• The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

Teams & Riders Froome Talk Only

Page 964 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
Re:

Singer01 said:
I have nothing to add on the current performance of CF, however can we agree that the angsty emo 'i'm done with cycling' is pathetic in the extreme, if you are done with it, have the courage of your convictions and go away. What a load of melodrama over men riding bikes.
Well I know around 4 or 5 people who feel that way and will take a big step back at the end of the Vuelta? Me included, probably.
A couple of those also stopped following during the US Postal years.
Sky just ruin cycling (or at least stage racing) for many, many people. Accept it.
 
Jul 6, 2016
599
1
0
Visit site
Re: Re:

LaFlorecita said:
Singer01 said:
I have nothing to add on the current performance of CF, however can we agree that the angsty emo 'i'm done with cycling' is pathetic in the extreme, if you are done with it, have the courage of your convictions and go away. What a load of melodrama over men riding bikes.
Well I know around 4 or 5 people who feel that way and will take a big step back at the end of the Vuelta? Me included, probably.
A couple of those also stopped following during the US Postal years.
Sky just ruin cycling (or at least stage racing) for many, many people. Accept it.

Agree and that's so afwul about this. The ones who are getting fed up with this Sky show are simply being told "it's just bike racing, get over it." Well, indeed. It should be there for the sake of entertainment for everybody, not just to pleasure a couple of ego's and some nation that never cared about road racing before.

I'm about done with sports in general, unfortunately. Just because people are too stupid money is allowed to rule everything and everywhere. It's hilarious and ridiculous. And truly sad because every single athlete is putting in maximum effort (if not much more) to be where they are. It's just grown too big, too high, there's too much at stake and it can't be turned around anymore.

IF Sky is doing nothing wrong in a legal sense, there's still much wrong with a system that makes almost all teams (both in and outside cycling) struggle for surviving because of a few monstrous money ships that rule everything.
 
I stopped during the US Postal years. Very close to stopping again. For me, a big part of the joy of road cycling is its unpredictable, uncontrollable, anarchic nature. Sky have been like an omnipresent black python just strangling that element of the race to death.
 
Sky won with Wiggins while 3 other teams had bigger budgets at the time than them, so it isn't anything to do with money. Even last year Katusha's budget was only 3M Euro's less than Sky's. Take Froome's 4M Wage out of Sky's budget and transfer it to Katusha and Katusha are then the biggest budget team in cycling. Are we saying Froome would win so boringly with Katusha? I don't think it's as simple as bigger budgets. There's clearly other reasons for their success in Tour de France.

CnrkyyCWIAEg_34.jpg
 
Re:

The Hegelian said:
I stopped during the US Postal years. Very close to stopping again. For me, a big part of the joy of road cycling is its unpredictable, uncontrollable, anarchic nature. Sky have been like an omnipresent black python just strangling that element of the race to death.

Is it the one team always winning or the same rider always winning that's the problem? Or the style of racing? Because since WW2 the same rider winning multiple tours with 2-4 years flux in between is pretty common. Bobet, Anquetil, Hinault, LeMond, Indurain, Armstrong, Contador, Froome, it's a fairly consistent pattern.
 
I don't think it's actually the success that bothers those that say it's killing cycling. Continued Tour success is pretty normal and experienced many times before sky came along. Compared to teams like Peugeot, Alcyon, Mapei etc Sky are simply nowhere in terms of dominating cycling. You want boring domination, just look at Peugeot from 1900's to 1980's lol!

I think what is not liked is Sky have clearly broken down the requirements of what is required to win, analysed it and built it back up into a how to win strategy. They've replaced the emotion with numbers, the doomed attacks with continual pressure and have the budget and team stability to keep paying the best Tour rider of the moment. They also clearly came in saying they would win Le Tour in 5 years, got laughed at by everyone and then went and did it in 3 years and that pissed off many fans of more traditional cycling where strong palamares from time as a junior all through the expected path of a real cyclist was basically torn up and they did it with a track rider and largely track staff.
 
Re:

samhocking said:
Sky won with Wiggins while 3 other teams had bigger budgets at the time than them, so it isn't anything to do with money. Even last year Katusha's budget was only 3M Euro's less than Sky's. Take Froome's 4M Wage out of Sky's budget and transfer it to Katusha and Katusha are then the biggest budget team in cycling. Are we saying Froome would win so boringly with Katusha? I don't think it's as simple as bigger budgets. There's clearly other reasons for their success in Tour de France.

CnrkyyCWIAEg_34.jpg
Wake up sam, it is about more than just the money. It has been explained hundred of times but some people still refuse to open their eyes.
 
Jul 6, 2016
599
1
0
Visit site
Re:

samhocking said:
I don't think it's actually the success that bothers those that say it's killing cycling. Continued Tour success is pretty normal and experienced many times before sky came along. Compared to teams like Peugeot, Alcyon, Mapei etc Sky are simply nowhere in terms of dominating cycling. You want boring domination, just look at Peugeot from 1900's to 1980's lol!

I think what is not liked is Sky have clearly broken down the requirements of what is required to win, analysed it and built it back up into a how to win strategy. They've replaced the emotion with numbers, the doomed attacks with continual pressure and have the budget and team stability to keep paying the best Tour rider of the moment. They also clearly came in saying they would win Le Tour in 5 years, got laughed at by everyone and then went and did it in 3 years and that pissed off many fans of more traditional cycling where strong palamares from time as a junior all through the expected path of a real cyclist was basically torn up and they did it with a track rider and largely track staff.

Exactly exactly. It's all together pretty annoying. Their holier than holy attitude, their moral superiority, their hypocrisy, their arrogance, their extreme cautiousness compared to what cycling in reality needs to be: just throw your balls out! And indeed their track/flat/cobble riders who are up there with the best climbers/GT-riders if not just dominating them already.

Compare it to Quick-Step for example. Also a big team with many captains except for GT-racing (might be a coincidende as well...), snatching many, many victories. But they are still humans. Racing aggressively, making stupid mistakes at times, communicate in a normal way.
 
Re:

samhocking said:
I think what is not liked is Sky have clearly broken down the requirements of what is required to win, analysed it and built it back up into a how to win strategy. They've replaced the emotion with numbers, the doomed attacks with continual pressure and have the budget and team stability to keep paying the best Tour rider of the moment. They also clearly came in saying they would win Le Tour in 5 years, got laughed at by everyone and then went and did it in 3 years and that pissed off many fans of more traditional cycling where strong palamares from time as a junior all through the expected path of a real cyclist was basically torn up and they did it with a track rider and largely track staff.
This is largely fair, and is analogous to the Schumacher era of F1. But it's not just the budget and team stability to keep paying the best Tour rider of the moment, but to also give him a steady stream of world class domestiques, and use their financial strength to pay riders who would have greater freedom elsewhere to work as part of that race-strangling machine. Riding to pre-calculated tempos for optimum gain may be smart, and it may require great talent, but it isn't as fun to watch as a less predictable race. Just as Schumacher's Ferrari team's ability to calculate the exact optimum time for him to put in the laps in clean air to overtake people in the pit stop required great strategic thinking and perfect execution from a great driver, but didn't create the same interest as drivers dicing for position mano a mano. And to this day, regardless of Schumacher's statistical records, a substantial portion of the fanbase rate Senna, Prost, Clark, Fangio, Stewart and others who won less but showed more in terms of memorable duels at least at the same level as Schumacher as a result.

As to the 5 years boast, that was scoffed at because at the inception of the team who was there? Wiggins was a one-hit wonder at the time and expected that he would need a very favourable parcours (and when he won, he did get that anyway), Thomas was still a Classics contender and has taken significant time to turn into a real climber - it's only from 2015 that he's been able to climb to the level to be realistically considered - and Kennaugh was the only youngster to have shown sufficient capabilities to be thought of as a GT winner for the future.

So I agree that Sky's adaptation of a race formula (which dates back to Anquetil's day, popularized by Banesto, perfected by USPS) that doesn't produce particularly entertaining racing is a large part of people's antipathy. But I think you also need to consider how unlikable many of the players in the game are. Brailsford comes across as a dishonest, corporate shill, parroting on-message nonsense and avoiding answering the simplest of questions by misdirecting the interviewer through a maze of subordinate clauses, buzzwords and being caught out in the simplest of lies. At many races they've been standoffish with fans at the same time as reaching media saturation point with articles about their race caravan, their lighting and their James Bond presentation. And also, not without reason, they're perceived like a Real Madrid, a Manchester City (actually more so the latter, Real have had this as their modus operandi for years), a moneyed Johnny-Come-Lately that is buying success with little respect for the traditions of the sport (using football-styled tapping up for big ticket purchases at the start of the team). And that, unlike the USPS era, they're taking their template all over the calendar rather than strangling a small number of specifically targeted races, doesn't help, because you can't just skip a couple of races and wonder what all the fuss is about. This happening at the same time as somebody previously involved in the team runs the UCI and coinciding with a fairly widespread downturn in people's trust in professional sport (and - a shame for them - the rise of social media, meaning those off-message are a lot harder to keep quiet than in Armstrong's day) just serves to exacerbate things, keeping the antipathy prominent.

There's really a perfect storm of factors that contribute to the unpopularity of the team. Some of which they don't have a hand in, but many of which they do, and several of which they don't really help themselves with either.
 
Re: Re:

veganrob said:
samhocking said:
Sky won with Wiggins while 3 other teams had bigger budgets at the time than them, so it isn't anything to do with money. Even last year Katusha's budget was only 3M Euro's less than Sky's. Take Froome's 4M Wage out of Sky's budget and transfer it to Katusha and Katusha are then the biggest budget team in cycling. Are we saying Froome would win so boringly with Katusha? I don't think it's as simple as bigger budgets. There's clearly other reasons for their success in Tour de France.

CnrkyyCWIAEg_34.jpg
Wake up sam, it is about more than just the money. It has been explained hundred of times but some people still refuse to open their eyes.

We agree, no?
 
Re: Re:

Libertine Seguros said:
samhocking said:
I think what is not liked is Sky have clearly broken down the requirements of what is required to win, analysed it and built it back up into a how to win strategy. They've replaced the emotion with numbers, the doomed attacks with continual pressure and have the budget and team stability to keep paying the best Tour rider of the moment. They also clearly came in saying they would win Le Tour in 5 years, got laughed at by everyone and then went and did it in 3 years and that pissed off many fans of more traditional cycling where strong palamares from time as a junior all through the expected path of a real cyclist was basically torn up and they did it with a track rider and largely track staff.
This is largely fair, and is analogous to the Schumacher era of F1. But it's not just the budget and team stability to keep paying the best Tour rider of the moment, but to also give him a steady stream of world class domestiques, and use their financial strength to pay riders who would have greater freedom elsewhere to work as part of that race-strangling machine. Riding to pre-calculated tempos for optimum gain may be smart, and it may require great talent, but it isn't as fun to watch as a less predictable race. Just as Schumacher's Ferrari team's ability to calculate the exact optimum time for him to put in the laps in clean air to overtake people in the pit stop required great strategic thinking and perfect execution from a great driver, but didn't create the same interest as drivers dicing for position mano a mano. And to this day, regardless of Schumacher's statistical records, a substantial portion of the fanbase rate Senna, Prost, Clark, Fangio, Stewart and others who won less but showed more in terms of memorable duels at least at the same level as Schumacher as a result.

As to the 5 years boast, that was scoffed at because at the inception of the team who was there? Wiggins was a one-hit wonder at the time and expected that he would need a very favourable parcours (and when he won, he did get that anyway), Thomas was still a Classics contender and has taken significant time to turn into a real climber - it's only from 2015 that he's been able to climb to the level to be realistically considered - and Kennaugh was the only youngster to have shown sufficient capabilities to be thought of as a GT winner for the future.

So I agree that Sky's adaptation of a race formula (which dates back to Anquetil's day, popularized by Banesto, perfected by USPS) that doesn't produce particularly entertaining racing is a large part of people's antipathy. But I think you also need to consider how unlikable many of the players in the game are. Brailsford comes across as a dishonest, corporate shill, parroting on-message nonsense and avoiding answering the simplest of questions by misdirecting the interviewer through a maze of subordinate clauses, buzzwords and being caught out in the simplest of lies. At many races they've been standoffish with fans at the same time as reaching media saturation point with articles about their race caravan, their lighting and their James Bond presentation. And also, not without reason, they're perceived like a Real Madrid, a Manchester City (actually more so the latter, Real have had this as their modus operandi for years), a moneyed Johnny-Come-Lately that is buying success with little respect for the traditions of the sport (using football-styled tapping up for big ticket purchases at the start of the team). And that, unlike the USPS era, they're taking their template all over the calendar rather than strangling a small number of specifically targeted races, doesn't help, because you can't just skip a couple of races and wonder what all the fuss is about. This happening at the same time as somebody previously involved in the team runs the UCI and coinciding with a fairly widespread downturn in people's trust in professional sport (and - a shame for them - the rise of social media, meaning those off-message are a lot harder to keep quiet than in Armstrong's day) just serves to exacerbate things, keeping the antipathy prominent.

There's really a perfect storm of factors that contribute to the unpopularity of the team. Some of which they don't have a hand in, but many of which they do, and several of which they don't really help themselves with either.

Well, only time will tell with many of these points. There's nothing stopping Katusha or BMC using similar strategy of buying strong riders though? Both have very similar budgets and if you factor in the additional operational costs of Sky not operating in Euros, you might argue Sky in terms of £ for £ is operating on less than Katusha.
Looking back at what we now know with Armstrong 15 years later, there was no magic drug, he used the same methods as everyone else and so did his doms. UCI Protecting the image of cycling seems to apply as much to the whole peloton as it did with Armstrong according to the circ report for example, so I'm not even convinced there's any exclusive Sky protection if using USPostal as the benchmark.
In terms of magic doping, my belief is, there's simply not enough money in cycling for any team to do anything unique to gain an advantage. The whole of the road cycling industry, especially just road racing fits into the development cost of one single, basic cheap prescription drug. There simply isn't any money in cycling to develop or use anything bespoke and the returns, even if you had limitless money to invest in such a drug, can't be found from the returns possible in sponsoring a cycling team which at the very best sees around $5 returned for every $1 sponsored. Very high compared to other sports, but even the most basic prescription drug costs $2.5 Billion to develop. The whole of the cycling industry, races, manufacturers, clothing, holidays etc etc is just $35 Billion. The whole of the cycling indistry would fit into the finances of one average sized pharmaceutical company.
Transparency could be improved for both UCI and Sky, but there are many legal reasons it can't, even if the desire and need is there. Again, cycling isn't important to change basic human rights, even though it might help cycling. No team is going to open themselves up to full transparency if others don't have to also. I think even if you released all the data on every rider in every team, all you'll see is a reflection of the result anyway. Even if you had full access to every bit of Sky data, I don't think you could analyze it and for example make a new team out of that could take on sky for example. The data will show you how they're winning, but I really don't think it will tell you why because that's at a very fundamental subconscious human/team level not possible to record anyway. Sky just have the ball at the moment, it will only last forever if all the other teams allow them to. There really is nothing unique about Sky. If teams with relationships in cycling and UCI and race organisers going back decades and decades can be beaten by a team with no relationship with UCI and race organisers i'd say the difference is perhaps in the team alone and how it operates compared to others, not protection, wonder drugs, slightly bigger budgets etc. Clearly a couple of TUEs, some testosterone and cortisone is not the reason anyway.
 
The cost of the drug is never the prohibitng factor. It is the logistics of the drug taking which makes it expensive for a sport that is never undertaken in the same venue.

Doping in other sports is significantly cheaper and easier as you can dope in a training facility and then travel to a stadium and compete on a single occasion - i.e. Football. In cycling it requires continued "top up" and avoidance techniques whilst travelling around a country and through European (international) borders, that costs.
 
May 26, 2010
28,143
5
0
Visit site
Re:

Singer01 said:
I have nothing to add on the current performance of CF, however can we agree that the angsty emo 'i'm done with cycling' is pathetic in the extreme, if you are done with it, have the courage of your convictions and go away. What a load of melodrama over men riding bikes.

You said nothing to add clinic wise then attack posters! Trolling in other words!

Are people not allowed give a voice to their opinion. Is this not what the forum is for?

When asked whether Froome and Brailsford are serial liars, you claimed not to know? One wonders why you are even posting in the clinic when it has been proven plenty of times that Sky, Froome, Wiggins and Brailsford constantly lied.
 
Re:

Singer01 said:
I have nothing to add on the current performance of CF, however can we agree that the angsty emo 'i'm done with cycling' is pathetic in the extreme, if you are done with it, have the courage of your convictions and go away. What a load of melodrama over men riding bikes.

It's a forum, no? Surely a place to express frustration about what one likes/dislikes about what is happening in the sport?
 
thehog said:
The cost of the drug is never the prohibitng factor. It is the logistics of the drug taking which makes it expensive for a sport that is never undertaken in the same venue.

Doping in other sports is significantly cheaper and easier as you can dope in a training facility and then travel to a stadium and compete on a single occasion - i.e. Football. In cycling it requires continued "top up" and avoidance techniques whilst travelling around a country and through European (international) borders, that costs.

Well no team has $2.5 Billion for a new drug so it clearly is prohibiting. The point is, if a team had a bespoke drug that wasn't known and therefore not banned and on WADA's list then logistics and therefore being caught with an as-yet unknown substance is not a logistical issue is it. It's not even a legal issue. Even with something like Russia's government-fueled doping program, the substances are not unknown and bespoke to Russian athletes, they are the same detectable substances as others have been found taking too anyway.
Even if you assume Sky are taking the usual detectable PEDS the same as everyone else is probably, I don't think it's that expensive to have a Simon Cope flying all over the world for training camps, Grand Tours and Classics. Average flight is what £400 around Europe, so £40K in flights for 100 days racing/training a year on-call drug mule. Same again for accommodation and hire cars, so call it £100K in having total logistical freedom to move any substance anywhere around Europe at the drop of a hat within the time of a flight and drive. How much would you want to be paid? Well that depends. Clearly most teams traditionally did this with staff barely earning average national wage and was enough, but lets say £1 Million total cost in the new era post Festina & USPostal would probably get you everything you wanted. Split that between a roster of 20 riders and that equates to £50K a rider. It seems financially very affordable for most teams even if the riders don't pay into it.
 
Aug 6, 2015
4,139
2
0
Visit site
Re: Re:

LaFlorecita said:
Singer01 said:
I have nothing to add on the current performance of CF, however can we agree that the angsty emo 'i'm done with cycling' is pathetic in the extreme, if you are done with it, have the courage of your convictions and go away. What a load of melodrama over men riding bikes.
Well I know around 4 or 5 people who feel that way and will take a big step back at the end of the Vuelta? Me included, probably.
A couple of those also stopped following during the US Postal years.
Sky just ruin cycling (or at least stage racing) for many, many people. Accept it.
Spot on. Flo, people will understand when sky start to control the tour, the giro, the vuelta and the monuments. Sky is killing this sport, in 5 years we will have a paris roubaix super controlled by team sky and we all can agree that roubaix is the most unpredictable race in the world. In 10 years, I'm sure that froome will be caught just like LA
 
Oct 6, 2009
5,270
2
0
Visit site
Re: Re:

Libertine Seguros said:
samhocking said:
I think what is not liked is Sky have clearly broken down the requirements of what is required to win, analysed it and built it back up into a how to win strategy. They've replaced the emotion with numbers, the doomed attacks with continual pressure and have the budget and team stability to keep paying the best Tour rider of the moment. They also clearly came in saying they would win Le Tour in 5 years, got laughed at by everyone and then went and did it in 3 years and that pissed off many fans of more traditional cycling where strong palamares from time as a junior all through the expected path of a real cyclist was basically torn up and they did it with a track rider and largely track staff.
This is largely fair, and is analogous to the Schumacher era of F1. But it's not just the budget and team stability to keep paying the best Tour rider of the moment, but to also give him a steady stream of world class domestiques, and use their financial strength to pay riders who would have greater freedom elsewhere to work as part of that race-strangling machine. Riding to pre-calculated tempos for optimum gain may be smart, and it may require great talent, but it isn't as fun to watch as a less predictable race. Just as Schumacher's Ferrari team's ability to calculate the exact optimum time for him to put in the laps in clean air to overtake people in the pit stop required great strategic thinking and perfect execution from a great driver, but didn't create the same interest as drivers dicing for position mano a mano. And to this day, regardless of Schumacher's statistical records, a substantial portion of the fanbase rate Senna, Prost, Clark, Fangio, Stewart and others who won less but showed more in terms of memorable duels at least at the same level as Schumacher as a result.

As to the 5 years boast, that was scoffed at because at the inception of the team who was there? Wiggins was a one-hit wonder at the time and expected that he would need a very favourable parcours (and when he won, he did get that anyway), Thomas was still a Classics contender and has taken significant time to turn into a real climber - it's only from 2015 that he's been able to climb to the level to be realistically considered - and Kennaugh was the only youngster to have shown sufficient capabilities to be thought of as a GT winner for the future.

So I agree that Sky's adaptation of a race formula (which dates back to Anquetil's day, popularized by Banesto, perfected by USPS) that doesn't produce particularly entertaining racing is a large part of people's antipathy. But I think you also need to consider how unlikable many of the players in the game are. Brailsford comes across as a dishonest, corporate shill, parroting on-message nonsense and avoiding answering the simplest of questions by misdirecting the interviewer through a maze of subordinate clauses, buzzwords and being caught out in the simplest of lies. At many races they've been standoffish with fans at the same time as reaching media saturation point with articles about their race caravan, their lighting and their James Bond presentation. And also, not without reason, they're perceived like a Real Madrid, a Manchester City (actually more so the latter, Real have had this as their modus operandi for years), a moneyed Johnny-Come-Lately that is buying success with little respect for the traditions of the sport (using football-styled tapping up for big ticket purchases at the start of the team). And that, unlike the USPS era, they're taking their template all over the calendar rather than strangling a small number of specifically targeted races, doesn't help, because you can't just skip a couple of races and wonder what all the fuss is about. This happening at the same time as somebody previously involved in the team runs the UCI and coinciding with a fairly widespread downturn in people's trust in professional sport (and - a shame for them - the rise of social media, meaning those off-message are a lot harder to keep quiet than in Armstrong's day) just serves to exacerbate things, keeping the antipathy prominent.

There's really a perfect storm of factors that contribute to the unpopularity of the team. Some of which they don't have a hand in, but many of which they do, and several of which they don't really help themselves with either.

Don't forget about Reedie running WADA too.

(good post, Libertine)
 
Re: Re:

samhocking said:
veganrob said:
samhocking said:
Sky won with Wiggins while 3 other teams had bigger budgets at the time than them, so it isn't anything to do with money. Even last year Katusha's budget was only 3M Euro's less than Sky's. Take Froome's 4M Wage out of Sky's budget and transfer it to Katusha and Katusha are then the biggest budget team in cycling. Are we saying Froome would win so boringly with Katusha? I don't think it's as simple as bigger budgets. There's clearly other reasons for their success in Tour de France.

CnrkyyCWIAEg_34.jpg
Wake up sam, it is about more than just the money. It has been explained hundred of times but some people still refuse to open their eyes.

We agree, no?
If you mean more money can buy better program and protection then yes, we agree.
 
What bothers me the most is the fact that Froome MOCKS the rest of riders by Yo-Yo-ing, pretending he's fading so then he can kill'em with a ridiculous acceleration.......

Today Nibali & Baharein threw everything at him- everything- but Froomie- with a Tour already in his legs- is riding at the top of his powers and fresher than ever.....

just disgusting :mad:
 
hfer07 said:
What bothers me the most is the fact that Froome MOCKS the rest of riders by Yo-Yo-ing, pretending he's fading so then he can kill'em with a ridiculous acceleration.......

Today Nibali & Baharein threw everything at him- everything- but Froomie- with a Tour already in his legs- is riding at the top of his powers and fresher than ever.....

just disgusting :mad:
Quick thing: Froome's "yoyo" is normally a TT up the mountain so the exact opposite of a yo-yo; it's everyone else who decides to slow down and speed up. Today it was a yo-yo because he somehow managed to find something when he seemed as if he was going to be dropped. And it was a lot, he caught Nibali and almost dropped him, before the ERS ran out.
 
Jul 11, 2009
55
0
0
Visit site
hfer07 said:
What bothers me the most is the fact that Froome MOCKS the rest of riders by Yo-Yo-ing, pretending he's fading so then he can kill'em with a ridiculous acceleration.......

Yeah, he was suffering and barely hanging on. Then voilà, crushes the field again. I've never hated a rider more and despised a team as much as this current Froome/Sky combo. I have watched cycling since Big Mig and tend to enjoy the Giro and Vuelta more then the TdF because the race parcours are always more interesting.

I truly believe that Sky is not doping, I think they're riding motorized bikes. Push the button and away we go. Saw again today, he was down and out and miraculously he is able to close gaps and pull away. I've never ever seen a rider that has had this ability, get dropped and boom, nitro boost. Last years Stage 15? at the Vuelta when he was dropped and done and with 30 mins left he is suddenly able to find life and claws his way back, no chance. I don't think its motors, I think its a magnet/rim combo.

Call me crazy or a crackpot, but I do not believe what I am seeing is possible.

Cheers
 
Re: Re:

Electress said:
Singer01 said:
I have nothing to add on the current performance of CF, however can we agree that the angsty emo 'i'm done with cycling' is pathetic in the extreme, if you are done with it, have the courage of your convictions and go away. What a load of melodrama over men riding bikes.

It's a forum, no? Surely a place to express frustration about what one likes/dislikes about what is happening in the sport?
Of course, a forum is a place for discussion and ranting and raving, but saying 'thats it, i'm not watching cycling anymore' just reeks of teenage angst.
 
Re: Re:

Benotti69 said:
Singer01 said:
I have nothing to add on the current performance of CF, however can we agree that the angsty emo 'i'm done with cycling' is pathetic in the extreme, if you are done with it, have the courage of your convictions and go away. What a load of melodrama over men riding bikes.

You said nothing to add clinic wise then attack posters! Trolling in other words!

Are people not allowed give a voice to their opinion. Is this not what the forum is for?

When asked whether Froome and Brailsford are serial liars, you claimed not to know? One wonders why you are even posting in the clinic when it has been proven plenty of times that Sky, Froome, Wiggins and Brailsford constantly lied.
Well if those posters were telling the truth instead of being little babies they wouldn't be around to read the attack, as they would have 'given up on cycling' and gone and found something else to do.
You and i have massively different ideas of what proven means. And also the leap from lying to doping is not a given either.
 

TRENDING THREADS