Bernie's eyesore said:Are you seriously saying that a rider who had previously won Junior Roubaix, finished 2nd in a cobbled stage in the Tour, 2nd in Dwars door Vlaanderen, 3rd and 4th in E3, 4th in the Omloop and 8th and 10th in Flanders underwent a bigger transformation in Paris Roubaix in 2014 then he did this year in the mountains?
Look! Before 2014, Thomas' performances in major classics were:
Tour of Flanders 2010 33rd
Paris-Roubaix 2010 64th
Milan-Sanremo 2011 60th
Tour of Flanders 2011 10th
Paris-Roubaix 2011 Out of Time Limits !!!
World Championship 2011 81st
Tour of Flanders 2013 41st
Paris-Roubaix 2013 79th
So only once he reached a top10 and that's in a Tour of Flanders, which is not as demanding as Paris-Roubaix. In Paris-Roubaix alone, he's never been better than 64th. And all of a sudden, he discovers amazing stamina power to handle 250k races on a regular basis and recuperating skills to align performances back to back with a near win Paris-Nice (if not for a crash) and top10 Tour of Flanders & Paris-Roubaix and this while playing domestique for Wiggins and while maintaining power on semi-classics like GPE3.
So don't tell me you couldn't know !! I do declare that those posters on this very thread who took offence or looked flabbergasted at Thomas' "sudden" performances and who suddenly denounce a team doping programme at Sky, simply show little concern for the classics because they just waited for performances in mountain stage races and particularly at the Tour of France to show up, while his sudden great performances in the classics last year were at least equally impressive and there's still no solid evidence to denounce a collective doping programme at Sky since suspicion only concerns a couple of riders no more. Other teams that I won't name show weird performances with many more riders ...
I didn't say anything at that time because I'm not the kind of guy to accuse a rider without rock solid evidence. I still don't. After all there might be a hidden explanation that escapes me. But I'm exasperated at some posters' hypocrisy and elitism. There are weird performance ON ANY RACES, even on some cyclosportives you see weird performances, so your Tour of France ...
But I can't even blame those posters. I mean the environment influences them. If your readings are Anglophone sport journos like Walsh or such, you are bound to think that only the Tour of France is prone to weird dope performances, never the classics. It's the way it is.