I agree. As you have proved with your posts on Horner, it's possible to love a guy and still shred his claims to be clean.
Explain how the data would look for there to be nothing suspect. If he had power/weight values comparable to what Grappe claims they are for post-2011, how would you explain his much poorer performances? Are you aware that we have already compared his ITT times pre- and post 2011 Vuelta, and found an indication of a 15% increase in power? How does someone with Froome’s current power ride ITTs so poorly? Do you think better bike handling, not wobbling around so much, can produce a 15% increase in power? Without so much as a visit to a wind tunnel? Seriously?
OTOH, if his power values were consistent with his poorer performance, how would he explain the large increase over a period of a few months in 2011? Michele, who never answered some pertinent questions put to her when she was on the forum recently, implied that it might have resulted from weight loss, but there are no data supporting that claim, either. It’s pure speculation. And even if there were data, they wouldn’t explain a 15% increase in power/surface area. He would have to lose more than 30% of his body weight to accomplish that.
She also didn’t seem aware that Grappe never measured Froome’s V02max; he estimated it, based on assumptions that may or may not be correct. Grappe thinks it’s over 85, and that it might be over 90. How in the world can someone with a V02max that high show so little promise for so long? How many Tom Danielsons are there, who never proved to be quite elite as GT contenders, but who set all kinds of hill climbing records in situations where tactics, bike handling skills and the ability to conserve energy over a three week race did not come into play? And yet a guy with a V02max that might be off the charts is never noticed?
You know the most disappointing part of this entire coverup? Not that they won’t measure and publish his V02max; not that they won’t publish his power values pre-2011; not that they won’t publish his weight during these time periods. It’s that they won’t even admit that there is a problem to address. If Froome is really clean, they should be publishing all the data they can, shouting from the rooftops that a huge increase in performance is possible without doping.
Walsh wants to write a book? How about a detailed description of how such a transformation was made? That would be one of the most inspirational sports science stories of all time, if it could be documented in terms of a detailed analysis of all the relevant parameters. There has to be an explanation for Froome's big jump in performance, and any real trainer or doctor associated with the team would want to know more than anything else in the world how it happened. Maybe it really happened clean, but how will we ever know if they make no effort whatsoever to find out, apparently not even privately, among themselves. That says volumes about what they believe is the answer.