meat puppet said:
DFA123 said:
Oude Geuze said:
Contador last vuelta, Nibali in the ‘16 giro are two recent examples. I find it hard to believe he just started doping yesterday and made insane progress. Why wait until now when it’s more suspicious to suddenly get a boost than being strong all the way? What would you need to take for such an improvement? Corticosteroids, high dose salbutamol, tramadol and a blood bag? Did they suddenly stop testing stage winners and top 10 in the giro? And if it’s all TUE, then that’s pretty much what they all do so why did Froome improve so much?
Alternatively, Froome came into the giro regularly TUE’ed up, a bit undercooked and then fell twice, but gradually recovered after rest day and two easy days. To say that’s physiologically impossible seems strange.
This. It just makes sense. Slightly undercooked and hampered by some swelling and muscle soreness, maybe some bad sleep after the crashes. Now his form is getting there and the soreness is gone. Of course, that's not to say he's not doping, but it's most probably just his normal program. Beating Yates, Pozzovivo and Lopez by a few seconds, is hardly Ventoux 2013 or PSM 2015 type levels either. Much more in line with his best form of the last two years.
Applied to a rider with a different history, maybe. But applied to froome it amounts to just smuggling in a premise that he developed in a regular manner, ie erasing his history. It amounts to arguing that there is more to froome than doping. This is a big leap of faith.
No, it's not a defence of Froome, or forgetting his history, at all. It's simply stating that other factors (non-clinic stuff) play a big role in races as well. And crashes, and recovery from them, is a huge factor. I understand this is The Clinic and, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But there are other explanations for swings in performance.
It is absolutely consistent for crashes to take their toll for a few days while there is a lot of swelling, road rash causing sleeping issues and muscles soreness. And then for that to almost completely disappear once the swelling goes away and the scabs form. And that makes much more sense to me, than a belief that Froome has taken a BB or suddenly resumed a doping program (like he ever would have stopped!).
It's not a leap of faith, because I don't for one second believe that Sky and Froome would have stopped or changed the program he has been using for the last seven years ahead of this Giro, whatever that is. It works and it's largely not detectable. Why would they stop using it - knowing the consequences - only to start using it again immediately before the most high profile stage in the race?