Geert Leinders

[Benotti69]

Sorry, just to clarify, but are you suggesting that the the team soigneur was experimenting with blood doping as well as the riders? Is that what happened with PDM?

It has been known for team staff members to dope. Sean Kelly got busted because the driver had been taking substances to keep awake and when his urine was used for a race test it came back positive.

It is possible Txema took something, PED.

 

[xcleigh]

It has been known for team staff members to dope. Sean Kelly got busted because the driver had been taking substances to keep awake and when his urine was used for a race test it came back positive.

It is possible Txema took something, PED.

Ok, but the suggestion was "It still very much has the taste of a failed blooddoping experiment". So why would a soigneur be involved as it was concurrent with the riders getting a viral infection, so it doesn't seem like he was the guinea pig.

Cant work out why a soigneur would be blood doping?

 

[Dear Wiggo]

And no one has replied to my earlier point...IF sky wanted to set up a team wide doping programme, would you only employ Leinders for 80 days/year, of which 60 were apparently at various races?

Fact: each individual rider responds differently to PEDs + training.

Theory: have a specifically skilled doctor long enough to track the blood parameters of riders as they train and dope. Once you have established their individual responses, you can pretty much set their regime and let them self-administer.

Personally I do not accept that Leinders was used team-wide, with Brailsford's tacit permission or expectation that riders would use him for doping per se.

I personally think Brailsford is anti-doping scandal, just like JV. As long as you fool the BP and don't get caught, he will love your results.

Brailsford doesn't have to have knowledge of what happened back in 2010 at the Vuelta. (cf 2008 track WChamps and Mr Team BC 50.3% Hct). First order of business is get it swept under the rug. Done. Txema was cremated.

With the road team, they have no results to date (unlike track team). So he asks the key team riders: who do I hire? He doesn't mention doping, and it's not on the agenda, but he acknowledges that riders doing what they're doing is failing (half the team are pulling out with stomach viruses and someone just died). He hires the right kind of doctor to make sure that (stomach virus stuff) doesn't happen again, he can essentially remain clueless and claim ignorance of anything else that is going on with that doctor when he's not looking.

Let's face it, they have not had a single stomach virus since, have they? So it worked.

I think it's more likely as they describe the Majorca camp. Every single possible facility is available: a chef, rooms to sleep in, coaches, medical staff, masseur/masseuse, mechanics, soigneurs, etc. Riders drop in and out and use the facilities as they see fit.

All the 27 riders at Team Sky are closely followed by the team's coaching staff but are free to drop in and out of the camp. Most of the riders spend at least a week at a time on the island, doing blocks of specific training, divided by rest days. The Team Sky chef means they can follow special diets and soigneurs (the team calls them carers), mechanics and staff are on hand to give them full support.

And for a while there, one of those medical staff was available, discretely, for specialised, personalised medical attention.

 

[Joachim]

once you take the history of cycling into consideration (which you hardly ever do), one side of the story becomes rather unconvincing.

What you are unwittingly admitting to there is prejudice. Somebody who holds any kind of prejudice cannot lay claim to being able to make a fair and objective judgement about the thing for which they hold a prejudice.

Don't go for your usual dogmatic instant response.....stop and think about it for a while.

Don't worry though, you are in abundant company on this thread.

 

[sniper]

Fact: each individual rider responds differently to PEDs + training.

Theory: have a specifically skilled doctor long enough to track the blood parameters of riders as they train and dope. Once you have established their individual responses, you can pretty much set their regime and let them self-administer.

Personally I do not accept that Leinders was used team-wide, with Brailsford's tacit permission or expectation that riders would use him for doping per se.

I personally think Brailsford is anti-doping scandal, just like JV. As long as you fool the BP and don't get caught, he will love your results.

Brailsford doesn't have to have knowledge of what happened back in 2010 at the Vuelta. (cf 2008 track WChamps and Mr Team BC 50.3% Hct). First order of business is get it swept under the rug. Done. Txema was cremated.

With the road team, they have no results to date (unlike track team). So he asks the key team riders: who do I hire? He doesn't mention doping, and it's not on the agenda, but he acknowledges that riders doing what they're doing is failing (half the team are pulling out with stomach viruses and someone just died). He hires the right kind of doctor to make sure that (stomach virus stuff) doesn't happen again, he can essentially remain clueless and claim ignorance of anything else that is going on with that doctor when he's not looking.

Let's face it, they have not had a single stomach virus since, have they? So it worked.

I think it's more likely as they describe the Majorca camp. Every single possible facility is available: a chef, rooms to sleep in, coaches, medical staff, masseur/masseuse, mechanics, soigneurs, etc. Riders drop in and out and use the facilities as they see fit.


And for a while there, one of those medical staff was available, discretely, for specialised, personalised medical attention.

some good points worth considering.
let's not fully dismiss the team-wide-doping-regime (TWDR) option, even though I agree it is the more unlikely option. One advantage of a TWDR is that it seems safer in terms of scandal prevention. it could be implemented as in soccer: athletes are told they're getting vitamins, end of discussion. In any case, Sky would have the financial means for a TWDR. On the other hand, I agree that not everything (e.g. Froome's exceptional peak) seems consistent with a TWDR

Something else:
Recall Leinders came in highly recommended.
recommended by whom? Steven de Jongh?
I re-read De Jongh's recent open letter. In it, he says he doped only in 1998-2000. Is that to protect Leinders? On the other hand, if De Jongh was honest in that open letter, it makes Sky's zero-tolerance policy look all the more ridiculous: here we have a guy who voluntarily stopped doping in the midst of his career; he saw the light, came to Jesus. And you throw that man out?

 

[86TDFWinner]

The guy in the title of this thread has a cool wrestler name

 

[Joachim]

First order of business is get it swept under the rug. Done. Txema was cremated..

Oh dear God. Please don't tell me you think Txema was cremated by Sky to cover up drugs they were testing on him.

My father was cremated. Do you think that could have been a cover up too???????????

 

[xcleigh]

Oh dear God. Please don't tell me you think Txema was cremated by Sky to cover up drugs they were testing on him.

My father was cremated. Do you think that could have been a cover up too???????????

My god, your Father was cremated. So was my Nan!!! Coincidence?? Join...the...dots!!!

 

[Joachim]

Maybe your nan and my dad, and everybody's dead dads and nans, are in fact still alive, in the Sky mothership hiding behind the Moon, all connected up with electrodes into one giant battery providing the electricity to power the Sky team wide doping scheme (TWDS)

 

[Libertine Seguros]

What you are unwittingly admitting to there is prejudice. Somebody who holds any kind of prejudice cannot lay claim to being able to make a fair and objective judgement about the thing for which they hold a prejudice.

Don't go for your usual dogmatic instant response.....stop and think about it for a while.

Don't worry though, you are in abundant company on this thread.

To dismiss the whole of history of cycling, however, is illogical.

If we're not allowed to use the past to inform the present, we are doomed to repeating the same mistakes.

Chris Froome is not Ezequiel Mosquera, nor is he Santiago Pérez, nor Bernhard Kohl, nor myriad other overnight success stories. But if those other overnight success stories have lots of factors in common with one another and with Chris Froome and a pattern emerges, you think that's totally irrelevant to how we should judge Chris Froome?

If that is prejudice and no judgment can be formed by anybody who joins those dots, you just basically invalidated the entire field of statistics. Again: the Clinic is not a court of law. When judging Chris Froome from a legal perspective, these patterns are not valid evidence that he is doping and are not valid evidence that he should be banned. But what they are, are highly recognisable patterns that steer logic. We make these logical jumps every day in our lives, and to question decisions made through pattern recognition as prejudiced and invalid is to be contrarian for the sake of contrarian. Even in a court of law, past experience in the form of case law forms part of the way it operates.

If something walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, I don't need to see it to make the conclusion "this is a duck". It's not prejudice, it's past knowledge applied to draw a conclusion. Deciding whether or not we think Chris Froome dopes is a more open to interpretation question than whether or not something is a duck, but you're not a fool, and you know that if you've seen something similar happen 15 times before and always end the same way, that is a clear pattern that will influence how people react when it happens a 16th time.

 

[Joachim]

Chris Froome is not Ezequiel Mosquera, nor is he Santiago Pérez, nor Bernhard Kohl, nor myriad other overnight success stories. But if those other overnight success stories have lots of factors in common with one another and with Chris Froome and a pattern emerges, you think that's totally irrelevant to how we should judge Chris Froome?

If that is prejudice and no judgment can be formed by anybody who joins those dots, you just basically invalidated the entire field of statistics.

You call those statistics?

They aren't.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

You call those statistics?

They aren't.

No, they aren't statistics.

But the entire field of statistics is based upon pattern recognition and probability as part of the interpretation and analysis of data.

Probability is greatly affected by previous experiences which allow us to predict future outcomes. If allowing previous experiences to affect your prediction of future outcomes is prejudice that makes your judgment invalid, then the whole field of statistics is invalidated.

 

[Joachim]

You post some great stuff, better than anyone else on this forum and ive infinite time for you, but this isn't one of your best.

You are correct that the history of the sport must inform the present but so much of what gets said here are red-herrings. Stuff like 'so and so has come from nowhere' are unquantifiable. The unquantifiable has no place in statistics.

 

[ebandit]

possibilty

No, they aren't statistics.

But the entire field of statistics is based upon pattern recognition and probability as part of the interpretation and analysis of data.

Probability is greatly affected by previous experiences which allow us to predict future ( POSSIBLE ) outcomes.

does that sound more correct?................as ls wrote based on PROBABILTY

we all know history of doping in cycling..............but just as not all
cyclists were doping.............not all cyclists are now doping

that's why it's important not to jump to conclusions

 

[Libertine Seguros]

You post some great stuff, better than anyone else on this forum by fa and ive infinite time for you, but this isn't one of your best.

You are correct that the history of the sport must inform the present but so much of what gets said here are red-herrings. Stuff like 'so and so has come from nowhere' are unquantifiable. The unquantifiable has no place in statistics.

Well, their career results are quantifiable, and Froome had fewer of them than those other people I mentioned.

I understand where you're coming from, but I wasn't saying that Froome judging was a legitimate part of statistics, more that if we take your statement to its logical conclusion it invalidates all of statistics, which is obviously not a desirable state to be in.

Yes, so much of what gets said here are red-herrings and conspiracy theories. But a lot of the reasons for suspicion are based on logic, and shutting down discussion using the past to inform the present as being too prejudiced is also too restrictive. So if the past must inform the present, as you've just said, why can we not use our interpretation of past data (another field of statistics) to inform our analysis of present data?

The performances of riders are not statistics. But they are data. They can be analysed. They are difficult to analyse accurately, because there are far too many variables to form conclusive conclusions (er) in professional road cycling. However, that means you get a much broader range of conclusions, based on different interpretations of the existing data. Deciding whether you think somebody is doping or not is inexact at best and wholly random at worst, but it's just as unfair to suggest that we can't use past experiences to inform our decisions (in the absence of more conclusive data) as it is to suggest that you can't use the same data to draw the opposite conclusion to the majority (in the absence of more specific data).

 

[Joachim]

Whats the baseline that you are making judgements against?

Kind of makes any sort of meaningful analysis a problematic

 

[Libertine Seguros]

The David Moncoutié International Prototype Index.

 

[sniper]

excellent points, libertine, as usual.
and thanks for pointing out to joachim the difference between prejudice and a well-informed opinion.

 

[Cerberus]

Whats the baseline that you are making judgements against?

Kind of makes any sort of meaningful analysis a problematic

The baseline of pre-epo cycling is a good start. Between WW2 and the invention of EPO only one rider has win the TdF without finishing in the top15 within his first couble of years of riding GTs and that rider got 18 minutes in a breakaway. The lowest GT finishing position of any eventual TdF winner was 57 (still the 18 minute guy) and 48 not counting him.

After the invention of EPO we have 5 guys who went from being around number 100 in the GC to winning, Indurain, Bjarne Riis, Armstrong, Landis and Wiggins. What that shows is that in the absence of drugs gt talent shows ealy. If you're really optimistic you can say that perhaps Wiggins improvement was due to the diminishing influence of drugs in the peleton, but cycling history rarely validates the optimistic point of view. Bear in mind that Wiggins improvement is actually by a fair margin the largest of the bunch.

ETA: and since statistics were the subject, the odds of the 5 biggest improvements all happening after the invention of EPO by chance is 0,23% and that is by totally ignoring the magnitude of the improvement and only considering that they were the 5 biggest.

 

[Cycle Chic]

Oh dear God. Please don't tell me you think Txema was cremated by Sky to cover up drugs they were testing on him.

Religion in Spain

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Jump to: navigation, search
Religions in SpainCatholicism 
70.1%Non-religious 
25%No answer 
2.2%Others 
2.7%Religious affiliation in Spain in 2011, according to Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. [1]

Religion in Spain (2011)[2]
Christianity (67%)
Other religions (3%)
Islam (1%)
Buddhism (1%)
Non-religious (21%)
Not stated (7%)

Roman Catholicism is the largest denomination of Christianity present in Spain by far. According to an October 2011 study by the Spanish Center of Sociological Research about 70.1% of Spaniards self-identify as Catholics

Why would he have been cremated....assuming he is of the 70.1% in the catholicism faith.??

 

[sniper]

Why would he have been cremated....assuming he is of the 70.1% in the catholicism faith.??

good point, cycle chic. indeed makes his cremation smell fishy.

What you are unwittingly admitting to there is prejudice. Somebody who holds any kind of prejudice cannot lay claim to being able to make a fair and objective judgement about the thing for which they hold a prejudice.

I think a couple of posters just showed you the difference between prejudice and common sense, well-informed opinion.

 

[Cerberus]

Why would he have been cremated....assuming he is of the 70.1% in the catholicism faith.??

Possibility 1) He wasn't in the 70,1 %

Possibility 2) He was in the 70,1 % but he was aware that cremation has been a permited practice for Catholics since 1963 and he or his family preferred cremation for some reason.

Possibility 3) It's a conspiracy. He was in the 70,1 % and he and his family would have preferred burial, but the dark unnamable power that is behind team Sky has such control over the mind, body and soul of it's employees that they used him as a test subject for doping experiments, and then after this killed him they had him cremated against his and his family's wishes to cover up their crime.

 

[sniper]

Posibility 1) He wasn't in the 70,1 %

Possibility 2) He was in the 70,1 percent but really wasn't that religious and he or his family preferred cremation for some reason.

Possibility 3) It's a conspiracy. He was in the 70,1 % and he and his family would have preferred burial, but the dark unnameable power that is behind team Sky has such control over the mind, body and soul of it's employees that they used him as a test subject for doping experiments, and then after this killed him they had him cremated against his and his family's wishes to cover up their crime.

wouldn't call option 3 a conspiracy. it's simply one of three possibilities.
I agree it's unlikely, but more crazy things have happened.
and to be honest, txema's dead remains unexplained.

 

[hrotha]

Why would he have been cremated....assuming he is of the 70.1% in the catholicism faith.??

Don't be stupid. Lots of Catholics get cremated in Spain.
http://enmemoria.lavanguardia.com/e...-un-32-de-los-fallecidos-son-incinerados.html

 

[Cerberus]

wouldn't call option 3 a conspiracy. it's simply one of three possibilities.
I agree it's unlikely, but more crazy things have happened.
and to be honest, txema's dead remains unexplained.

According to the official story he died from a bacterial infection. That seems like a perfectly good explanation to me. The idea that he died from something else seems to really on the fact that he was cremated, but that doesn't really accomplish much.

He was admitted to what I assume was a regular hospital and treated there. If the doctors there believed it was a bacterial infection then there's no need to cremate him because there'd be no autopsy if the doctors didn't suspect something was up. If the doctors did suspect that something was wrong there'd have been an autopsy before he was cremated. If the doctor knew he'd died from something else, but decided to keep it secret, then that's defiantly a conspiracy, and also there'd have been no need to cremate him since the corrupt doctors wouldn't have requested an autopsy.

In summery it seems to me that the notion that he was cremated to keep the "truth" secret is highly unlikely, because the truth probably is that he died from a bacterial infection and because cremation doesn't really accomplish anything even if he did die from doping experiments.