Froome19 said:
I wouldn't say it was a contradiction rather he was simplifying what the Bilharzia was. Understandable imo
Maybe some time I will make a timeline of the Bilharzia and how it developed which will hopefully clear things up.
I don't see the other discrepancy between the Tour de Suisse treatment or the ATOC treatment either. The treatment could have taken place after Cali and Suisse, there was no time lapse specified.
There is a discrepancy on the diagnosis. Julich advises they tested for it after California, found he had it, then it was treated (which, yes, could have been after Suisse). Froome himself advises he found out he had it in December 2010. Also, with regards to the chest infection line, Bilharzia/Schistosomiasis is not a chest infection. Not even close. Now, he may have been more susceptible to chest infections as a result of the bilharzia, but it's not like having had the disease is some kind of big secret he needed to hide from the rest of the péloton.
It's not like a training technique that works really well, that the team might want to avoid letting others know about lest they copy it and the team lose their competitive advantage. If it had been diagnosed back in December 2010 as Froome says, then surely you would expect there to have been some mention of it between December 2010 and August 2011 - especially as he points out that he "re-did" the treatment after the Tour de Suisse, suggesting he had already had some kind of treatment for it. This would then be the only way that you could square up Froome's December 2010 timeline with Julich's May 2011 timeline (with the initial treatment being after Froome's date of December 2010, but then another recurrence of the disease probably in May 2011 to allow for the better Romandie performance probably being comparatively healthy, resulting in them testing for it again, finding it and treating it in June 2011), but then would make it surprising that this wasn't known about or mentioned at all until the guy turned into Johann Mühlegg on a bike on August 28, 2011.
Even then, though, it is reliant on us buying that the difference between "autobus fodder" Froome and "Bjarndo Riiscò" Froome is nothing more than the difference between "suffering from bilharzia" Froome and "not suffering from bilharzia" Froome. Because of how raw Froome was in 2008-9, we never saw anything even approximating the kind of talent level that could justify such a transformation. Sorry, we didn't, unless you're prepared to buy Johan van Summeren, GT podium contender, or Alessandro Bertuola, GT winner.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram