Mellow Velo said:
Rubbish.
Black and white would be a one colour improvement around here.
This: "you are either with us or against us" ( and therefore wrong) ideology is nonsense.
Posters get judged on their arguments. Of course posters can't come in here and get immunity from ridicule simply because they have a minority opinion.
Thus far no pro Sky poster has actually been able to challenge the case against Froome.
A number have been able to make good points in threads on
individual subjects. Eg In a debate about Froome's Ventoux ascent, someone might say that 1 performance alone doesn't prove he is doping. Which is a fair argument, though I still believe that scientific studies into the effect of drugs suggest that it is unlikely in the extreme that someone could beat all those dopers times without massive PED help.
Some might point to the fact that Froome did not do as well on Alpe and Semnoz, therefore fades in gts, therefore more likely to be clean than if he improved during the gt. Though I think the fact that he had the GC wrapped up by then makes it difficult to conclude with certainty as to how good his form actually was, and in any case fading during a gt can happen to dopers as well.
Some say the 2012 Tour was heavily time trial based and Wiggins prefers time trials , though I would observe that 1 he beat Nibali in the mountains anyway, 2 he was never the time trial demon he became in the Tour that year, 3 his body shape was built for climbing, yet he sitll destroyed the flat time trials even though Canc was told that if you lose weight like that you should lose time trial power. Still it is true that the TDF route was more tt based.
But then that person or those people, who make respectable points in some discussions, will totally ignore other extremely damning points of evidence against Froome. They won't address why both Froome and Wiggins were able to in consecutive seasons peak for such long periods of time. And from where I'm standing, even if you can, in theory explain why Froome was able to match Lances time up Ventoux, (and Ax3 and that training climb, I forget its name) then all of that still seems thin if you cant explain why he was able to do that on a 6 month peak. Or should we pretend Wiggins and Froome didn't require an incredibly long peak to keep winning new stage races against new opposition, month after month after month?
No one has adressed the point that its extremely convenient that the only 2 riders who can defeat dopers times clean just happen to have emerged at more or less the same time, from the same country riding with the same set up. Presumably the argument would be that it really is another massive coincidence. Well in that case it is just
another massive coincidence, on top of many others. How many coincidences can there be before the proposition becomes unlikely?
Why did Froome do so well in time trials before entering a wind tunnel. And isn't SKy's Pr about training bull**** if they don't even put one of their star riders in 1 for 3 years.
More importnatly some very difficult questions remain
totally ignored.
Bilharzia in particular remains totally untouched by all of you. No one has attempted to do any research whatsoever, or address any of points made by those who have. A few of the joachim accounts quoted a unsourced wikipedia sentence which reffered to somethingh else entirely, and parker offered the pathetically weak strawman that he doesn't remember everything his doctor tells him either, so presumably it would make sense for an athlete to mishear that a mild easily treatable disease was potentially career ending (and go with the flow for 3 years).
But no one has adressed any of the legitimate questions about Froomes bilharzia.
Like why for example, did the Bilharzia which he had from 2009 -2013 which allegedly destroyed 2 years of his career, magically stopped having any impact on his performance, for 3 weeks during the 2011 Vuelta and another 9 weeks during the 2012 summer, before starting back up again immediately after in both cases (there is no possible scientific explanation for this. Bilharzia either exists or it doesn't, it doesn't conveniently disappear for a month).
Im not going to make this whole post about Bilharzia since Cn doesn't have a sufficient word limit for all the easily identifiable Bull**** Froome and Brailsford have tried to spin on it.
Still, its like we are supposed to pretend Froome didn't lie through his teeth in interview after interview for 3 years before changing his story into something that contradicts the first one.
As is the issue about weight loss. I and others may be ridiculed for reposting for the 10 000th time that wiggo managing to lose weight but not power is highly suspicious but these same posts ridiculing it won't explain how it was done.
Likewise its totally ignored that Wiggins finding out how to lose weight without losing power,
clean just happens to coincide directly with the emergence of powerful weight loss drugs in professional sport. And the related point, made by Shane Stokes last year, is also ignored of how Wiggins dominates an olympic time trial with shockingly low body fat while preaching the importance of weight loss in his performances, and then the next year says he needs to build up weight to compete in time trials and ends up winning a silver and then a gold at world championships doing that.
These points are all left unasnwered.
Yes sometimes some of you can make good points, good observations, sometimes be in the right. With the whole "horse steroids" thing for example, I didn't think there was that much there besides another example of Froome lying, and I thought many clinic members who don't like Sky were heavily baiting and trolling on that issue.
But all that is worth very little as a defense or an argument if all you do is wait on the sidelines for the opportunity to pick holes in a few arguments, but totally ignore other damning parts. If you just address some of the questions about Froome but leave ones you have no answer for, on the side.
The unanswered questions I list above as well as many many others are still left open to be responded to/ addressed/ challenged if anyone is up for it.
But as long as posters who believe Sky are clean, or are "open to the possibility" of them being clean, refuse to even glance at a lot of the damning evidence that exists to believe Sky are doping, or engage in the full debate, then I don't see why I am in the wrong to view their arguments as inferior.
If you don't engage the whole debate and only try to pick off slices here and there then as far as I am concerned your argument is heavily inferior.
I'm not going to respect a weak opinion that's reliant on coincidences but more importantly ignores every valid counterargument against it.