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Teams & Riders Froome Talk Only

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Re:

LaFlorecita said:
No sign of fatigue whatsoever. Could have easily taken another minute or two on the others.
Next up: TDF. Anything less than another win would be hugely disappointing.

This brings to mind the epic attack of Andy Schleck on one mountainous Tour stage followed by a stage where Contador attacked long distance only to be caught by Sammie Sanchez and Pierre Rolland (who ultimately won the stage). Andy after his effort on that previous ended up losing time.
Strangely many here in support of Froome stated that it was natural for him to lose time after winning on Zoncolan, which makes sense. This just doesn't smell right.
 
Oliwright said:
Were people getting mad about Froome when he lost 1:10 in 1km on stage 9?
Look Dumoulin, Pinot or anyone else in the peloton could be having a similar case to Froome. But some * leaked it and Froome loses his right to the correct process.
Just because you don't support Froome doesn't mean you should rage at the keyboard.
EVERY GC contender other than Froome peaked early in the race. TD was at his best in Israel. Everything just fell right for Froome.

What sense would it make for anyone hoping to compete for 3 weeks to peak early in the race? Are you implying that Sky is the only team capable of training their riders properly for a grand tour or is this just some ludicrous belief that you have to make you feel better?
 
Jul 10, 2009
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It is perhaps the end of cycling as a creditable sport. Not the beginning of the en, that started with Lance. The only thing that moves change is money. When sponsors start fleeing, TV deals are cancelled, perhaps there will be change

Lance should be completely exonerated and his ban lifted. I cannot see any justification for his ban with Froome having a freeload
 
Pantani Attacks said:
Oliwright said:
Were people getting mad about Froome when he lost 1:10 in 1km on stage 9?
Look Dumoulin, Pinot or anyone else in the peloton could be having a similar case to Froome. But some * leaked it and Froome loses his right to the correct process.
Just because you don't support Froome doesn't mean you should rage at the keyboard.
EVERY GC contender other than Froome peaked early in the race. TD was at his best in Israel. Everything just fell right for Froome.

giphy.gif

Exactly.
 
So in review.
Chaves was done after one week
Aru was finished after 1,5 weeks
Yates was finished after 2,5 weeks
Pozzovivo was battered after 18 days
Pinot was dead one stage before the end
Dumoulin was running in empty in the last stages and his attacks didn't have much behind them

Yet Chris Froome looked like he could have roflstomped the entire field again the day after a 80km solo. After being dropped on every mole hill in the first 2 weeks. Fall or not. It's ridiculous. And he still looked fresh as a daisy
 
Re:

jilbiker said:
It is perhaps the end of cycling as a creditable sport. Not the beginning of the en, that started with Lance. The only thing that moves change is money. When sponsors start fleeing, TV deals are cancelled, perhaps there will be change

Lance should be completely exonerated and his ban lifted. I cannot see any justification for his ban with Froome having a freeload


Actually I agree with this. If Froome is free to do what he's currently doing Lance's ban needs to be lifted. However, I'm still convinced his ban is due to his being a total jerk and not actually doping.
 
Mar 14, 2009
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Re:

Dekker_Tifosi said:
So in review.
Chaves was done after one week
Aru was finished after 1,5 weeks
Yates was finished after 2,5 weeks
Pozzovivo was battered after 18 days
Pinot was dead one stage before the end
Dumoulin was running in empty in the last stages and his attacks didn't have much behind them

Yet Chris Froome looked like he could have roflstomped the entire field again the day after a 80km solo. After being dropped on every mole hill in the first 2 weeks. Fall or not. It's ridiculous. And he still looked fresh as a daisy

Exactly!

Puff Daddy just gave the “Fresh Blood” saying a completely new dimensions :cool:
 
Re:

Dekker_Tifosi said:
So in review.
Chaves was done after one week
Aru was finished after 1,5 weeks
Yates was finished after 2,5 weeks
Pozzovivo was battered after 18 days
Pinot was dead one stage before the end
Dumoulin was running in empty in the last stages and his attacks didn't have much behind them

Yet Chris Froome looked like he could have roflstomped the entire field again the day after a 80km solo. After being dropped on every mole hill in the first 2 weeks. Fall or not. It's ridiculous. And he still looked fresh as a daisy

Durrr that's because they 'targetted' it. You know all the yoyoing all the falling off up hill before all the looking fat all the other stuff before was all part of the plan.
 
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I asked the same question in the non-clinic section of the forum, but it quickly got buried, so now I'm trying here:

I faintly remember an illustration from before Froome's breakthrough where Sky had charted their riders' potential, but I can't find it anywhere. Can anyone help me find it? I just want to confirm that Sky themselves saw Froome as a potential ProConti rider rather than the one of the best GT riders of all-time.
 
Re:

Flax_Generous said:
I asked the same question in the non-clinic section of the forum, but it quickly got buried, so now I'm trying here:

I faintly remember an illustration from before Froome's breakthrough where Sky had charted their riders' potential, but I can't find it anywhere. Can anyone help me find it? I just want to confirm that Sky themselves saw Froome as a potential ProConti rider rather than the one of the best GT riders of all-time.
Inside the mind of the Brailsfraud

Find your holder of all GTs folks


DBgraphhires1.jpg
 
Angliru said:
Oliwright said:
Were people getting mad about Froome when he lost 1:10 in 1km on stage 9?
Look Dumoulin, Pinot or anyone else in the peloton could be having a similar case to Froome. But some * leaked it and Froome loses his right to the correct process.
Just because you don't support Froome doesn't mean you should rage at the keyboard.
EVERY GC contender other than Froome peaked early in the race. TD was at his best in Israel. Everything just fell right for Froome.

What sense would it make for anyone hoping to compete for 3 weeks to peak early in the race? Are you implying that Sky is the only team capable of training their riders properly for a grand tour or is this just some ludicrous belief that you have to make you feel better?


Last 3 grand tours says yes!!!!
 
Re: Re:

MartinGT said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
So in review.
Chaves was done after one week
Aru was finished after 1,5 weeks
Yates was finished after 2,5 weeks
Pozzovivo was battered after 18 days
Pinot was dead one stage before the end
Dumoulin was running in empty in the last stages and his attacks didn't have much behind them

Yet Chris Froome looked like he could have roflstomped the entire field again the day after a 80km solo. After being dropped on every mole hill in the first 2 weeks. Fall or not. It's ridiculous. And he still looked fresh as a daisy

Durrr that's because they 'targetted' it. You know all the yoyoing all the falling off up hill before all the looking fat all the other stuff before was all part of the plan.

well they did target it because they also want to win TdF,thats when the real genius of SKY will show itself...this is not even 100% froome because of giro-tour
 
Re: Re:

saganftw said:
MartinGT said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
So in review.
Chaves was done after one week
Aru was finished after 1,5 weeks
Yates was finished after 2,5 weeks
Pozzovivo was battered after 18 days
Pinot was dead one stage before the end
Dumoulin was running in empty in the last stages and his attacks didn't have much behind them

Yet Chris Froome looked like he could have roflstomped the entire field again the day after a 80km solo. After being dropped on every mole hill in the first 2 weeks. Fall or not. It's ridiculous. And he still looked fresh as a daisy

Durrr that's because they 'targetted' it. You know all the yoyoing all the falling off up hill before all the looking fat all the other stuff before was all part of the plan.

well they did target it because they also want to win TdF,thats when the real genius of SKY will show itself...this is not even 100% froome because of giro-tour

Aye because none of the other teams have the capability or thought process to do this. Just like they have never thought about fuelling through a high mountain stage of having a cool down etc.

You are absolutely bang on there. Total genius.
 
Just imagine what he's gonna be like in July when he hits his peak! Kirby who talks gash all time whilst wearing his Sky onesie,was saying Nibbles will be watching them laughing at them knocking lumps out of each other. Haha if the Dawg takes this to the Tour he won't mention once how much energy he's expended in the Giro and the recovery between
 
Re: Re:

MartinGT said:
saganftw said:
MartinGT said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
So in review.
Chaves was done after one week
Aru was finished after 1,5 weeks
Yates was finished after 2,5 weeks
Pozzovivo was battered after 18 days
Pinot was dead one stage before the end
Dumoulin was running in empty in the last stages and his attacks didn't have much behind them

Yet Chris Froome looked like he could have roflstomped the entire field again the day after a 80km solo. After being dropped on every mole hill in the first 2 weeks. Fall or not. It's ridiculous. And he still looked fresh as a daisy

Durrr that's because they 'targetted' it. You know all the yoyoing all the falling off up hill before all the looking fat all the other stuff before was all part of the plan.

well they did target it because they also want to win TdF,thats when the real genius of SKY will show itself...this is not even 100% froome because of giro-tour

Aye because none of the other teams have the capability or thought process to do this. Just like they have never thought about fuelling through a high mountain stage of having a cool down etc.

You are absolutely bang on there. Total genius.

they have the thought process,they dont have means to pull it off...i know how to get the ball into the basket,doesnt make an NBA player
 
Re: Re:

saganftw said:
MartinGT said:
saganftw said:
MartinGT said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
So in review.
Chaves was done after one week
Aru was finished after 1,5 weeks
Yates was finished after 2,5 weeks
Pozzovivo was battered after 18 days
Pinot was dead one stage before the end
Dumoulin was running in empty in the last stages and his attacks didn't have much behind them

Yet Chris Froome looked like he could have roflstomped the entire field again the day after a 80km solo. After being dropped on every mole hill in the first 2 weeks. Fall or not. It's ridiculous. And he still looked fresh as a daisy

Durrr that's because they 'targetted' it. You know all the yoyoing all the falling off up hill before all the looking fat all the other stuff before was all part of the plan.

well they did target it because they also want to win TdF,thats when the real genius of SKY will show itself...this is not even 100% froome because of giro-tour

Aye because none of the other teams have the capability or thought process to do this. Just like they have never thought about fuelling through a high mountain stage of having a cool down etc.

You are absolutely bang on there. Total genius.

they have the thought process,they dont have means to pull it off...i know how to get the ball into the basket,doesnt make an NBA player

:lol: these are professionals in the business though, you're comparing apples and oranges.
 
While the way they win may change, the underlying problem that explains why Froome and Sky have never been taken to heart by a large (and admittedly vocal) section of the fanbase remains the same: they feel like their intelligence is being insulted.

The thing is, the complete do-over on Froome's form coming into the season may have given the impression Froome was distinctly undercooked coming into the Giro, having not been his regular, dominant self, but at the same time we've never really seen Froome Mark II (the good Froome) prepare for the Giro, so maybe all of that was in line with where they wanted his form to be at the time. Or maybe his miracle malfunctioning kidney returned. We just don't know. See, that malfunctioning kidney is exactly what we're talking about when we talk about fans' intelligence being insulted - fans have been asked to swallow some seriously stupid excuses before. And defending such cases is not so much about proving that the excuse given is what did happen, but about proving that the reasoning given is plausible enough to introduce sufficient doubt that the doping explanation is not the only possible explanation. From a regulatory perspective, if the prosecution cannot provide evidence that irrevocably confirms that doping was the purpose, and the defence provides evidence that something other than doping could have caused the anomaly, it doesn't matter if 99,9999% of likelihoods point to doping, the regulators cannot say with certainty that it was doping. That doesn't change the most likely outcome being doping, but makes it harder to issue a suspension. Lots of riders have provided unconvincing excuses for doping, and while most have become cycling in-jokes (vanishing twins, beer and a shot, sex), some have actually been successful arguing their improbable explanations (Daryl Impey springs to mind immediately) for that very reason.

So the man with his malfunctioning kidney, severe asthma (which was not mentioned in his book which came out shortly before his being filmed puffing on an inhaler in the Tour de Romandie, which he won convincingly thanks to a TUE for prednisolone, without which apparently he would have been too sick to race. Must suck to be on a team like Mitchelton-Scott where you don't have a fast track into the system and riders suffering from allergies just have to lose time. Maybe that's the revolution Sky were bringing to cycling, hey?) and severe dehydration just happened to regain all the time he lost the previous day in a Vuelta where he held the leader's jersey for 18 days. It doesn't matter how implausible it is, because what the lawyers have to do, realistically, is prove that it isn't impossible, and put the onus back onto the prosecution to prove that the intention was to cheat. It doesn't matter that anybody who wants to keep up the belief that Sky are the 100% clean all singing all dancing revolution the sport needs will have to produce a similarly miraculous level of mental contortion in order to justify this explanation and that almost every man and his dog has come around to the realisation that Froome is at least using every performance-enhancing substance he can feasibly get away with, if not using ones he can't. After all, they don't even pretend to hide it, with him swigging from miniature bottles and puffing on his inhaler in full view of the cameras at various times in his career.

The problem is, Sky and Froome are now in a much worse position in the PR war. The presence of that positive test, regardless of whether being for a controlled substance rather than an explicitly forbidden one, has shone a light onto the team that once and for all extinguishes the lingering residual flickering flame of their anti-doping policy. The Sky fans that five years ago were dismissing the criticisms of Wiggins and Froome and touting the team's commitment to clean cycling and successfully marginalising the voices of doubt have progressively seen their standards, and expectations, lowered and lowered again until we're now in the rather unflattering position where the defence of Sky almost entirely rests on criticizing people who kick against what they're seeing for cheering other suspected or confirmed dopers, either not ackowledging or not recognizing the change in themselves and their arguments from supporting the team that is changing cycling for the better, to supporting the team that is "no worse than any of the others" - and resenting the fact that they attract more criticism and more hate, due to the intelligence-insulting BS that they themselves used to parrot in order to get a rise from the doubters.

That all changed when the AAF came out. That was the point at which Team Sky, and Chris Froome in particular, ceded once and for all their claim to the moral high ground. Not that we didn't already have a mountain of circumstantial evidence - but there wasn't a smoking gun. Now, is a positive test for salbutamol truly a smoking gun? No, it isn't - nobody in their right mind is going to claim that salbutamol alone is responsible for the enormous performance increases we see at Team Sky - but it was proof positive (sic) that the system was being gamed by the team that promised they wouldn't do that. It wasn't a surprise to most sceptics - they claimed they would never hire any doctor involved in cycling and then hired Geert Leinders and Fabio Bartalucci; they claimed they would never hire anyone involved in doping ever and then hired Mick Rogers and Michael Barry; they claimed they would withdraw riders from races rather than get TUEs, and we've seen both Froome and Wiggins win races where they have obtained TUEs and heard Shane Sutton openly state that obtaining those TUEs - whether used for a legitimate medical need or pre-emptive - was one of their marginal gains. But a positive test meant that the press, which had largely been willing to buy the feel-good narrative until the Jiffy Bag story and the Fancy Bears TUE revelations, could no longer see no evil.

But it's Sky's reaction to this that has raised people's ire more than anything else. They haven't just pretended it's business as usual; they've run and hid. Brailsford of course has previous for this, remembering him literally running away from Daniel Benson asking him how the investigation into Leinders was going back in 2012. Brailsford has been avoiding the press at all turns, then at the pre-Giro press conference claiming about his openness - he's been at all the races, so the press just haven't seen fit to ask him questions, notwithstanding that he's hidden away at the bus and avoided interviews, and when he has he's given even more circuitous non-answer answers than usual, and refused to handle any questions pertaining to the ongoing situation (while commenting on the specifics of the case may not be possible due to the ongoing proceedings, he's used that as an excuse to not answer some only tangentially related questions, such as conditional outcomes and how this meshes with Team Sky's stated anti-doping policy). He's doubled down on supporting Froome, and then been in hiding for most of the Giro, only to emerge at the last minute to gloat and take personal credit for Froome's spectacular stage 19 ride.

And then you have the ride itself. I've been over a few times how the transformation of Froome, his style on a bike and his paucity of results before his contract was up and he said avada khedavra and became the rider we now know mean that it's harder for fans to suspend their disbelief with him than with other riders' doped exploits, because it's harder to rationalize him as the best cyclist in the world for those reasons. And that's part of the reason why a rider flying away with 80km and three mountains to go and winning solo by minutes isn't being bought in many quarters as a heroic throwback to the golden days of yore, but as a disgusting power play. Froome himself must surely know that a performance like this in 2018 is going to be received much more negatively than even if he himself did it five years ago, because when you're under investigation for doping and pull out a miracle comeback of that kind, surely in his heart of hearts he knows this is not going to be interpreted as a wounded champion putting on a show like Bernard Hinault into Ávila in 1983, but as a brazen display of "you can't catch me" from a known doper? Were the Sky fans who are cheering Froome to this Giro victory similarly enthused by Alejandro Valverde's two year stint as a fugitive from CONI, winning left right and centre between giving CONI a blood test after the Prato Nevoso stage in 2008 (oh look, another link to today) and eventually being suspended in 2010? The comparison was made, many years ago, to an action movie when the hero has got the villain in for questioning, they know they're the bad guy but they haven't got a charge, so the villain is taunting them, mocking them, and the hero can't do anything about it. That's a good comparison - especially when Brailsford emerges from his Keyser Soze slumber to publicly gloat about the triumph - at this stage it's become evident that Sky are very much villains of the piece, and in many ways have been shown up as that most unlikable of villains, the pontificating moralizer that casts judgement on others, incites people against them, but is simultaneously just as guilty themselves. Remember, these guardians of the morals of cycling also have a known racist in the ranks who they refused to sanction until it was at minimum loss to themselves, and who apparently deliberately tried to injure a fellow competitor for publicizing that.

It is in this light that we must cast the actions of stages 19 and 20. George Bennett has said that the anti-doping (and largely anti-Sky or anti-Froome or both) twitterati have treated him as going to bat for them even if he isn't meaning things to the same extent as they think - however there is also another element to that, in that the interview that was given immediately post-race is a much more instant reaction. I'm sure Bennett will have thought about the stage in greater detail later on and come to a more nuanced position, but his immediate response was one of almost amused shock, and even if many have attributed greater value to his words than were intended, that in and of itself speaks volumes. There is also the possibility that following Lotto-Jumbo themselves distancing themselves from his comments (that they posted for everybody to see), Bennett's partial retraction of his comments may also have in mind the fact that Sky have thrown their weight around with people who say or do things they don't like before (remember Peter Kennaugh screaming in Rasmussen's face, Aru being shoved almost off the road for not waiting for Froome in the Tour, or Phil Deignan outing Pauline Ferrand-Prévot's personal business at the same time his fiancée was begging for her privacy to be respected) and we must remember that cycling is a pack sport, so getting on the wrong side of the teams who can strong-arm you could jeopardise future results and earnings.

At this stage, with the likes of Moscon, Brailsford's disappearing and reappearing act, and Froome making miracle comeback rides while under investigation, it's almost like Team Sky have reached the point where they're kicking against the ***, in their mindset. They've tried to present themselves as the good guys, and that's not worked, so now they're embracing their role as the bête noire of the fanbase, and actively enjoying being ruthless, trampling on opponents (at another time or from another team, the slow-down to allow Dumoulin to return and then sprinting away from him might not be so ill received, but from Froome and Poels at this stage - remember Poels doing his Leonardo Piepoli job on Angliru too - it just looked like a calculated move to disrespect Dumoulin, who we must remember went on record in March saying that Froome shouldn't be racing) and fanning the flames of the hostile responses they're given. It's almost like, if our reputation's going down, we're gonna go down swinging, and take as many results as we can on the way - in much the same way, you could argue, as the likes of Astana or indeed Valverde. So nobody should be surprised by the hostile response. After all, we're now at the stage where the all-singing, all-dancing 100% clean team has now been surpassed in the quality of its anti-doping protocols by such luminary clean teams as Lampre, given their response to the Ulissi positive.

And of course the UCI and ASO are worried. This Giro has now proven to them that if Froome wants something, there's a good chance that if he lines up for the race and they can't stop him, they can't stop him winning it. At this stage, everything Froome wins is bad for business for the sport. The hardcore fanbase may not change, but the issue has always been that Froome is not a popular champion. When you have an unpopular champion and people think he can be beaten and will tune in to see him beaten, that's ok. But when you have an unpopular champion and people don't believe that he can be beaten, or think that he's getting it all his own way, then they are less likely to tune in. And when he's performing like this while under investigation, with the fanbase having the full knowledge that he's either facing a ban or these results could be taken away in the near future, what reason do they have for believing what they're seeing?

The thing is, what we've been seeing from Froome this last few months is, in effect, what historically has been a selling point for the Volta a Portugal. The Volta is a cult favourite of the hardcore fanbase, a cartoonish version of cycling served without moral pretence, full of comically fast speeds, absurdly counter-productive tactics, fratricidal battles and fantastical exploits. But the reason the Volta works like that is because nobody buys it as being clean cycling. The World Tour, the Grand Tours, the Monuments and all those other races at the very pinnacle of the sport have that obligation to protect their brand, and maintaining the conception that we're watching a fair fight is a large part of that. By contrast, the Volta is a sideshow attraction which, due to a relatively lowly status and its difficulty, is somewhat marginal compared to the very pinnacle of the sport, which enables fans to enjoy it for what it is guilt-free. There's no pretence that it is anything other than a freak show. Maybe if we gave up that pretence with Chris Froome, we could enjoy his exploits a bit more.
 
Re:

Libertine Seguros said:
if the prosecution cannot provide evidence that irrevocably confirms that doping was the purpose, and the defence provides evidence that something other than doping could have caused the anomaly, it doesn't matter if 99,9999% of likelihoods point to doping, the regulators cannot say with certainty that it was doping. That doesn't change the most likely outcome being doping, but makes it harder to issue a suspension…It doesn't matter how implausible it is, because what the lawyers have to do, realistically, is prove that it isn't impossible, and put the onus back onto the prosecution to prove that the intention was to cheat.

In the first place, the WADA standard is only between preponderance of evidence (> 50%) and beyond reasonable doubt (maybe 99%; I just read a lawyer’s take on another doping case saying it was just 95%). Given the very high standard for positive tests, generally > 99.9%, once a rider tests positive, it’s all up to him to show that there is another explanation. The prosecution does not have to prove anything further at this point, the onus is not on them. If the rider offers another explanation, it’s up to him to show not simply that that explanation is possible, but probable. That’s why Contador was sanctioned. His defense certainly established that there was some chance of a non-doping explanation, it just wasn’t considered likely enough.

In the second place, a ban doesn’t have to involve proof of intentional doping. If a rider is concluded to have intentionally doped (e.g., oral salbutamol), the ban is generally four years (WADA 10.2.1), but AFAIK, no rider has ever received a ban for salbutamol on that basis. But riders still get shorter bans for having that or some other prohibited substance in their system. Petacchi and Ulissi were not proven to have intentionally cheated, but they got suspended.
 
Jul 10, 2009
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I really don't know what stuff/program Froome is on but is has got to be out of this planet stuff, real Krytonite, superman stuff. 80k+ ride alone in a GT MTN stage, did not fade even in the last 5km and then next day could have done it again.

I think Domoulin and co must feel helpless. Actually there is no point anyone showing up at TDF, waste of time and money, unless (they are hoping), he crashes, but wait didn't he crash at this Giro. His Kryptonite overcomes crashes, overcomes 1 month recovery between GTs, overcomes 80k+ solos.

Actually perhaps its a good comedy...we got to get some fun out of this cacophony
 

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