

Nevertheless there must have been something there, including that vaunted "rough diamond" style that, once the inefficiencies were coached out of him, could reap dividends (strangely, there has not been any physical change in that style, other than the descending which he has markedly improved, but that's been only once he was already an established star, and not to do with his emergence), otherwise he wouldn't have found his way to the UCI World Cycling Centre or onto Barloworld - nevertheless Barloworld was, at the time, the only logical team for him to get onto that would have been able to ride at the top levels, and for all the attention paid to his performances in the final week of the 2008 Tour, he wasn't even the most promising young African climber at Barloworld, because while Froome did well to survive the break over the Croix de Fer and stay with Menchov for a bit after the Russian was dropped on Alpe d'Huez, he did get detached from the group just after Johan van Summeren (not exactly a vaunted climber) and he did finish 9 minutes behind the reigning Vuelta winner. Augustyn survived a strong break over the Col de la Lombarde and then was the strongest climber in it on the Col de la Bonette, cresting the highest peak in the race alone and he would have been in the position to win the stage had he not wiped out on the descent and lost his bike, which descended the Bonette to a fate unknown, much like Millar's legendary Contursi Terme bike throw that sent the bike rolling down the hillside over the barriers. But still, there were some performances there that suggested Froome had at least some talent to make it as a pro, if not a multiple Grand Tour winning one.

This is the problem - there's not linear progress with Froome that means we can answer the question "is it plausible coming from him?" with any degree of certainty at all. There's little by way of signs of early promise that tell us that he was a genetic freak, born to succeed in endurance sports. There's definitely no aesthetically-pleasing style on the bike that tells us he had a natural affinity for riding. And there's no bank of results obtained that told us he was anything other than a moderately talented climber who could feasibly do a decent job for a team leader if he developed. I've traditionally said that I thought he could have become a rider like Egoí Martínez or Chris Anker Sørensen, and I don't feel that's an unreasonable level for what was possible from what he showed in his first years at Barloworld. But Barloworld themselves are a difficult one to judge, as they had a number of unreliable riders and riders with awkward, shuffling techniques, and they also had a number of dopers and positive tests - so actually ascertaining what development opportunities they provided is fairly difficult. But if it was simply that Sky provided better development opportunities, teaching him how to ride within himself and not be wasteful of energy as they described him as being, and improving his pack skills and tactical awareness even while he was struggling with the bilharzia, you would expect him to be at least stagnating, compensating for his less competitive physical shape with improved nous and energy preservation. But he wasn't - his results were going backwards until that hail mary was thrown in the Vuelta.

Then you have to add all of the other factors that have come to light over the last five and a half years - the TUEs, the jiffy bags, the asthma not mentioned in his book but coming to light shortly after its release when he was shown puffing on his inhaler in the middle of a race he won easily, the dubious team doctors, the laughably bad concocted story about the lost laptop, and so on - that make the team less trustworthy. Some of these factors Froome can help, some of them he can't. Then throw in the case history of cycling that makes his a) level and extent of success, and b) speed of emergence at such a late stage in his career look extremely unusual without broaching the subject of doping, and things mount up.

The thing is, "is it plausible?" is one thing. But "is it plausible coming from Chris Froome, given all that we already know and all that we already have seen?" Well, that's a much more subjective question.

Now that's what balance looks and sounds like. Great post!

 

[brownbobby]

So there's the biggest part of the answer to the Froome conundrum. Most of the stuff you list, physique, endurance, power, ability to recover, longevity, consistency...all needs to be nurtured but most of it is there from birth. Forget the nonsense about him having no talent, thats just ridiculous. He was simply born to be the best, when it came to cycling, he won the genetic lottery.

If he's clean and that's the case, he's the only clean athlete I can think of that showed absolutely nothing that indicated legendary athletic capabilities until the age of 26. Every other top endurance or power athlete was dominating from a young age.

Merckx was competitive in the Belgian cycling scene at 16, and started winning as soon as he got into the pro ranks. Bolt ran a sub-20 second 200m as a teenager, Messi was in the Barcelona first team at 16 and a regular at 17. Ali won an Olympic gold medal at 18 and was the heavyweight champion at 22.

Other football superstars like Pelé (won the World Cup for Brazil at 17), Cristiano Ronaldo (was a regular for both Sporting and Manchester United as a teenager), Brazilian Ronaldo (was scoring goals for fun for Cruzeiro, PSV and Barcelona as a teenager) all showed immense promise early on. Gretzky was skating rings around kids three or four years older than him from the day he started playing organized hockey and won the NHL MVP award in his first season, at the age of 18. LeMond won l'Avenir by 10 minutes when he was 21 and finished third in his first ever Tour de France two years later, riding as a domestique for Fignon. The list goes on, by the way. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Roger Federer, Babe Ruth, Michael Phelps... all incredible from the very beginning of their careers.

Yet Froome, who was described as average even by his fellow riders on the African cycling scene and is now perhaps even more dominant compared to his contemporaries than all the athletes mentioned in this post with the possible exception of Gretzky, is somehow clean and gifted with the ability to be the best from birth.

Who said he, or any of the others you mention, was clean?

 

[Benotti69]

This now looks like Froome retires after TdF and gives a 2 finger salute to the sport. Whether he gets his 5th TdF is meh......

 

[LaFlorecita]

Please let's not revisit the 'Froome has zero natural talent debate again, that's been done to death

The bold bit +1

 

[Saint Unix]

Who said he, or any of the others you mention, was clean?

When you say "born to be the best" it implies that the person in question is so naturally gifted that the talent is immediately visible and extraordinary from the very beginning, before the point where doping is part of the game. Every dominant athlete in any major sport has either proven to be a precocious talent from very early on or a doper or both. Froome is either just another doper on a ridiculous programme or he's the biggest anomaly in terms of career trajectory the world has ever seen, and by a huge margin.

Great post by Libertine, by the way. It's important to remember that Froome "having no talent" does mean relative to other riders riding at Conti level or above at the time. To even get there you have to be in the top bracket of riders from your country, or in Froome's case - coming from an area with little cycling history - his continent. Even so, riders with similar results to Froome's Konica and Barloworld exploits are dime-a-dozen at the top level of cycling. If he was born to be the best there should have been some evidence of it somewhere. There's nothing other than hearsay that Froome had this great engine all along, but we know from riders like Betancur, Boasson Hagen, Brajkovic and Popovych that even wasted talents show some ability before falling off the cliff due to bad training habits or lack of motivation or other problems.

 

[brownbobby]

Who said he, or any of the others you mention, was clean?

When you say "born to be the best" it implies that the person in question is so naturally gifted that the talent is immediately visible and extraordinary from the very beginning, before the point where doping is part of the game. Every dominant athlete in any major sport has either proven to be a precocious talent from very early on or a doper or both. Froome is either just another doper on a ridiculous programme or he's the biggest anomaly in terms of career trajectory the world has ever seen, and by a huge margin.

Great post by Libertine, by the way. It's important to remember that Froome "having no talent" does mean relative to other riders riding at Conti level or above at the time. To even get there you have to be in the top bracket of riders from your country, or in Froome's case - coming from an area with little cycling history - his continent. Even so, riders with similar results to Froome's Konica and Barloworld exploits are dime-a-dozen at the top level of cycling. If he was born to be the best there should have been some evidence of it somewhere. There's nothing other than hearsay that Froome had this great engine all along, but we know from riders like Betancur, Boasson Hagen, Brajkovic and Popovych that even wasted talents show some ability before falling off the cliff due to bad training habits or lack of motivation or other problems.

Sorry, but that's not what I said and it's only implied if that's how you interpret it. All it means, simply, is that the person has the natural talent to achieve something. There are many reasons why natural talent isn't immediately visible; given the population of the world and the number of pro cyclists, chances are that the most naturally gifted (potential) cyclists in history have never even ridden a bike with intent.

The myth that doping turns average athletes into world beaters is, in my experience and opinion, one of the biggest red herrings in the doping debate. In cycling and most athletic disciplines, doping, in the forms we know about, can and will elevate already freakishly talented and world class athletes to levels of invincibility, but the talent comes first.

 

[DFA123]

Who said he, or any of the others you mention, was clean?

When you say "born to be the best" it implies that the person in question is so naturally gifted that the talent is immediately visible and extraordinary from the very beginning, before the point where doping is part of the game. Every dominant athlete in any major sport has either proven to be a precocious talent from very early on or a doper or both. Froome is either just another doper on a ridiculous programme or he's the biggest anomaly in terms of career trajectory the world has ever seen, and by a huge margin.

Great post by Libertine, by the way. It's important to remember that Froome "having no talent" does mean relative to other riders riding at Conti level or above at the time. To even get there you have to be in the top bracket of riders from your country, or in Froome's case - coming from an area with little cycling history - his continent. Even so, riders with similar results to Froome's Konica and Barloworld exploits are dime-a-dozen at the top level of cycling. If he was born to be the best there should have been some evidence of it somewhere. There's nothing other than hearsay that Froome had this great engine all along, but we know from riders like Betancur, Boasson Hagen, Brajkovic and Popovych that even wasted talents show some ability before falling off the cliff due to bad training habits or lack of motivation or other problems.

The one thing about Froome that is massively obvious looking at the photos of him at Barloworld, is that he was considerably overweight for a GC rider. Which, if he was like that his whole career could easily have obscured some kind of huge engine.

For all the wacky conspiracy theories, it has always seemed pretty clear to me that the main reason behind Froome's transformation is losing weight. Specifically, losing weight without losing power, or even increasing it slightly. Of course, whether he did this clean in a relatively short space of time is hugely doubtful imo. But, I think it's certainly possible he has had a huge engine all along, but he was just too fat, not very aero and too bad at positioning for it to show before he joined Sky.

 

[Rollthedice]

Who said he, or any of the others you mention, was clean?

When you say "born to be the best" it implies that the person in question is so naturally gifted that the talent is immediately visible and extraordinary from the very beginning, before the point where doping is part of the game. Every dominant athlete in any major sport has either proven to be a precocious talent from very early on or a doper or both. Froome is either just another doper on a ridiculous programme or he's the biggest anomaly in terms of career trajectory the world has ever seen, and by a huge margin.

Great post by Libertine, by the way. It's important to remember that Froome "having no talent" does mean relative to other riders riding at Conti level or above at the time. To even get there you have to be in the top bracket of riders from your country, or in Froome's case - coming from an area with little cycling history - his continent. Even so, riders with similar results to Froome's Konica and Barloworld exploits are dime-a-dozen at the top level of cycling. If he was born to be the best there should have been some evidence of it somewhere. There's nothing other than hearsay that Froome had this great engine all along, but we know from riders like Betancur, Boasson Hagen, Brajkovic and Popovych that even wasted talents show some ability before falling off the cliff due to bad training habits or lack of motivation or other problems.

The one thing about Froome that is massively obvious looking at the photos of him at Barloworld, is that he was considerably overweight for a GC rider. Which, if he was like that his whole career could easily have obscured some kind of huge engine.

For all the wacky conspiracy theories, it has always seemed pretty clear to me that the main reason behind Froome's transformation is losing weight. Specifically, losing weight without losing power, or even increasing it slightly. Of course, whether he did this clean in a relatively short space of time is hugely doubtful imo. But, I think it's certainly possible he has had a huge engine all along, but he was just too fat, not very aero and too bad at positioning for it to show before he joined Sky.

Yep, he just lost the fat. On his back.

 

[DFA123]

Who said he, or any of the others you mention, was clean?

When you say "born to be the best" it implies that the person in question is so naturally gifted that the talent is immediately visible and extraordinary from the very beginning, before the point where doping is part of the game. Every dominant athlete in any major sport has either proven to be a precocious talent from very early on or a doper or both. Froome is either just another doper on a ridiculous programme or he's the biggest anomaly in terms of career trajectory the world has ever seen, and by a huge margin.

Great post by Libertine, by the way. It's important to remember that Froome "having no talent" does mean relative to other riders riding at Conti level or above at the time. To even get there you have to be in the top bracket of riders from your country, or in Froome's case - coming from an area with little cycling history - his continent. Even so, riders with similar results to Froome's Konica and Barloworld exploits are dime-a-dozen at the top level of cycling. If he was born to be the best there should have been some evidence of it somewhere. There's nothing other than hearsay that Froome had this great engine all along, but we know from riders like Betancur, Boasson Hagen, Brajkovic and Popovych that even wasted talents show some ability before falling off the cliff due to bad training habits or lack of motivation or other problems.

The one thing about Froome that is massively obvious looking at the photos of him at Barloworld, is that he was considerably overweight for a GC rider. Which, if he was like that his whole career could easily have obscured some kind of huge engine.

For all the wacky conspiracy theories, it has always seemed pretty clear to me that the main reason behind Froome's transformation is losing weight. Specifically, losing weight without losing power, or even increasing it slightly. Of course, whether he did this clean in a relatively short space of time is hugely doubtful imo. But, I think it's certainly possible he has had a huge engine all along, but he was just too fat, not very aero and too bad at positioning for it to show before he joined Sky.

Yep, he just lost the fat. On his back.

Great photo.

Shows a couple of the key things I was mentioning. He looks a good 4-5kg heavier than he is now, and his bike position is also way less aerodynamic than it is now.

That's the difference of 30-40w which can take you from being a bottle carrier, to GT winner.

 

[Saint Unix]

The one thing about Froome that is massively obvious looking at the photos of him at Barloworld, is that he was considerably overweight for a GC rider. Which, if he was like that his whole career could easily have obscured some kind of huge engine.

Not on flat time trials. Being overweight (for a GC rider) stopped the likes of Grabsch, Bodrogi, Malori, Tuft and pre-transformation Wiggins from doing anything other than riding with the grupetto in the mountains, but they have all still placed in the medals of the TT World Champs, aside from Wiggins who placed 7th before 2009 and then somehow won it once and placed second twice after he lost the weight.

Froome couldn't even medal at the Commonwealth Games before 2011.

 

[thehog]

Re:

Well, the problem is hyperbole. Even the most cynical people in this forum who describe Froome as having "zero talent" are meaning "relative to competition", in this case meaning the elite pro péloton. I'm not about to argue that he doesn't, or didn't, know how to ride a bike, even if his style of doing so may be among the ungainliest ever, along with the likes of Fernando Escartín, Juan Mauricio Soler and Francisco Mancebo, all of whom were great climbers. Soler was even the team leader at Froome's own team back in 2008-9.

Similarly, when we've looked at the performances and the power outputs, there has always been this debate over what's plausible, but it neglects the most important question, which is "is it plausible coming from that particular rider?" We can look at the climbing records on Mont Ventoux for an example. Nobody is going to argue away somebody matching Iban Mayo or Marco Pantani unassisted without serious cognitive dissonance, but at 58'31 you have David Moncoutié's best time, a rider who has been generally perceived as clean. Even if we add a bit to that, and say that there's a race with a summit finish on Mont Ventoux and the winning time is 1'00'00" on the money, if you have somebody like Marcel Kittel trail in at +1'00" it's going to raise eyebrows - a 61 minute ascent of Mont Ventoux is not in and of itself suspicious, it's a good 5 minutes slower than Iban Mayo's time from the Dauphiné, but if somebody like Marcel Kittel pulls it off, people are going to call BS, because that's quite simply not what Marcel Kittel is born to do (with apologies to Marcel, I just picked him as a pre-eminent sprinter who is known as a pure power guy, just for an extreme example).

Saint Unix has their list of the immediate success stories (there are many others you can add, take for example Darya Domracheva in the biathlon, competing as a youth she had to race against the boys, because she was regularly pasting the girls not only in her age group but in ALL age groups; Alejandro Valverde is always a good example to point to here because he's a rider nobody is going to call clean, but his indomitable record as a cadet which led to his "El Imbatido" nickname speaks for itself as to there being a special natural talent level from an early age also). Froome is something of an exception to that in that he didn't come to the sport via a traditional route, but nonetheless, it is worth noting that other late converts have been successful far more quickly - at the elite level there's Michael Woods, Primož Roglič and Richie Porte in recent years, for example (Porte came from triathlon so at least had some cycling background, but Woods came from distance running, and Roglič even came from a sport where explosivity is more important than endurance). But Froome didn't come to cycling with an established sporting background already there, nor did he come to the sport at a fully physically grown stage like them, so they're not fair direct comparisons either. Somebody like Bauke Mollema is a better comparison point, having taken up cycling at 19, and won the Tour de l'Avenir at 21. That stands in stark contrast to Froome's records from South African domestic events that was once publicised, which showed him not to have been especially out of the ordinary there either.

Nevertheless there must have been something there, including that vaunted "rough diamond" style that, once the inefficiencies were coached out of him, could reap dividends (strangely, there has not been any physical change in that style, other than the descending which he has markedly improved, but that's been only once he was already an established star, and not to do with his emergence), otherwise he wouldn't have found his way to the UCI World Cycling Centre or onto Barloworld - nevertheless Barloworld was, at the time, the only logical team for him to get onto that would have been able to ride at the top levels, and for all the attention paid to his performances in the final week of the 2008 Tour, he wasn't even the most promising young African climber at Barloworld, because while Froome did well to survive the break over the Croix de Fer and stay with Menchov for a bit after the Russian was dropped on Alpe d'Huez, he did get detached from the group just after Johan van Summeren (not exactly a vaunted climber) and he did finish 9 minutes behind the reigning Vuelta winner. Augustyn survived a strong break over the Col de la Lombarde and then was the strongest climber in it on the Col de la Bonette, cresting the highest peak in the race alone and he would have been in the position to win the stage had he not wiped out on the descent and lost his bike, which descended the Bonette to a fate unknown, much like Millar's legendary Contursi Terme bike throw that sent the bike rolling down the hillside over the barriers. But still, there were some performances there that suggested Froome had at least some talent to make it as a pro, if not a multiple Grand Tour winning one.

This is the problem - there's not linear progress with Froome that means we can answer the question "is it plausible coming from him?" with any degree of certainty at all. There's little by way of signs of early promise that tell us that he was a genetic freak, born to succeed in endurance sports. There's definitely no aesthetically-pleasing style on the bike that tells us he had a natural affinity for riding. And there's no bank of results obtained that told us he was anything other than a moderately talented climber who could feasibly do a decent job for a team leader if he developed. I've traditionally said that I thought he could have become a rider like Egoí Martínez or Chris Anker Sørensen, and I don't feel that's an unreasonable level for what was possible from what he showed in his first years at Barloworld. But Barloworld themselves are a difficult one to judge, as they had a number of unreliable riders and riders with awkward, shuffling techniques, and they also had a number of dopers and positive tests - so actually ascertaining what development opportunities they provided is fairly difficult. But if it was simply that Sky provided better development opportunities, teaching him how to ride within himself and not be wasteful of energy as they described him as being, and improving his pack skills and tactical awareness even while he was struggling with the bilharzia, you would expect him to be at least stagnating, compensating for his less competitive physical shape with improved nous and energy preservation. But he wasn't - his results were going backwards until that hail mary was thrown in the Vuelta.

Then you have to add all of the other factors that have come to light over the last five and a half years - the TUEs, the jiffy bags, the asthma not mentioned in his book but coming to light shortly after its release when he was shown puffing on his inhaler in the middle of a race he won easily, the dubious team doctors, the laughably bad concocted story about the lost laptop, and so on - that make the team less trustworthy. Some of these factors Froome can help, some of them he can't. Then throw in the case history of cycling that makes his a) level and extent of success, and b) speed of emergence at such a late stage in his career look extremely unusual without broaching the subject of doping, and things mount up.

The thing is, "is it plausible?" is one thing. But "is it plausible coming from Chris Froome, given all that we already know and all that we already have seen?" Well, that's a much more subjective question.

I agree with a good portion of this. However imagine in the 2011 Vuelta Froome finished 23rd helping Wiggins to 2nd place. Or if he helped Wiggins to a point, rode for himself to get a top ten at the Vuelta. That would be actual progression. A very good progression.

Another way you’d exspect natural progression would be winning a Stage here and there before finding consistency. If Froome won the Queen stage at the ToC before dropping off you’d be a little more comfortable with him climbing with Cobo. And to that point, he didn’t just climb or sit on Cobo he was sprinting passed him, being caught, sprinting again and again. And that was not all, Froome became a world class time trialer. What are the chances?

 

[DFA123]

The one thing about Froome that is massively obvious looking at the photos of him at Barloworld, is that he was considerably overweight for a GC rider. Which, if he was like that his whole career could easily have obscured some kind of huge engine.

Not on flat time trials. Being overweight (for a GC rider) stopped the likes of Grabsch, Bodrogi, Malori, Tuft and pre-transformation Wiggins from doing anything other than riding with the grupetto in the mountains, but they have all still placed in the medals of the TT World Champs, aside from Wiggins who placed 7th before 2009 and then somehow won it once and placed second twice after he lost the weight.

Froome couldn't even medal at the Commonwealth Games before 2011.

Well yeah, weight loss doesn't make a huge difference to flat time trials. Which is why I referred specifically to weight loss and also becoming more aero. Both of which are nicely outlined in the photo above.

I think becoming significantly more aero after joining a team with the resources of Sky is one of the least suspicious things about Froome. Especially for a rider who spent his whole youth and junior career with very limited access to top level equipment and coaching.

 

[thehog]

Who said he, or any of the others you mention, was clean?

When you say "born to be the best" it implies that the person in question is so naturally gifted that the talent is immediately visible and extraordinary from the very beginning, before the point where doping is part of the game. Every dominant athlete in any major sport has either proven to be a precocious talent from very early on or a doper or both. Froome is either just another doper on a ridiculous programme or he's the biggest anomaly in terms of career trajectory the world has ever seen, and by a huge margin.

Great post by Libertine, by the way. It's important to remember that Froome "having no talent" does mean relative to other riders riding at Conti level or above at the time. To even get there you have to be in the top bracket of riders from your country, or in Froome's case - coming from an area with little cycling history - his continent. Even so, riders with similar results to Froome's Konica and Barloworld exploits are dime-a-dozen at the top level of cycling. If he was born to be the best there should have been some evidence of it somewhere. There's nothing other than hearsay that Froome had this great engine all along, but we know from riders like Betancur, Boasson Hagen, Brajkovic and Popovych that even wasted talents show some ability before falling off the cliff due to bad training habits or lack of motivation or other problems.

The one thing about Froome that is massively obvious looking at the photos of him at Barloworld, is that he was considerably overweight for a GC rider. Which, if he was like that his whole career could easily have obscured some kind of huge engine.

For all the wacky conspiracy theories, it has always seemed pretty clear to me that the main reason behind Froome's transformation is losing weight. Specifically, losing weight without losing power, or even increasing it slightly. Of course, whether he did this clean in a relatively short space of time is hugely doubtful imo. But, I think it's certainly possible he has had a huge engine all along, but he was just too fat, not very aero and too bad at positioning for it to show before he joined Sky.

Yep, he just lost the fat. On his back.

Great photo.

Shows a couple of the key things I was mentioning. He looks a good 4-5kg heavier than he is now, and his bike position is also way less aerodynamic than it is now.

That's the difference of 30-40w which can take you from being a bottle carrier, to GT winner.

Yes, he is way more aero now 40w right there

 

[DFA123]

Yes, he is way more aero now 40w right there

So are you suggesting that he's not more aero now than he was at Barloworld? With all the resources and access to top level equipment/coaching that is available to a team like Sky?

This is the kind of dismissive clinic-bot thinking that destroys any sensible discussion around Froome. The idea that doping is somehow 100% responsible for every improvement Froome has made is just ludicrous. And if you're not even willing to entertain the possibility that his transformation is, at least in part, driven by non-doping factors, you are just as bad as the Sky bots who refuse to entertain the possibility that Froome may have doped.

 

[Bronstein]

The one thing about Froome that is massively obvious looking at the photos of him at Barloworld, is that he was considerably overweight for a GC rider. Which, if he was like that his whole career could easily have obscured some kind of huge engine.

Not on flat time trials. Being overweight (for a GC rider) stopped the likes of Grabsch, Bodrogi, Malori, Tuft and pre-transformation Wiggins from doing anything other than riding with the grupetto in the mountains, but they have all still placed in the medals of the TT World Champs, aside from Wiggins who placed 7th before 2009 and then somehow won it once and placed second twice after he lost the weight.

Froome couldn't even medal at the Commonwealth Games before 2011.

Well yeah, weight loss doesn't make a huge difference to flat time trials. Which is why I referred specifically to weight loss and also becoming more aero. Both of which are nicely outlined in the photo above.

I think becoming significantly more aero after joining a team with the resources of Sky is one of the least suspicious things about Froome. Especially for a rider who spent his whole youth and junior career with very limited access to top level equipment and coaching.

Reality:

Despite being the Olympic bronze medallist in the discipline and runner-up to Wiggins in both long time-trials in this year’s Tour, Froome has never tested his position and bike in a wind tunnel. In time-trial terms, he has been operating in the Stone Age, with elbows out as if riding a scooter.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/9751875/Chris-Froome-defiant-over-Bradley-Wiggins-challenge-to-Tour-de-France-ambitions.html

 

[thehog]

Yes, he is way more aero now 40w right there

So are you suggesting that he's not more aero now than he was at Barloworld? With all the resources and access to top level equipment/coaching that is available to a team like Sky?

This is the kind of dismissive clinic-bot thinking that destroys any sensible discussion around Froome. The idea that doping is somehow 100% responsible for every improvement Froome has made is just ludicrous. And if you're not even willing to entertain the possibility that his transformation is, at least in part, driven by non-doping factors, you are just as bad as the Sky bots who refuse to entertain the possibility that Froome may have doped.

Sensible discussion? Froome’s own words said he’d never been in a wind tunnel until 2014. Let’s keep things in perspective. And to that point if you think Froome is aero then your tin-foil hat is blinding your own eyesight

 

[Saint Unix]

Well yeah, weight loss doesn't make a huge difference to flat time trials. Which is why I referred specifically to weight loss and also becoming more aero. Both of which are nicely outlined in the photo above.

I think becoming significantly more aero after joining a team with the resources of Sky is one of the least suspicious things about Froome. Especially for a rider who spent his whole youth and junior career with very limited access to top level equipment and coaching.

He placed 5th at the Commonwealth Games while decked out in full Sky TT gear, and he didn't even go to a wind tunnel until after the 2013 Tour, as per Sky's own admission.

So between riding a one-day TT event with top of the line gear while finishing behind the likes of a teenage Luke Durbridge and a 37 year old Michael Hutchinson and going to a wind tunnel he loses all the weight and starts battling it out with Martin, Wiggins and Cancellara on flat time trials and with dopers like Contador, Purito and Cobo on mountains.

No amount of mental gymnastics can make sense of that.

 

[Benotti69]

Yes, he is way more aero now 40w right there

So are you suggesting that he's not more aero now than he was at Barloworld? With all the resources and access to top level equipment/coaching that is available to a team like Sky?

That myth died a death 2 years ago.

This is the kind of dismissive clinic-bot thinking that destroys any sensible discussion around Froome. The idea that doping is somehow 100% responsible for every improvement Froome has made is just ludicrous. And if you're not even willing to entertain the possibility that his transformation is, at least in part, driven by non-doping factors, you are just as bad as the Sky bots who refuse to entertain the possibility that Froome may have doped.

Anyone who claims the clinic as a single entity is full of it.

Konica and Barloworld were not amatuer teams. What Sky claimed to have done to improve Froome are all lies.

The reason this thread continues is for the exact same reason the Armstrong threads ran and ran. Posters, whether paid to post or fans keep trying to introduce the absurd notion that Froome is legit or at least as legit as other winners.

He aint. The words freak, alien, stick insect etc all apply to guy who looks as conformtable on a bike as a giraffe.

 

[DFA123]

Yes, he is way more aero now 40w right there

So are you suggesting that he's not more aero now than he was at Barloworld? With all the resources and access to top level equipment/coaching that is available to a team like Sky?

This is the kind of dismissive clinic-bot thinking that destroys any sensible discussion around Froome. The idea that doping is somehow 100% responsible for every improvement Froome has made is just ludicrous. And if you're not even willing to entertain the possibility that his transformation is, at least in part, driven by non-doping factors, you are just as bad as the Sky bots who refuse to entertain the possibility that Froome may have doped.

Sensible discussion? Froome’s own words said he’d never been in a wind tunnel until 2014. Let’s keep things in perspective. And to that point if you think Froome is aero then your tin-foil hat is blinding your own eyesight

Froome's TT position is superb. One of the most aero in the peloton. Same as his position on the Finestre stage, when he'd prepared for the posibility of a long solo. Trying to imply otherwise is being disingenuous. For a change.

 

[DFA123]

Well yeah, weight loss doesn't make a huge difference to flat time trials. Which is why I referred specifically to weight loss and also becoming more aero. Both of which are nicely outlined in the photo above.

I think becoming significantly more aero after joining a team with the resources of Sky is one of the least suspicious things about Froome. Especially for a rider who spent his whole youth and junior career with very limited access to top level equipment and coaching.

He placed 5th at the Commonwealth Games while decked out in full Sky TT gear, and he didn't even go to a wind tunnel until after the 2013 Tour, as per Sky's own admission.

So between riding a one-day TT event with top of the line gear while finishing behind the likes of a teenage Luke Durbridge and a 37 year old Michael Hutchinson and going to a wind tunnel he loses all the weight and starts battling it out with Martin, Wiggins and Cancellara on flat time trials and with dopers like Contador, Purito and Cobo on mountains.

No amount of mental gymnastics can make sense of that.

So you don't think it's possible that he has improved his aerodynamics considerably since that 2010 TT? Of course I'm not saying that is the sole reason for his transformation to become an elite TTist, but it is a factor imo.

After all, there are plenty of first class dopers who are horrendous TTers. There are other factors involved than just having a huge engine.

 

[DFA123]

Anyone who claims the clinic as a single entity is full of it.

Nowhere have I claimed the clinic is a single entity. The Clinic s great, and with a wide range of opinions. I have simply noted my disdain for 'clinic-bots' (I think we all know who they are). The kind of posters who fail to acknowledge any factor influencing a cyclist or bike race, other than doping.

It just ends up in circular conversations heavy in cherry-picked examples and innuendo, with no room for nuance or shades of grey.

 

[brownbobby]

Re: Re:

Well, the problem is hyperbole. Even the most cynical people in this forum who describe Froome as having "zero talent" are meaning "relative to competition", in this case meaning the elite pro péloton. I'm not about to argue that he doesn't, or didn't, know how to ride a bike, even if his style of doing so may be among the ungainliest ever, along with the likes of Fernando Escartín, Juan Mauricio Soler and Francisco Mancebo, all of whom were great climbers. Soler was even the team leader at Froome's own team back in 2008-9.

Similarly, when we've looked at the performances and the power outputs, there has always been this debate over what's plausible, but it neglects the most important question, which is "is it plausible coming from that particular rider?" We can look at the climbing records on Mont Ventoux for an example. Nobody is going to argue away somebody matching Iban Mayo or Marco Pantani unassisted without serious cognitive dissonance, but at 58'31 you have David Moncoutié's best time, a rider who has been generally perceived as clean. Even if we add a bit to that, and say that there's a race with a summit finish on Mont Ventoux and the winning time is 1'00'00" on the money, if you have somebody like Marcel Kittel trail in at +1'00" it's going to raise eyebrows - a 61 minute ascent of Mont Ventoux is not in and of itself suspicious, it's a good 5 minutes slower than Iban Mayo's time from the Dauphiné, but if somebody like Marcel Kittel pulls it off, people are going to call BS, because that's quite simply not what Marcel Kittel is born to do (with apologies to Marcel, I just picked him as a pre-eminent sprinter who is known as a pure power guy, just for an extreme example).

Saint Unix has their list of the immediate success stories (there are many others you can add, take for example Darya Domracheva in the biathlon, competing as a youth she had to race against the boys, because she was regularly pasting the girls not only in her age group but in ALL age groups; Alejandro Valverde is always a good example to point to here because he's a rider nobody is going to call clean, but his indomitable record as a cadet which led to his "El Imbatido" nickname speaks for itself as to there being a special natural talent level from an early age also). Froome is something of an exception to that in that he didn't come to the sport via a traditional route, but nonetheless, it is worth noting that other late converts have been successful far more quickly - at the elite level there's Michael Woods, Primož Roglič and Richie Porte in recent years, for example (Porte came from triathlon so at least had some cycling background, but Woods came from distance running, and Roglič even came from a sport where explosivity is more important than endurance). But Froome didn't come to cycling with an established sporting background already there, nor did he come to the sport at a fully physically grown stage like them, so they're not fair direct comparisons either. Somebody like Bauke Mollema is a better comparison point, having taken up cycling at 19, and won the Tour de l'Avenir at 21. That stands in stark contrast to Froome's records from South African domestic events that was once publicised, which showed him not to have been especially out of the ordinary there either.

Nevertheless there must have been something there, including that vaunted "rough diamond" style that, once the inefficiencies were coached out of him, could reap dividends (strangely, there has not been any physical change in that style, other than the descending which he has markedly improved, but that's been only once he was already an established star, and not to do with his emergence), otherwise he wouldn't have found his way to the UCI World Cycling Centre or onto Barloworld - nevertheless Barloworld was, at the time, the only logical team for him to get onto that would have been able to ride at the top levels, and for all the attention paid to his performances in the final week of the 2008 Tour, he wasn't even the most promising young African climber at Barloworld, because while Froome did well to survive the break over the Croix de Fer and stay with Menchov for a bit after the Russian was dropped on Alpe d'Huez, he did get detached from the group just after Johan van Summeren (not exactly a vaunted climber) and he did finish 9 minutes behind the reigning Vuelta winner. Augustyn survived a strong break over the Col de la Lombarde and then was the strongest climber in it on the Col de la Bonette, cresting the highest peak in the race alone and he would have been in the position to win the stage had he not wiped out on the descent and lost his bike, which descended the Bonette to a fate unknown, much like Millar's legendary Contursi Terme bike throw that sent the bike rolling down the hillside over the barriers. But still, there were some performances there that suggested Froome had at least some talent to make it as a pro, if not a multiple Grand Tour winning one.

This is the problem - there's not linear progress with Froome that means we can answer the question "is it plausible coming from him?" with any degree of certainty at all. There's little by way of signs of early promise that tell us that he was a genetic freak, born to succeed in endurance sports. There's definitely no aesthetically-pleasing style on the bike that tells us he had a natural affinity for riding. And there's no bank of results obtained that told us he was anything other than a moderately talented climber who could feasibly do a decent job for a team leader if he developed. I've traditionally said that I thought he could have become a rider like Egoí Martínez or Chris Anker Sørensen, and I don't feel that's an unreasonable level for what was possible from what he showed in his first years at Barloworld. But Barloworld themselves are a difficult one to judge, as they had a number of unreliable riders and riders with awkward, shuffling techniques, and they also had a number of dopers and positive tests - so actually ascertaining what development opportunities they provided is fairly difficult. But if it was simply that Sky provided better development opportunities, teaching him how to ride within himself and not be wasteful of energy as they described him as being, and improving his pack skills and tactical awareness even while he was struggling with the bilharzia, you would expect him to be at least stagnating, compensating for his less competitive physical shape with improved nous and energy preservation. But he wasn't - his results were going backwards until that hail mary was thrown in the Vuelta.

Then you have to add all of the other factors that have come to light over the last five and a half years - the TUEs, the jiffy bags, the asthma not mentioned in his book but coming to light shortly after its release when he was shown puffing on his inhaler in the middle of a race he won easily, the dubious team doctors, the laughably bad concocted story about the lost laptop, and so on - that make the team less trustworthy. Some of these factors Froome can help, some of them he can't. Then throw in the case history of cycling that makes his a) level and extent of success, and b) speed of emergence at such a late stage in his career look extremely unusual without broaching the subject of doping, and things mount up.

The thing is, "is it plausible?" is one thing. But "is it plausible coming from Chris Froome, given all that we already know and all that we already have seen?" Well, that's a much more subjective question.

I agree with a good portion of this. However imagine in the 2011 Vuelta Froome finished 23rd helping Wiggins to 2nd place. Or if he helped Wiggins to a point, rode for himself to get a top ten at the Vuelta. That would be actual progression. A very good progression.

Another way you’d exspect natural progression would be winning a Stage here and there before finding consistency. If Froome won the Queen stage at the ToC before dropping off you’d be a little more comfortable with him climbing with Cobo. And to that point, he didn’t just climb or sit on Cobo he was sprinting passed him, being caught, sprinting again and again. And that was not all, Froome became a world class time trialer. What are the chances?

Despite my tendencies to defend Froome mostly on here, I can't argue with this.

We've seen many examples of doping transformations...rouleurs/tt specialists who suddenly become climbers, stupendous solo attacks that come out of nowhere and are never repeated, one season/one GT wonders that come from nowhere.....but nothing like Froome, he really was average in all departments, and almost overnight became the worlds best in both climbing and tt efforts. And he's stayed this way, consistently, ever since.

It's like someone just hit a switch that's stayed on to this day

Doping alone doesn't explain this. I've never even remotely bought into the motors theories. None of the explanations offered by Team Froome are overly convincing.

Everything he's ever done since, IF we accept the 2011 reset, in my opinion is plausible. On the edge of incredible, but that's what we should be seeing from people who are the best in the world at what they do.

2011 remains the big mystery.

 

[Benotti69]

Anyone who claims the clinic as a single entity is full of it.

Nowhere have I claimed the clinic is a single entity. The Clinic s great, and with a wide range of opinions. I have simply noted my disdain for 'clinic-bots' (I think we all know who they are). The kind of posters who fail to acknowledge any factor influencing a cyclist or bike race, other than doping.

It just ends up in circular conversations heavy in cherry-picked examples and innuendo, with no room for nuance or shades of grey.

In the case of Froome, no there is no grey. In 2 weeks the guy went from pack fodder to GT podium. There are no nuances attained in those 2 weeks. From there he has been GT podium or crash with 6 GT wins (4Tdf, 1 Giro and 1 Vuelta) I mean that stratospheric rise at 26 is not nuanced in any manner. This guy was going to out of a job then BOOM, he would've won a GT if not for Wiggins. CRAZY. Nuance where, just *** where??????

 

[Saint Unix]

So you don't think it's possible that he has improved his aerodynamics considerably since that 2010 TT? Of course I'm not saying that is the sole reason for his transformation to become an elite TTist, but it is a factor imo.

After all, there are plenty of first class dopers who are horrendous TTers. There are other factors involved than just having a huge engine.

Of course it's possible, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that any gains he would have had from reducing drag (even with the help of a wind tunnel, which he didn't have) would have been negated by the power loss that comes naturally with that sort of weight loss.

ScienceIsCool has done the math and shown Froome to gain 15% more power on TTs. To attribute all of that to reduced drag and weight loss isn't possible. Focusing on circumstances that can at best be a partial explanation for his drastic and instant improvement is just smoke and mirrors to distract from the point of this particular thread in this particular forum, which is "Is Chris Froome doping?"

So to use a Coundism: Can "legal" gains explain Froome's improvement? Maybe to a small degree, but not fully.

 

[thehog]

Froome on Pena 2011, the slow motion reply of a side view is interesting. Bearly pedalling as he flies past Cobo.

Regardless, this is absurd that he could do his and even kmow that he could do it without blowing up.

https://youtu.be/_mFDtlQXCRQ?t=1m50s