Re: Re:
The Hegelian said:
My sense is that at the time it happened, there was kind of a universal "wtf!!" sentiment around it, probably best personified by Bennett's tweet.
It just looked utterly outrageous and crazy, principally because of how crap his form had been up to that point.
But then, with the passage of time, and so much of that Sky Special PR sauce (namely, pseudo scientific rationalisation), the discourse switched to watts and descending etc, and hey presto, a few weeks on I'm almost convinced it was kosher.
So the question is: how did the discourse get from A (wtf, this is crazy 00's stuff) to B (well, this gentleman did nothing exceptional, other than being brave) so quickly?
I'm not one who believes in conspiracy theories, but I am one who believes in the power of PR, especially by those organisations that are well resourced + media savvy. Sky is definitely one such organisation.
Yes, how did we go from A to B? Well, here's an example of that shift in thinking:
Valv.Piti wrote:
I very much agree with Rasmussen that his raid was plausible and within the limits. Had nothing to do with Landis or whatever - I argued that just after what he did after the half the forum moaned that it isn't natural, it was Landis esque etc.
Well, it might very well not be natural, but to go back to Rasmussen, it definitely didn't show that he is on some hardcore stuff the rest of the field isn't. Its pretty even.
In fact, his W/kg for the escape were very similar to Landis’s. So yes, his ride
was Landesque. If you want to argue that what Landis did that day wasn’t by itself proof of doping, that Floyd could have done that clean (even if it turns out he didn’t), go ahead, but beginning any discussion of Froome’s solo ride with “it wasn’t like Landis’s” is patently false, and a non-starter. The only way it can be considered different from Landis's ride is if we assume
a priori that Froome is capable of a greater performance clean than Landis was. Where I come from, that's called beginning with the conclusion you favor, then interpreting the data to support that conclusion.
IOW, what this discussion has shown is that we’ve reached that point—predicted by JV a few years ago—where rides that used to be done only by doping are now considered possible clean. If Froome did Alpe D’Huez as fast as Pantani, trust me, there would be posters here who would argue, based on his lab tests (or that ride he and Porte did up La Madone a few years ago), that he could do that clean. And maybe he could--it seems unlikely to me, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility that it's physiologically possible. But let's stop pretending that Froome isn't doing anything that other riders, clean, couldn't do, that he's winning all these GTs just by being clever.