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Is Walsh on the Sky bandwagon?

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Apr 20, 2012
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This book is a hagiography for fans.
Often in the car we spoke about doping and at one point he pondered his own career. He wasn’t making a fuss about it but he hadn’t doped and, like everyone else rowing a boat against the blokes with outboard engines, he didn’t get very far. ‘I was the same era, more or less, as guys like George Hincapie, Bobby Julich and even David Millar. ‘They were good riders, but I felt I trained as hard as they did, I wanted it as much as they did, but they went on to have great careers. I thought about it a lot, why they went so far and why I went nowhere. What I believed is that they were much smarter than me. They trained better,they were cleverer in races and I felt I just wasn’t bright enough.’
Are these fellas for real?
 
Sep 3, 2012
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LaFlorecita said:
Oh my god that's just sad :(

I'm hoping there's an in joke going on... Maybe with his appearance similar to that of a young Benicio del Toro, if so the quote could be from the film the Usual Suspects. And in my eyes would make it funny!!

In English please.....
 
Apr 20, 2012
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Dear Wiggo said:
Who is that pondering his career?
Ellingworth. The former Witham Wheeler star.

Note the 'they were smarter'.

edit:
That Thursday evening I was in London speaking with a group of cycling fans, mostly corporate guys working in the City. Three of them in turn asked about Tiernan-Locke and the unspecified reason for his withdrawal from Team GB. They thought something was up. As the Inspector Clouseau of cycling, I felt I should have had an answer for them. I didn’t, but at least mine wasn’t the only suspicious mind. The more I thought about it, the more I sensed that this smelt more fishy than an anchovy’s armpit. Next day I rang Dave Brailsford. He was in Tuscany. He didn’t pick up. Slight relief for me, as this was going to be a tough call. I left a message saying there was something I needed to check. I knew things would have been fraught in Italy with the Cookson/McQuaid shootout cum election going down the following day and the ongoing Froome/Wiggins peace process still at a delicate stage, but it was still unusual for Brailsford not to return the call.
Lolz.
 
Parrulo said:
Your not Irish? Your IP suggested otherwise but who cares anyway? My point stands. How can you still defend walsh even after this book? Can you answer me that?

And the whole JTL argument is total BS. It's just like saying: "hey that SOB raped 50 women" "ya but he cuddled a kitten last night, so he's alright"

The whole JTL thing looks more and more like a decoy to make Walsh seem unbiased before this book was released.

while anything can happen in the cycling circus, I just can't see a colluded effort to throw JTL under the bus in order to give Walsh a bit of credibility as what really transpired.

Still think it was a relatively neutral player at UCI getting disgusted with how things are running, but not quite ready to blow things up completely.
 
gooner said:
It's in relation to one person(he knows who he is) that didn't have that position towards him this time last year. I know that for a fact. That's my point and it was the same for the forum. Walsh was not called out for being sanctimonious around here back then.

Rubbish that I was the only person...

I had misgivings from the time he tweeted about being able to sleep well tonight because the big fish has been caught - but just because I didn't post it in the clinic!
Also I had conversations with other people where the same was said.
 
Sep 20, 2009
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Dazed and Confused said:
are we headed for the Book of the Year award here?
Well researched, poetic language and a solid feel good story.
Alas, we probably need to wait for the numbers to come in. Gotta be somewhat popular, the choice.

Given that the clinic lepers have all read the book on line sales should reach zero. But Walsh a 58 yr old Irishman who skipped English As A Written Language at school might be saved. Put it in the fiction section along with Every Pro Dopes by Bennotti and it might get into a few Christmas stockings!

As I continually say for the Tossers out there if you have any evidence that Froome or Wiggins doped phone UKAD. If you are an Aussie like Dear Wiggo just hang your head in shame for the excesses of the AIS programmes that appear to have ceased.
 
timmers said:
Given that the clinic lepers have all read the book on line sales should reach zero. But Walsh a 58 yr old Irishman who skipped English As A Written Language at school might be saved. Put it in the fiction section along with Every Pro Dopes by Bennotti and it might get into a few Christmas stockings!

As I continually say for the Tossers out there if you have any evidence that Froome or Wiggins doped phone UKAD. If you are an Aussie like Dear Wiggo just hang your head in shame for the excesses of the AIS programmes that appear to have ceased.

come on Timmers, this book is not intended for anybody else but July fans. Thats the market opportunity. Sell the stuff to the clueless masses. Quickly, while things are hot.

Hell, I even think the same people will buy a new book from Walsh if he eventually details the entire thing as a fraud.
 
timmers said:
Given that the clinic lepers have all read the book on line sales should reach zero. But Walsh a 58 yr old Irishman who skipped English As A Written Language at school might be saved. Put it in the fiction section along with Every Pro Dopes by Bennotti and it might get into a few Christmas stockings!

As I continually say for the Tossers out there if you have any evidence that Froome or Wiggins doped phone UKAD. If you are an Aussie like Dear Wiggo just hang your head in shame for the excesses of the AIS programmes that appear to have ceased.
WTF! Show me a true Aus sports fan who thinks that the AIS has stopped it's programs and I'll show you a naive idiot in denial. The rest of us know the score - we've been burned before, the UK is only just catching up and when it comes out, it won't be pretty ;)
 
Sep 29, 2012
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42x16ss said:
WTF! Show me a true Aus sports fan who thinks that the AIS has stopped it's programs and I'll show you a naive idiot in denial. The rest of us know the score - we've been burned before, the UK is only just catching up and when it comes out, it won't be pretty ;)

Pretty sure the AIS program - which I believe was one of the best around - has simply been absorbed into the UK program + Team Sky.
 
I just went to Amazon and read the free portion. I found this gem:

Brailsford had offered [Kimmage] full access to the team but when he started asking tough questions they didn’t like it…Part of the difficulty was that, while the team’s policy precluded the employment of any rider or staff member with a doping past, not every rider or staff member was going to be comfortable with the kind of scrutiny Kimmage was going to exercise

How can Walsh write this with a straight face? He’s basically saying the reason Sky allowed him to travel with the team is because he wouldn’t ask tough questions. IOW, there was never any pretense that this was going to be investigative journalism.

As an example of a tough question that Kimmage asked, Walsh describes how he wanted to know why EBH was not doing better. Kimmage’s point, I believe, was to note the irony of a team that boasted turning riders like Wiggins, Froome and Porte into great stage racers, after they showed little initial promise in this endeavor, while EBH, who showed great early promise at what he did, hadn’t fully lived up to that promise.

If that kind of question is not allowed, apparently on the grounds that it’s too embarrassing for EBH, why would anyone think any question about doping would be?

And this:

They prefer "carers" because traditionally soigneurs have been carriers and providers of doping products and central to the culture that Brailsford, performance manager Rod Ellingworth and head of performance Tim Kerrison despise. First you change the name, then the habits.

Hmm, wonder what the original name of the practice they renamed as "marginal gains" was?


Here are some questions I would like to ask Walsh:

1) Realistically, how difficult would it be for riders to dope while you were traveling with the team, without your knowing about it?
2) Why has Sky refused to publish any power data from Froome pre-2011, when this is critical to evaluating how much he improved from his early years to his first GT podium?
3) Given that you and others first concluded LA was doping while watching him climb in the 1999 TDF, why have you not had at least suspicions about Froome? At the very least, why don’t you explain in detail how the two situations are different?
 
Merckx index said:
As an example of a tough question that Kimmage asked, Walsh describes how he wanted to know why EBH was not doing better. Kimmage’s point, I believe, was to note the irony of a team that boasted turning riders like Wiggins, Froome and Porte into great stage racers, after they showed little initial promise in this endeavor, while EBH, who showed great early promise at what he did, hadn’t fully lived up to that promise.

If that kind of question is not allowed, apparently on the grounds that it’s too embarrassing for EBH, why would anyone think any question about doping would be?
That's not the real reason why it's a tough question. It's a tough question due to the actual answer, which obviously no one on Sky would like to spill.
 
Oct 16, 2009
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timmers said:
As I continually say for the Tossers out there if you have any evidence that Froome or Wiggins doped phone UKAD. If you are an Aussie like Dear Wiggo just hang your head in shame for the excesses of the AIS programmes that appear to have ceased.
Nah, I'd rather just keep making fun of them on the Internet. Hope you don't mind.
Fearless Greg Lemond said:
Holy smoke:There is an arresting theatrical drama about Ventoux when the riders get to the top of the tree line and come out into the blinding light of the moonscape beyond. It is a mountain built to stage final acts. This final act begins with Froome attacking and leaving everybody for dead except Quintana. Tactically it is a master class, and illustrates how much wisdom Team Sky have been able to plant in Froome’s head these past few years. The younger, straight out of Africa, Froome would have chased down every break of the day before finding himself out of gas. Or on another day from the early years he would have looked around him, taking in all the big names, and decided his only chance was to attack from far out, when they weren’t paying much attention. They would think he was mad and do what bike riders have done since 1903: give him enough rope to hang himself. He would often get a good placing on the stage but would have emptied his tank to do so. The next day, he would sleep with the fishes. But here on Ventoux, he is calculating, waiting for the right moment. And his understanding of the perfect strategic climb is no coincidence. Froome has climbed Ventoux before. Twice..
"Straight out of Africa." What? Did this thing have an editor? Thank God Brailsford beat the Africa out of him.

Walsh is such a loser.
 
Merckx index said:
3) Given that you and others first concluded LA was doping while watching him climb in the 1999 TDF, why have you not had at least suspicions about Froome? At the very least, why don’t you explain in detail how the two situations are different?

I read his answer to that somewhere ... "in '99, we knew EPO was around. This time, there is no drug generating a buzz", or something like that.
 
Mar 25, 2013
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Digger said:
Rubbish that I was the only person...

I had misgivings from the time he tweeted about being able to sleep well tonight because the big fish has been caught - but just because I didn't post it in the clinic!
Also I had conversations with other people where the same was said.

I'm sure.

Did you say it to Walsh?
 
Like a jilted lover left at the alter...



erl5k8.jpg
 
timmers said:
Given that the clinic lepers have all read the book on line sales should reach zero. But Walsh a 58 yr old Irishman who skipped English As A Written Language at school might be saved. Put it in the fiction section along with Every Pro Dopes by Bennotti and it might get into a few Christmas stockings!

As I continually say for the Tossers out there if you have any evidence that Froome or Wiggins doped phone UKAD. If you are an Aussie like Dear Wiggo just hang your head in shame for the excesses of the AIS programmes that appear to have ceased.

Please drop the insults.

Thanks.
 
Sep 29, 2012
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ffs. Does he think The Badger didn't do Pot Belge? The Badger who stands up on stage after every stage to congratulate the winner and the jersey wearers?

Seriously?

Vomit inducing claptrap.