Teams & Riders Froome Talk Only

[The Hegelian]

Froome is getting greedy though. 4 TDFs now.
When you are wiggins or cadel or Sastre you can sneak 1 tdf and hide behind history.

with 4 Froome can't do that anymore. And considering how tarnished cycling's reputation is, with every win, he's making himself look even more dodgy.

Agree. The longer it goes on, the more incentive there is for everyone to break silence, dig for a story, sell a story, etc. It only takes one slip.

I counter assert: Indurain.

Armstrong is the exception not the rule.

Froome has played an exceptionally straight bat, let all the fancy bears nicks fly through to the keeper, and is going on to make a chanceless ton. Who would have thought - say in 2013 - that Wiggins and Brailsford would look so much dirtier than Froome? But alas, that is reality. Chapeau is the only word.

 

[Cycle Chic]

Found it

http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/chris-froome-dominates-final-time-trial-to-set-up-historic-fourth-tour-de-france-victory-343414

go to 2mins 10secs

I think Sky are dirty, but that's a fluffed gear change.

I'd agree with that - he's pedaling like mad but going nowhere, not much point of a motor if thats what it produces. Maybe an electronic gear change foul up?

He's shifting down for when he exits the corner.

Its way before the corner....he is on the flat.....the camera is right behind him

 

[King Boonen]

Found it

http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/chris-froome-dominates-final-time-trial-to-set-up-historic-fourth-tour-de-france-victory-343414

go to 2mins 10secs

I think Sky are dirty, but that's a fluffed gear change.

I'd agree with that - he's pedaling like mad but going nowhere, not much point of a motor if thats what it produces. Maybe an electronic gear change foul up?

He's shifting down for when he exits the corner.

Its way before the corner....he is on the flat.....the camera is right behind him

It's about 3 seconds before he starts getting out of the saddle and moving onto the brakes. He's done it slightly too early, but he is shifting down and getting it into an appropriate gear so he can accelerate out of the corner.

 

[Benotti69]

Froome is getting greedy though. 4 TDFs now.
When you are wiggins or cadel or Sastre you can sneak 1 tdf and hide behind history.

with 4 Froome can't do that anymore. And considering how tarnished cycling's reputation is, with every win, he's making himself look even more dodgy.

Agree. The longer it goes on, the more incentive there is for everyone to break silence, dig for a story, sell a story, etc. It only takes one slip.

I counter assert: Indurain.

Armstrong is the exception not the rule.

Froome has played an exceptionally straight bat, let all the fancy bears nicks fly through to the keeper, and is going on to make a chanceless ton. Who would have thought - say in 2013 - that Wiggins and Brailsford would look so much dirtier than Froome? But alas, that is reality. Chapeau is the only word.

Indurain pre-dates Armstrong.

Also Indurain won 5, while he went for more he still did not beat the French heroes totals. I think that is important.

Froome has not played much, Mrs Froome has done the most PR, in fact re-read the Kimmage interview and you will see how things really are. Since that interview the Froome's have only talked to a few and then it is people on their side.

But this is pro cycling and part from Sky/Froome fans the rest of the world thinks they are dopers.

Froome will no doubt ride off to Kenya with his $$$$s but i doubt his reputation will be intact in his rear pocket, at present a small minority of UK cycling fans think Froome is the real deal. That will not grow.

 

[Fergoose]

Froome is getting greedy though. 4 TDFs now.
When you are wiggins or cadel or Sastre you can sneak 1 tdf and hide behind history.

with 4 Froome can't do that anymore. And considering how tarnished cycling's reputation is, with every win, he's making himself look even more dodgy.

Agree. The longer it goes on, the more incentive there is for everyone to break silence, dig for a story, sell a story, etc. It only takes one slip.

I counter assert: Indurain.

Armstrong is the exception not the rule.

Froome has played an exceptionally straight bat, let all the fancy bears nicks fly through to the keeper, and is going on to make a chanceless ton. Who would have thought - say in 2013 - that Wiggins and Brailsford would look so much dirtier than Froome? But alas, that is reality. Chapeau is the only word.

I agree with that. There were even suggestions he was delaying re-signing with Sky as they were damaging his reputation. I feel like I'm in an alternate universe.

 

[Benotti69]

Froome is getting greedy though. 4 TDFs now.
When you are wiggins or cadel or Sastre you can sneak 1 tdf and hide behind history.

with 4 Froome can't do that anymore. And considering how tarnished cycling's reputation is, with every win, he's making himself look even more dodgy.

Agree. The longer it goes on, the more incentive there is for everyone to break silence, dig for a story, sell a story, etc. It only takes one slip.

I counter assert: Indurain.

Armstrong is the exception not the rule.

Froome has played an exceptionally straight bat, let all the fancy bears nicks fly through to the keeper, and is going on to make a chanceless ton. Who would have thought - say in 2013 - that Wiggins and Brailsford would look so much dirtier than Froome? But alas, that is reality. Chapeau is the only word.

I agree with that. There were even suggestions he was delaying re-signing with Sky as they were damaging his reputation. I feel like I'm in an alternate universe.

That universe which pretends dopers can win a 3 week GT clean!!

 

[Fergoose]

How far down the GC just a rider before you would consider the possibility that they aren't doping Mr 69?

 

[DanielSong39]

Re:

How far down the GC just a rider before you would consider the possibility that they aren't doping Mr 69?

I think it's possible for an extremely talented rider to make it to the Pro Continental level without doping at any point during his career.

 

[Irondan]

Re: Re:

How far down the GC just a rider before you would consider the possibility that they aren't doping Mr 69?

I think it's possible for an extremely talented rider to make it to the Pro Continental level without doping at any point during his career.

But most riders aren't satisfied with almost making it to the top and know that to make that next step they have to do some fuzzy math...

To answer the previous question from Fergoose, you would have to go all the way through the Tour GC to find a clean rider. It's not that they're all "doping" traditionally, only the top riders are on a real program. The rest are all looking for ways to coax their bodies into doing superhuman physical performances by legal and illegal means. To be "Clean" means nothing other than blood, sweat and tears which just isn't a practical method of preparation.

 

[sniper]

In my view it's a bit of a moot question.
The issue is this: there are probably several clean riders, but as long as there's no legitimate antidoping body, there's no way for us to tell who it is.
As long as there is such ample opportunity and motive to dope, any (pro)rider is a potential suspect, including the clean ones.

I wish it were different.

It's why I still expect genuinely clean riders to be (or become) vocal against the UCI, rather than to get angry at the sceptical fans.

 

[silvergrenade]

Re:

In my view it's a bit of a moot question.
The issue is this: there are probably several clean riders, but as long as there's no legitimate antidoping body, there's no way for us to tell who it is.
As long as there is such ample opportunity and motive to dope, any (pro)rider is a potential suspect, including the clean ones.

I wish it were different.

It's why I still expect genuinely clean riders to be (or become) vocal against the UCI, rather than to get angry at the sceptical fans.

At the Tour there probably arent.
Very few make the Tour team and the ones that do are generally those who have performed well throughout the first half of the season or have a huge pedigree...

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

In my view it's a bit of a moot question.
The issue is this: there are probably several clean riders, but as long as there's no legitimate antidoping body, there's no way for us to tell who it is.
As long as there is such ample opportunity and motive to dope, any (pro)rider is a potential suspect, including the clean ones.

I wish it were different.

It's why I still expect genuinely clean riders to be (or become) vocal against the UCI, rather than to get angry at the sceptical fans.

At the Tour there probably arent.
Very few make the Tour team and the ones that do are generally those who have performed well throughout the first half of the season or have a huge pedigree...

Yeah good point and I tend to agree.

But my wider point would be that "who's the clean rider?" is to a large extent a moot discussion.
As long as UCI continues to provide such an attractive risk-reward ratio, they're all potential suspects and none of us can tell who's clean. Same for motors.

 

[GraftPunk]

Re: Re:

How far down the GC just a rider before you would consider the possibility that they aren't doping Mr 69?

I think it's possible for an extremely talented rider to make it to the Pro Continental level without doping at any point during his career.

Late commenting, but I'm in agreement with this.

 

[The Hitch]

Froome is getting greedy though. 4 TDFs now.
When you are wiggins or cadel or Sastre you can sneak 1 tdf and hide behind history.

with 4 Froome can't do that anymore. And considering how tarnished cycling's reputation is, with every win, he's making himself look even more dodgy.

Agree. The longer it goes on, the more incentive there is for everyone to break silence, dig for a story, sell a story, etc. It only takes one slip.

I counter assert: Indurain.

Armstrong is the exception not the rule.

Froome has played an exceptionally straight bat, let all the fancy bears nicks fly through to the keeper, and is going on to make a chanceless ton. Who would have thought - say in 2013 - that Wiggins and Brailsford would look so much dirtier than Froome? But alas, that is reality. Chapeau is the only word.

Its hillarious when fans always try to give famous people credit for being some sort of strategic geniuses, for doing things that never actually happened. Happened a lot with Armstrong. Oh Armstrong was so smart to do this and that, turns out he was just a fraud who took the easy option everytime.

So Froome is some genius who masterminded a way to look clean when everything around him is dodgy? That is some warped interpretation of what is going on.

The reality is Froome couldn't have made his entire career look more dodgy if he tried and the fan reaction every year reflects that. As does the continued worldwide scepticism to cycling as "that dodgy sport".

No one who doubted Froome in 2013 suddenly believes he is clean. The entirety of the British cycling media continues to be dedicated to defending froome and trying to convince themselves and their readers that he is clean. The reason for that is because they continue to be fighting against a tidal wave.

 

[The Hitch]

Froome is getting greedy though. 4 TDFs now.
When you are wiggins or cadel or Sastre you can sneak 1 tdf and hide behind history.

with 4 Froome can't do that anymore. And considering how tarnished cycling's reputation is, with every win, he's making himself look even more dodgy.

Agree. The longer it goes on, the more incentive there is for everyone to break silence, dig for a story, sell a story, etc. It only takes one slip.

The point im making isnt about whether sky ever fall (totally different subject), but about whether they will ever convince people they are clean.

Frauds are obsessed with convincing people that they are innocent. Its not just about getting away with the crime on a technicality, its about conning everyone into believing it was all legit. You can hear this in the very early (2012) sky literature. Wiggins saying "we are shouting from the rooftops - we are clean".

Whether Sky ever go down or not, they will never win THIS battle however.

So what we have is a moment, 2012, after it was shockingly to most people, revealed that the biggest hero, most well known name and champion, in the sports history, was a total fraud and that they entire sport was marred in doping.

And that same moment, as all faith in cycling has collapsed, a new rider emerges with few to none differences from Armstrong, who dominates exactly like Armstrong, winning Tour after Tour after Tour.

Do Sky or Froome or Walsh really believe the world's reaction is gonna be - oh we were betrayed by Armstrong but this new Armstrong fella who looks like him, walks like him and talks like him, is clean?

That is the height of delusion. Trust in the sport is 0. And Froome by winning TDF after TDF just like Lance, makes himself look like Armstrong 2.0. No one outside fleetstreet buys the creationist level ideas that dope testing in cycling overnight became eficient.

 

[Tricycle Rider]

Personal opinion - Froome is seriously pushing his luck with the anti-doping peoples. (If there are any, that is.)

If I were him I would just quit while I'm ahead.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

 

[The Hegelian]

Froome is getting greedy though. 4 TDFs now.
When you are wiggins or cadel or Sastre you can sneak 1 tdf and hide behind history.

with 4 Froome can't do that anymore. And considering how tarnished cycling's reputation is, with every win, he's making himself look even more dodgy.

Agree. The longer it goes on, the more incentive there is for everyone to break silence, dig for a story, sell a story, etc. It only takes one slip.

I counter assert: Indurain.

Armstrong is the exception not the rule.

Froome has played an exceptionally straight bat, let all the fancy bears nicks fly through to the keeper, and is going on to make a chanceless ton. Who would have thought - say in 2013 - that Wiggins and Brailsford would look so much dirtier than Froome? But alas, that is reality. Chapeau is the only word.

Its hillarious when fans always try to give famous people credit for being some sort of strategic geniuses, for doing things that never actually happened. Happened a lot with Armstrong. Oh Armstrong was so smart to do this and that, turns out he was just a fraud who took the easy option everytime.

So Froome is some genius who masterminded a way to look clean when everything around him is dodgy? That is some warped interpretation of what is going on.

The reality is Froome couldn't have made his entire career look more dodgy if he tried and the fan reaction every year reflects that. As does the continued worldwide scepticism to cycling as "that dodgy sport".

No one who doubted Froome in 2013 suddenly believes he is clean. The entirety of the British cycling media continues to be dedicated to defending froome and trying to convince themselves and their readers that he is clean. The reason for that is because they continue to be fighting against a tidal wave.

It's not about being some genius strategic mastermind - it's about being simple and playing a straight bat. Don't get flashy, don't use your power to make friends and enemies, know the game, have fidelity to omerta, etc etc. It's not rocket science.

It is Brailsford who is attempting to play the strategic mastermind PR game: and it's going very pear shaped for him.

Armstrong was smart, in a Machiavellian kind of way. Should have been a politician, he would have been a very good one (good in the Machiavellian sense; successful). But he went way too hard with his global power, and made enough enemies to get taken down.

My point is that a/ Indurain never played it like that - and he appears today as a dignified legend of the sport. and b/ Froome is playing it a lot like Indurain did.

Central to your thinking is an assumption that there is some important causation between genuine fans of the sport who find Froome ludicrous, and fair weather tdf fans who merely consume ASO product. The only thing that matters are the latter: and they believe. That's the game. The hack on Wiggins was one little breath of reality intervening, but it's just a breath.

 

[Cycle Chic]

If Geraint Thomas was on the podium, won the tdf 4 times ...would that be ok ? I think it would....personally I dont mind if Sky are doped up because so are the other teams. We have had to endure Sastre, Contador etc winning every tdf every year so why not join them. It annoyed me to see Contador up there every year.

Its the donkey to racehorse which is annoying...like Wiggins, Froome is donkey. Any other rider in Sky would be legitimate in my eyes as they have all gone through the ranks.

 

[RichWalk]

Re:

If Geraint Thomas was on the podium, won the tdf 4 times ...would that be ok ? I think it would....personally I dont mind if Sky are doped up because so are the other teams. We have had to endure Sastre, Contador etc winning every tdf every year so why not join them. It annoyed me to see Contador up there every year.

Its the donkey to racehorse which is annoying...like Wiggins, Froome is donkey. Any other rider in Sky would be legitimate in my eyes as they have all gone through the ranks.

and to my brief knowledge no one knows how this happened, bilharzia or a tremendous responder to one or various of Sky's programs..........

Watching this year, I thought he was either lacking form, showing signs of his age or deliberately running a much reduced program to ensure what they were using wouldn't be easily/if currently at all picked up in tests, a clear nod to Skys predicament and a safety first, tactical 'race by numbers' approach.

What did catch my eye was Urans miraculous recovery after 2 seasons of being dropped when it mattered and Barguil breaking the record (from Stava) on the Izoard; Froomes performance looked relatively innocuous in comparison.........

 

[Saint Unix]

Re:

If Geraint Thomas was on the podium, won the tdf 4 times ...would that be ok ? I think it would....personally I dont mind if Sky are doped up because so are the other teams. We have had to endure Sastre, Contador etc winning every tdf every year so why not join them. It annoyed me to see Contador up there every year.

Its the donkey to racehorse which is annoying...like Wiggins, Froome is donkey. Any other rider in Sky would be legitimate in my eyes as they have all gone through the ranks.

This and the fact that Sky are so insanely unlikeable. Brailsford in particular might be the most uncharismatic DS ever to grace the sport, and Froome also has the personality of a melon. I never warmed to Wiggins either, but I guess he was a bit weird and had funny hair.

Sky and Astana are without a doubt the two most suspicious teams in the peloton at the moment, although Saxo Tinkoff surely gave them a run for their money before Oleg threw his final hissy fit and pulled the plug. Those three teams have cleaned up 12 of the last 16 Grand Tours in recent years, while the epic fraudster and charisma vacuum Chris Horner also has one. That's a lot of wins for riders who aren't at all likeable and/or credible.

When you have suspicious teams filled with mostly unlikeable riders (I actually like the way Nibbles and Bertie ride, but lets be honest... Both them and their teams were rotten to the core) sweeping up pretty much every major stage race for five years straight it's no surprise that the animosity towards them grows, and Sky with their lack of credibility combined with the potent mixture of their holier-than-thou attitude, enormous buses that take up all the room on parking lots, massively inflated budgets that allow them to sign GC contender-level riders as domestiques, uncharismatic leaders and donkeys winning Grand Tours deserve a hell of a lot of that animosity.

You can't waltz into a sport like cycling and flaunt supposed moral superiority, success, excess and dominance and not expect to receive a lot of hate. Cycling is a sport traditionally followed by working class people. A team like Team Sky comes across as a bit of a slap in the face to people like that.

 

[sniper]

what is that "belief" based on, if not on willful blindness?

 

[mrhender]

Re:

ok ?

You can't waltz into a sport like cycling and flaunt supposed moral superiority, success, excess and dominance and not expect to receive a lot of hate. Cycling is a sport traditionally followed by working class people. A team like Team Sky comes across as a bit of a slap in the face to people like that.

it is my belief that team sky really did want to do everything 100% cleans...........however
somewhere along the way i was realised that it was not possible..........promises had been
made to win the tour........sponsors demanded results

team sky pretty much dropped such talk after wiggo's win..............but how far have they pushed
the envelope? supported TUE's or beyond.............

at least they have stuck to 'no convicted dopers' on the staff.......any other teams doing that....

Mark L

Maybe so, or maybe they opted with branding first, results later.

If they really meant it, perhaps a stronger impact/message could have been made in declaring that it simply isn't possible to compete under a true cleaner than clean regime - and as such a potential (huge)moneymaker for the sport would pull out.

 

[mrhender]

Another noteworthy thing, for me at least. Is how Froome in his first win had to declare cleanliness on the podium in Paris, but as years go by. People come to accept the absurdity of his transformation as his regular wins in TDF almost make him more legit.. Ha..

 

[The Hegelian]

Re:

Another noteworthy thing, for me at least. Is how Froome in his first win had to declare cleanliness on the podium in Paris, but as years go by. People come to accept the absurdity of his transformation as his regular wins in TDF almost make him more legit.. Ha..

Yeah, it does work like that.

Somewhat like fascism - or indeed any political system or structure. At first there's shock, outrage and disbelief. Then it becomes normalised, then it becomes the very fabric of reality and people can't even imagine anything different.

 

[Durden93]

Re: Re:

Another noteworthy thing, for me at least. Is how Froome in his first win had to declare cleanliness on the podium in Paris, but as years go by. People come to accept the absurdity of his transformation as his regular wins in TDF almost make him more legit.. Ha..

Yeah, it does work like that.

Somewhat like fascism - or indeed any political system or structure. At first there's shock, outrage and disbelief. Then it becomes normalised, then it becomes the very fabric of reality and people can't even imagine anything different.

I think a lot people in the media have just realized how pointless it is to question Froome/DB/Sky. Look at how they responded to criticism this tour. In 2013 and 15 you had incredible performances which had to be explained. There hasn't been too much too really hammer Froomey on. What could you say? "Please answer the questions that you've answered for the last 5 years again?" Wait til something new comes out, then (hopefully) the media will give them a proper interrogation.