Teams & Riders Froome Talk Only

[TheSpud]

The quotes are already on the thread, posted as part of today's discussion.

Ok i'm with you now - that other one is from the DailyMail from what i've found. Certainly discrepancies between the two - does that make DB a liar or a bad story recaller? Who knows - i guess you can decide either way. I once worked with someone like that - he used to recall to our team a meeting that he and I went to, it was a raging success, etc. etc. Strange really as I was off sick the day the meeting happened. So definitely those two accounts don't tally in the words Sutton was meant to have said.

Isn't there a slightly bigger potential discrepancy in that story though ...

 

[TheSpud]

Come on Martin, pay attention

(I jest, see the humor, please)

Boom boom!

I wont be putting a pound in my retirement fund for that one ...

 

[pastronef]

I blame the off-season, 3-4 pages talking about sand shoes....

 

[bobbins]

Flips flops are like sandles. Australians call them thongs. They are made of rubber.

Sand shoes/sneakers are like running trainers.

Shane refers to flip flops / thongs as sand shoes. He likes to exaggerate. Maybe if you aren't British / Australian it might be worth just ignoring this part of the thread as it is all lost on you.

Obviously it is really important to analyse every statement / comment / quote from Dave B or Walshe and make sure they are accurate.

I just hope that they have never said 'it's raining cats and dogs'

 

[sniper]

I just hope that they have never said 'it's raining cats and dogs'

nice one.
however, you'll agree that Braiilsford deserves the ridicule he gets.
the seriousness with which he's been talking about crap marginal gains while lying about more urgent issues, that's not exactly worthy of a Sir, is it.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Obviously it is really important to analyse every statement / comment / quote from Dave B or Walshe and make sure they are accurate.

It is when they use that statement to make it seem like Froome was more talented than he actually was. They lied to make him seem less suspicious. Not cool.

 

[The Hitch]

Shane refers to flip flops / thongs as sand shoes. He likes to exaggerate. Maybe if you aren't British / Australian it might be worth just ignoring this part of the thread as it is all lost on you.

Obviously it is really important to analyse every statement / comment / quote from Dave B or Walshe and make sure they are accurate.

I just hope that they have never said 'it's raining cats and dogs'

How is a figure of speech like "it's raining cats and dogs" universally accepted as a metaphor, comparable to Sutton bizarrely claiming a guy in normal cycling gear is riding at an imagined disadvantage. Is it some private joke between brailsford and Sutton. If so then why is brailsford clearly making out like froome rode the race without proper attire. Whatsmore this isn't some drunken talk at the table at 4 in the morning. It was put in a book, written for the sole purpose of arguing froome was clean, in a section that listed all the alleged disadvantages froome had in his early career.
And it was retold by brailsford at a press conference when he was specifically asked why a guy with no prior cycling accomplishments managed to become the world's greatest rider. He gave the story as an example of how froome actually was really good as a youngster but limited by the absence of the bare necessities of cycling racing, which brailsford can now provide. If froome wasn't wearing sand shoes, the story is absolutely meaningless since not even the gullible sky target fans would believe coming 17th and 5 minutes in a commonwealth tt where most guys can't participate, is any sign of future stardom.

And of course 2 of skys most devoted journalists reprint the story as fact.

So I don't see where the story becomes a joke or a metaphor. It's quite clearly one that people are meant to believe happened and has been directly used in arguments by sky about why they thought froome was good.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Shane refers to flip flops / thongs as sand shoes. He likes to exaggerate. Maybe if you aren't British / Australian it might be worth just ignoring this part of the thread as it is all lost on you.

Obviously it is really important to analyse every statement / comment / quote from Dave B or Walshe and make sure they are accurate.

I just hope that they have never said 'it's raining cats and dogs'

Good post, so what we actually should make of that remark is Froome's equipement that day was amateuristic?

Fact remains there are a lot of sweet stories surrounding our dear friend Chris.

 

[The Hitch]

I blame the off-season, 3-4 pages talking about sand shoes....

Well, no, it was already discussed when froomies book came out. I believe that was June, very much not the off season

And while usually you are a good poster, you are being a little bit disingenuous. Brailsford brought up sandshoes. And Walsh and more reprinted it. As fact. You can't then turn around and blame the clinic for responding to something they brought up. Essentially when it's so clear cut that it's total bull****, invented to persuade fans far more gullible than yourself.

 

[SeriousSam]

It's clear absolutely no one had even the slightest idea Froomey would go on to climb and time trial like Lance. Quotes like the Sutton one aren't real. Post hoc made up narrative to sell to the dumb and gullible.

In fact, whenever some glorious tale from the past involving a dialogue ends with "the rest is history", you can be sure it's pure fabrication.

 

[bobbins]

How is a figure of speech like "it's raining cats and dogs" universally accepted as a metaphor, comparable to Sutton bizarrely claiming a guy in normal cycling gear is riding at an imagined disadvantage. Is it some private joke between brailsford and Sutton. If so then why is brailsford clearly making out like froome rode the race without proper attire. Whatsmore this isn't some drunken talk at the table at 4 in the morning. It was put in a book, written for the sole purpose of arguing froome was clean, in a section that listed all the alleged disadvantages froome had in his early career.
And it was retold by brailsford at a press conference when he was specifically asked why a guy with no prior cycling accomplishments managed to become the world's greatest rider. He gave the story as an example of how froome actually was really good as a youngster but limited by the absence of the bare necessities of cycling racing, which brailsford can now provide. If froome wasn't wearing sand shoes, the story is absolutely meaningless since not even the gullible sky target fans would believe coming 17th and 5 minutes in a commonwealth tt where most guys can't participate, is any sign of future stardom.

And of course 2 of skys most devoted journalists reprint the story as fact.

So I don't see where the story becomes a joke or a metaphor. It's quite clearly one that people are meant to believe happened and has been directly used in arguments by sky about why they thought froome was good.

You're probably reading too much into this. Sutton speaks in exaggerations and metaphors. Brailsford will repeat them verbatim because he's got a weak repertoire and very little in the way of personality when compared to Sutton.

You need to realise that Brailsford is a very good administrator but as far as coaching, tactics, being a DS and cycling in general is concerned, he is very lacking in knowledge. Watch some of his interviews and study what he says. Very little is his own thoughts.

He will take credit but share blame. He is a very clever bloke, a great organiser but knows very little about the sport.

If Walshe was gullible enough to take what was said as verbatim then that his own fault. It is already well established that he is a Team Sky fan with a typewriter so why look into the book like it is a probing insight into the team or Froome. I've heard so many things that the team have told their ill-informed sponsors that I'm sure they do it just to wind them up. Walsh was probably sucked in by it too.

 

[Benotti69]

Brailsford aint clever if he is selling to the gullible.

Talk of Froome riding in sand shoes was easily going to be found out to be a lie. Not clever.

Those who lie always find it hard to keep track of their lies.....

 

[bobbins]

Brailsford aint clever if he is selling to the gullible.

Talk of Froome riding in sand shoes was easily going to be found out to be a lie. Not clever.

Those who lie always find it hard to keep track of their lies.....

I can't see the link between this sudden obsession of whether Froome wore sand shoes and the fact that he is the greatest transformation into a Grand Tour winner since that testicle-less yank.

Focus more on things like the sudden Froome transformation, his coach Bobby Julich, his new doctor, Sky's TUEs, sharing of dope test results between BC and Sky, adverse findings going away etc, etc.....

 

[SeriousSam]

Here's the link. The Sand Shoe Story is part of the evidence Froome is clean. Yes, I kid you not.

To move the status of Froome's transformation from the greatest scientific miracle of the 21st century into the realm of the plausible, anything and everything that indicates Froome had great potential prior to his Climb will do.

Like, if Froome had actually worn sandshoes and had actually put in a great performance, and if Sutton hat actually taken note of his potential, that would be something. Alas it's all false.

 

[thehog]

I can't see the link between this sudden obsession of whether Froome wore sand shoes and the fact that he is the greatest transformation into a Grand Tour winner since that testicle-less yank.

Focus more on things like the sudden Froome transformation, his coach Bobby Julich, his new doctor, Sky's TUEs, sharing of dope test results between BC and Sky, adverse findings going away etc, etc.....

We all know that. The sandshoe story is just part of it... its a folklaw bulls!t story the same that Armstrong used to create, like 500 tests or his extra long thigh bone that gave extra leverage. All this stuff that created the Armstrong myth is the same that has been put together for Froome.

And yes, Shance Sutton is Chris Carmichael...

Chris Carmichael, who became his coach when Armstrong was still a teen-ager, told me that even then Armstrong was among the most remarkable athletes he had ever seen. Not only has his cardiovascular strength always been exceptional; his body seems specially constructed for cycling. His thigh bones are unusually long, for example, which permits him to apply just the right amount of torque to the pedals.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/15/the-long-ride

 

[bobbins]

Good point but to be fair, Sutton always said that Wiggins had massive potential.

As for Froome. I've never heard of Sutton to be particularly effusive about his talent.

Froome went outside of Team Sky for his magic formula just as his contract was being halved / not renewed. Bobby Julich shined this turd and it looks like the team just had to suck it up and go along with it when he placed high in the Vuelta. Dave B couldn't be seen to lose such a mega talent so outbid OPQS to retain Froome and then I guess had to ignore the way Froome came to form or look after him in-house.

Either way, it's simply a matter of time before Froome goes down and takes Sir Dave with him. By all accounts Froome is a loose cannon so it won't be long.

Investigating the suitability of his footwear won't get you anywhere.

 

[roundabout]

Not saying that you are wrong, but I am not convinced that things happened as you described.

 

[Granville57]

I just hope that they have never said 'it's raining cats and dogs'

But that's not a fair comparison. If they had used that phrase, the Braislford equivalent retelling of it would've gone something like this:

I was with Shane Sutton [the British head coach] on the beach road in Melbourne during the time trial. Chris rode past, and Shane said: "Bloody hell, it's raining cats and dogs, and he's going fast." There were both cats and dogs falling on the course, and look what he's done. Even with all those f'cking cats and dogs!

But why so much traction on such a silly little story?

Because it's a crystal clear example of truth bending on the part of Sky to push an agenda, and the easiest one to refute. It's not about the specifics of the story—it could've been foot ware or falling felines, it's the notion of what is being sold to the public, and what some of us are refusing to buy.

 

[sniper]

...
If Walshe was gullible enough to take what was said as verbatim then that his own fault. It is already well established that he is a Team Sky fan with a typewriter so why look into the book like it is a probing insight into the team or Froome. I've heard so many things that the team have told their ill-informed sponsors that I'm sure they do it just to wind them up. Walsh was probably sucked in by it too.

...
Focus more on things like the sudden Froome transformation, his coach Bobby Julich, his new doctor, Sky's TUEs, sharing of dope test results between BC and Sky, adverse findings going away etc, etc.....

Good point but to be fair, Sutton always said that Wiggins had massive potential.
As for Froome. I've never heard of Sutton to be particularly effusive about his talent.

Froome went outside of Team Sky for his magic formula just as his contract was being halved / not renewed. Bobby Julich shined this turd and it looks like the team just had to suck it up and go along with it when he placed high in the Vuelta. Dave B couldn't be seen to lose such a mega talent so outbid OPQS to retain Froome and then I guess had to ignore the way Froome came to form or look after him in-house.

Either way, it's simply a matter of time before Froome goes down and takes Sir Dave with him. By all accounts Froome is a loose cannon so it won't be long.
...

three very interesting posts, thanks.
I don't doubt you are on the right track here.
but whence your optimism about Froome going down quickly? At the moment he seems to receive firm backing from Cookson, wouldn't you agree?

 

[The Hitch]

You're probably reading too much into this. Sutton speaks in exaggerations and metaphors. Brailsford will repeat them verbatim because he's got a weak repertoire and very little in the way of personality when compared to Sutton.

You need to realise that Brailsford is a very good administrator but as far as coaching, tactics, being a DS and cycling in general is concerned, he is very lacking in knowledge. Watch some of his interviews and study what he says. Very little is his own thoughts.

He will take credit but share blame. He is a very clever bloke, a great organiser but knows very little about the sport.

If Walshe was gullible enough to take what was said as verbatim then that his own fault. It is already well established that he is a Team Sky fan with a typewriter so why look into the book like it is a probing insight into the team or Froome. I've heard so many things that the team have told their ill-informed sponsors that I'm sure they do it just to wind them up. Walsh was probably sucked in by it too.

But it wasn't just Walsh. Months before Walsh's book came out the story was printed in the daily mail. A similar story also appears another time in the guardian.

In all cases brailsford mentions that it was where he discovers froome and that froome wearing sandshoes made it impressive. So he's been telling plenty of "journalists" the story, and at some point one has to stop giving brailsford the benefit of the doubt that "oh he probably thought the journos wouldn't take it literaly" and see that he's offering the clearly factually incorrect story to anyone asks how froome transformed.

And in any case if brailsford is as you say just repeating lines he heard from others and falsely posing as this great cycling genius then that invalidates much of what he has said and many of the arguments sky have made.

 

[The Hitch]

Focus more on things like the sudden Froome transformation, his coach Bobby Julich, his new doctor, Sky's TUEs, sharing of dope test results between BC and Sky, adverse findings going away etc, etc.....

Well ive already focused on most of them and many other questions which Sky fans conveniently refuse to answer, while waiting for new discussions which they can more easily mock.

But what more can I say for many of these things, especially the ones you list above which are quite simply dismissed by fans as "you can't prove that means they are doping".

eg Bobby Jullich may have been a doping scumbag but you can't prove he didn't stop being a doping enabler when he joined team sky, and you can't prove his new doctor hasn't become clean since he started working with Froome, and you can't prove lying about TUE's means they lie about other drugs.

Where else am I supposed to go with that.

As for adverse findings going away, and sharing of dope test results, I don't really know much about that and haven't heard anything about it, nor do I know what evidence there is to back it up, so I don't really know what I can say on those issues.

 

[The Hitch]

We all know that. The sandshoe story is just part of it... its a folklaw bulls!t story the same that Armstrong used to create, like 500 tests or his extra long thigh bone that gave extra leverage. All this stuff that created the Armstrong myth is the same that has been put together for Froome.

And yes, Shance Sutton is Chris Carmichael...



http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/15/the-long-ride

This.

The thing that makes the sandshoe story valuable is that its one of the few cases where you can 100% prove Sky made it up, as opposed to the others where its only 99.99999% clear they made it up and the sky fans cling to the 0.0000001%.

For example, after 3 decades of teams and bicycle companies employing dozens of experts to find any little way time trial gear and position can be improved, did Sky's swimming coach really discover in only his 2nd year in the sport, that raising the handlebars adds an extra 40 watts and everyone else had overlooked that?

Extremely unlikely. But oh you can't prove he didn't.

Or did Froome really do another 4 hours of riding in secret every day when his trainers weren't paying attention after the 6 hour sessions that exhausted everyone else on the team so much.

From a physical standpoint it makes no sense, and whoever invented that story clearly has no concept of how training actually works,

But you can't prove he didn't.

There's plenty more bull**** stories like that that make no sense, but "you can't prove they didn't", because you weren't there and don't have immages.

Well here we finaly have an image. And it shows this particular religious myth of Froome wearing sandshoes in a tt and beating guys, is not true. The picture shows that.

 

[thehog]

This.

The thing that makes the sandshoe story valuable is that its one of the few cases where you can 100% prove Sky made it up, as opposed to the others where its only 99.99999% clear they made it up and the sky fans cling to the 0.0000001%.

For example, after 3 decades of teams and bicycle companies employing dozens of experts to find any little way time trial gear and position can be improved, did Sky's swimming coach really discover in only his 2nd year in the sport, that raising the handlebars adds an extra 40 watts and everyone else had overlooked that?

Extremely unlikely. But oh you can't prove he didn't.

Or did Froome really do another 4 hours of riding in secret every day when his trainers weren't paying attention after the 6 hour sessions that exhausted everyone else on the team so much.

From a physical standpoint it makes no sense, and whoever invented that story clearly has no concept of how training actually works,

But you can't prove he didn't.

There's plenty more bull**** stories like that that make no sense, but "you can't prove they didn't", because you weren't there and don't have immages.

Well here we finaly have an image. And it shows this particular religious myth of Froome wearing sandshoes in a tt and beating guys, is not true. The picture shows that.

I'm shocked at how closely the story mimicks the one of Armstrong. The book, the diesese etc. Whilst the sandshoe story is anecdotal it's the sort of story that kept the Armstrong myth alive for so long. They'd just keep placing these small stores that would get repeated 100s of times over until it was considered as fact. The surprising part is Walsh, he knows all this from Armstrong and is happy to play that role this time around. Unbelievable.

Truth be told Brailsford never thought Froome would be a GT champion one day. Never. But he has to make up crap to join the dots looking backwards.

Case in point below on how this stuff snowballs...

 

[the sceptic]

I'm shocked at how closely the story mimicks the one of Armstrong. The book, the diesese etc. Whilst the sandshoe story is anecdotal it's the sort of story that kept the Armstrong myth alive for so long. They'd just keep placing these small stores that would get repeated 100s of times over until it was considered as fact. The surprising part is Walsh, he knows all this from Armstrong and is happy to play that role this time around. Unbelievable.

Truth be told Brailsford never thought Froome would be a GT champion one day. Never. But he has to make up crap to join the dots looking backwards.

Case in point below on how this stuff snowballs...

Good post Hog.

Even the average bot who didn't know cycling was a sport before 2012 would probably raise an eyebrow whon the Dawg went full mutant and made a mockery of the sport.

Hence they are getting fed all these stories through the british media, who will of course happily write about anything that makes sky look good and ignore everything that makes them look bad.

Walsh becoming the bot leader was really the icing on the cake. Great comedy.

 

[pastronef]

Well, no, it was already discussed when froomies book came out. I believe that was June, very much not the off season

And while usually you are a good poster, you are being a little bit disingenuous. Brailsford brought up sandshoes. And Walsh and more reprinted it. As fact. You can't then turn around and blame the clinic for responding to something they brought up. Essentially when it's so clear cut that it's total bull****, invented to persuade fans far more gullible than yourself.

I must admit I did not follow all these pages of this thread, concerning sand shoes, TUE, marginal gains, Froome IQ etc
I am a bit disingenuous and I don't pay attention to ALL the words that come out from DB or Sutton's mouth. and I know that nothing the clinic says will change the Skybot's mind.
I know he is NOT clean. in that case I am not gullible.

Why trying to analize anything they said and done?
You know it's just bull****, the Skybots believe it.
I see no way of finding a way to agree with each other. or to open their eyes and make them admit Sky and UK cycling needed to say those things to get the public behind them and please their home journos.

The pics of crash with the race official and Froome pushing Hendy were posted hundreds of times. it's become boring, annoying.

I understand the clinic wants to seriously talk about these issues, but I find all the analyzing and quoting a bit exaggerated* (that's why I wondered what was the point of talking about those sand shoes time and time again)

*I know anyone can write whatever he wants on here, I mean exaggerated because this debate will not change anyone's mind.