Teams & Riders Froome Talk Only

[stutue]

Only if I get there before you've milked it dry.

Ha ha ha.. God, I'd never have cracked that joke if I'd realised you'd come back with such a devastatingly witty retort.

You take my joke and make it funnier! I didn't see that coming!!!!!

 

[SundayRider]

His answers would be transparent, his Vo2max he would tell us, he would release his numbers at Barloworld, his numbers pre Vuelta'11, that his now doc at Sky, Farrell, says are normal for Froome and point to a rider's normal progression.....

It is easy to convince when everything is at it should be and you just lay it out openly and honestly. The opposite of the Sky obfuscation and Froome's silence over his numbers!

His story about Bilharzia has been told so many different ways for example. If it was an honest story there would be only 1 version, not many versions.

Exactly. I don't buy all this 'we can't release this info as it would give advantage to the competition'. He has been on another level for the past 18 months or so, so knowing his power output wouldn't suddenly allow other riders to match it.

 

[RownhamHill]

i don't think anybody's saying he was particularly protected prior to his transformation.
sky as a team may have received protection early on though.

No, I agree. I think most people are saying he wasn't doping before his transformation, but that he started doping in order to transform - as witnessed by his progression from the tour of poland to Vuelta in 2011, right?

But within that suggestion there is the added suggestion that he has managed to transform in such a startling fashion without tripping any drugs tests is because he has been receiving protection from the UCI. So one extension of that theory is the protection must have started at the same time as the drugs? Unless he doped for the year and a half it took him to wrest Sky leadership from Wiggins, at which point the 'protection as captain' kicked in.

 

[42x16ss]

Exactly. I don't buy all this 'we can't release this info as it would give advantage to the competition'. He has been on another level for the past 18 months or so, so knowing his power output wouldn't suddenly allow other riders to match it.

You can argue that his competitors would then know what W/Kg they need to reach, which seems to be the only reason for them being so ridiculously overprotective of power numbers while other teams are happy to release full power profiles for races

 

[SundayRider]

You can argue that his competitors would then know what W/Kg they need to reach, which seems to be the only reason for them being so ridiculously overprotective of power numbers while other teams are happy to release full power profiles for races

Just because they know what they have to do doesn't mean they can do it. Runners for example know they will have to run a certain time to win a race/beat a competitor, it guarantees very little though.

 

[Wallace and Gromit]

Just because they know what they have to do doesn't mean they can do it.

I was thinking along those lines. Knowing how much you need to improve is not hard to estimate.

If you concede a minute up Alpe D'Huez then you know you need to go around 2.5% faster, so need to improve power to weight by 2.5%.

Likewise, if you're 1% slower in a TT then you need to improve power to resistance by approx 3%.

 

[BYOP88]

Ha ha ha.. God, I'd never have cracked that joke if I'd realised you'd come back with such a devastatingly witty retort.

You take my joke and make it funnier! I didn't see that coming!!!!!

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

 

[sniper]

No, I agree. I think most people are saying he wasn't doping before his transformation, but that he started doping in order to transform - as witnessed by his progression from the tour of poland to Vuelta in 2011, right?

But within that suggestion there is the added suggestion that he has managed to transform in such a startling fashion without tripping any drugs tests is because he has been receiving protection from the UCI. So one extension of that theory is the protection must have started at the same time as the drugs? Unless he doped for the year and a half it took him to wrest Sky leadership from Wiggins, at which point the 'protection as captain' kicked in.

i'm not sure about the 'protection as captain' part.
basically i'm not sure if it's all that complicated.
Assuming Froome dopes, for him not to have triggered the BP in 2011, it seems likely that he, or rather Team Sky as a whole, received some sort of protection. And with protection i merely mean some sort of guarantee from higher up that Sky was not going to get into any sort of (anti-)doping trouble.
On the other hand, he may simply have beaten the BP in 2011. Or the WADA/UCI may simply not have looked into any profiles of any riders at all.

 

[stutue]

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Oh god another stunner but this time with a 16th century literary allusion.

Here, let me have a go...

But by the croys which that SeInte Eleyne fond
I wolde I codde thy coillons in myn hond
In styde of relikes Or of seintuarie
Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helps hem carie
They shul be shryned in an hogges toord!

 

[stutue]

You can argue that his competitors would then know what W/Kg they need to reach, which seems to be the only reason for them being so ridiculously overprotective of power numbers while other teams are happy to release full power profiles for races

I don't think that could be a cohesive argument because they have given out some data....
....therefore begging the question why they are picking and choosing which data they give out.

I seem to recall Brailsford saying he would give it out if they had it...therefore leaving the door open to saying they haven't got it.

They might not have it. But it seems unlikely.

 

[RownhamHill]

i'm not sure about the 'protection as captain' part.
basically i'm not sure if it's all that complicated.
Assuming Froome dopes, for him not to have triggered the BP in 2011, it seems likely that he, or rather Team Sky as a whole, received some sort of protection. And with protection i merely mean some sort of guarantee from higher up that Sky was not going to get into any sort of (anti-)doping trouble.
On the other hand, he may simply have beaten the BP in 2011. Or the WADA/UCI may simply not have looked into any profiles of any riders at all.

No, I'm not so sure about the protection as captain part either, which is why I was questioning Netserk's suggestion in the first place.

But then, on the rest of your post, if it's likely that Sky as a whole were given some carte-blance protection in 2011, then you still come back to the original question that Netserk was answering - if the whole team had protection then why was it primarily Froome (and perhaps to a lesser degree Porte) that took advantage, and why haven't the other more promising riders on their books at the time (EBH? Geraint Thomas? Peter Kennaugh? Lovkist? Even Ben Swift has a more promising junior Palmares than Froome) been able to get anywhere near taking advantage of this protection?

Which to me points towards Froome beating the passport off his own back (either through clever doping, or riding clean).

 

[RownhamHill]

If you are trying to come up with some kind of logical explanation it's not possible.

AND based on the teeeeny tiny bits of information we have is even more impossible.

Yeah, completely agree. But I'm not really trying to come up with an explanation myself (I'm entirely content to know that I don't know) - I'm just exploring the logic of other people's explanations to see how well they stand up!

 

[sniper]

No, I'm not so sure about the protection as captain part either, which is why I was questioning Netserk's suggestion in the first place.

But then, on the rest of your post, if it's likely that Sky as a whole were given some carte-blance protection in 2011, then you still come back to the original question that Netserk was answering - if the whole team had protection then why was it primarily Froome (and perhaps to a lesser degree Porte) that took advantage, and why haven't the other more promising riders on their books at the time (EBH? Geraint Thomas? Peter Kennaugh? Lovkist? Even Ben Swift has a more promising junior Palmares than Froome) been able to get anywhere near taking advantage of this protection?

Which to me points towards Froome beating the passport off his own back (either through clever doping, or riding clean).

ok, i'm getting you better now.
fair points (except for the "riding clean" part) and an intriguing issue.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

i'm not sure about the 'protection as captain' part.
basically i'm not sure if it's all that complicated.
Assuming Froome dopes, for him not to have triggered the BP in 2011, it seems likely that he, or rather Team Sky as a whole, received some sort of protection. And with protection i merely mean some sort of guarantee from higher up that Sky was not going to get into any sort of (anti-)doping trouble.
On the other hand, he may simply have beaten the BP in 2011. Or the WADA/UCI may simply not have looked into any profiles of any riders at all.

Having bilharzia does kind of give him a clean biopassport slate in 2011 though, so even with zero protection he could argue that any significant change in readings were due to the treatment of a blood disease. I don't know how much blood they'd have had on file from testing him back with Barloworld (ProContinental) back in 2008-9, not having won much to justify being tested as a jersey holder/stage winner etc. so they'd only have the handful of OOC tests or if he was picked at random from the bunch at a couple of races to go on from before he was at Sky.

 

[Benotti69]

Having bilharzia does kind of give him a clean biopassport slate in 2011 though, so even with zero protection he could argue that any significant change in readings were due to the treatment of a blood disease. I don't know how much blood they'd have had on file from testing him back with Barloworld (ProContinental) back in 2008-9, not having won much to justify being tested as a jersey holder/stage winner etc. so they'd only have the handful of OOC tests or if he was picked at random from the bunch at a couple of races to go on from before he was at Sky.

How do we know Froome does not have a doctor writing him a nice prescription for Bilharzia medicine every year due to the recurring problem!

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

How do we know Froome does not have a doctor writing him a nice prescription for Bilharzia medicine every year due to the recurring problem!

Because in the Gospel of Saint David we have learned his blood profile wasnt different at the Vuelta 2011 as to his first 18 months at Sky, according to the Team Sky doctor, or is it carer?

 

[Benotti69]

Because in the Gospel of Saint David we have learned his blood profile wasnt different at the Vuelta 2011 as to his first 18 months at Sky, according to the Team Sky doctor, or is it carer?

Methinketh Walsh will be condemned to the old hacks home over his Sky PR job writing obits for all those dopers that never got caught and probably loads who did........

 

[Nathan12]

Vayer is Froome-obsessed at the moment.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Vayer is Froome-obsessed at the moment.

I don't think it does his or anyone else's credibility much good to ridicule or insult a rider in that fashion.

 

[sniper]

I don't think it does his or anyone else's credibility much good to ridicule or insult a rider in that fashion.

agreed.
not very subtle from antoine.

 

[the sceptic]

Who is getting insulted? Froome or the kid?

Either way I found it funny, especially when Michelle chimed in to assure everyone it was indeed not sir Chris in the video.

 

[Nathan12]

Who is getting insulted? Froome or the kid?

Either way I found it funny, especially when Michelle chimed in to assure everyone it was indeed not sir Chris in the video.

The further you go down the thread, the better it gets. Macur chiming in was fun too.

I do think Vayer would be listened to more if he didn't troll so much, but he does crack me up.

 

[42x16ss]

Just because they know what they have to do doesn't mean they can do it. Runners for example know they will have to run a certain time to win a race/beat a competitor, it guarantees very little though.

I get that, but I honestly can't see any other argument Sky can up with for being so stupidly overprotective of riders power data when other teams are more than happy for riders to release entire power profiles from races for media to publish.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

I get that, but I honestly can't see any other argument Sky can up with for being so stupidly overprotective of riders power data when other teams are more than happy for riders to release entire power profiles from races for media to publish.

Chris Horner. 2008-2013 BP data. Released.
Chris Froome. 2008-2013 data. Far more relevant and interesting

 

[Digger]

The further you go down the thread, the better it gets. Macur chiming in was fun too.

I do think Vayer would be listened to more if he didn't troll so much, but he does crack me up.

Michelle. Her twitter account is like a shrine to Chris. And heaven forbid anyone says anything negative.
And we know she's reading this thread...must be killing her.