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Is Walsh on the Sky bandwagon?

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This has to be the corner piece of the Walsh book.

It's worth reading more than once to grapple what he's actually saying or not saying.

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Low Octane said:
I think you meant it's not conclusive evidence that Sky is clean.

I meant it isn’t any evidence. I haven’t read the book, and maybe he says things that would change my mind, but nothing that has been quoted in this thread does.

Again, what strikes me most forcefully is how much of an adoring fanboy Walsh is. Nothing wrong with that, but fanboys are not the ones you want investigating doping. I’m not saying he would look the other way, cover up, lie, etc. I’m not going there. I’m just saying he won’t make much of an effort to look. It’s very hard to maintain amicable relationships with people you’re investigating for possible fraud. Walsh gives every indication that maintaining those relationships is very important to him. I have difficulty imagining his putting himself in an awkward situation—e.g., spying on some rider against the latter’s wishes, or grilling some relatively lowly staff member with embarrassing questions.

He doesn’t want to be the bad guy. And this is not all on him. If he plays the bad guy, the team will resent it—the quote about Kimmage makes that abundantly clear—and maybe rescind their offer. He’s only allowed to be with the team if he respects certain limits. But this is not the way you catch dopers. You don’t catch dopers by playing nice. That’s why most of the major busts in recent years have involved police actions.

If Walsh had actually approached the situation that way, I would expect he would emphasize it very early in the book. He would recount—and it would make an excellent story, by the way, probably a lot more entertaining than the one he has actually written—all of the ways he snuck around trying to catch someone out. Peering through windows, knocking on doors, interrupting meetings, going through garbage, and on and on. But—anyone who has read the book, correct me if I’m wrong—this isn’t what he does. He just says when he talks to them, they act innocent, like they have nothing to hide. They say all the right things. Come on.

To repeat, maybe they do have nothing to hide. I just can’t conclude that from this book.

Low Octane said:
It's easy to make a quip about detective Walsh, but yes, it would be bloody difficult to conceal this type of huge doping conspiracy with an investigative anti doping journalist on the team bus every day. That's why the likes of Walsh were blacklisted by teams. We now know just how much team staff have to be involved to pull this off every day - running around hiding rubbish, making courier trips across borders, pulling over the bus on mountain bends, using makeup to hide injections, hiding drugs in the bus drivers underpants etc. We also know how difficult it is for many of these people to not let slip in body language or impression that something is up when you're working with them every day.

After all the talk about how Sky is pioneering new approaches to training, it doesn't even cross your mind that they could be applying the same mindset to doping as well? Yes, I agree with you that the Sky bus probably doesn’t pull over in some lonely spot so all the riders can get their transfusion. I doubt any team today would be dumb enough to do that. There are many other times and places where that can be done.

If there is anything we have learned again and again and again throughout the history of doping is that dopers adapt their approaches to stay ahead of those trying to catch them. The Reasoned Decision was a treasure trove of things not to do, of advice for anyone who wants to dope without getting caught. What Postal did and didn’t do in their heyday worked then, but everyone understands that in today’s atmosphere, a different approach is needed—just as everyone understands that you can’t raise your HT by 5 points, even if it stays under 50, and even if there is no test for blood transfusions.

If Sky really wants to convince us skeptics, the solution is very simple. Put a bunch of journalists on Froome, Porte and a few others 24/7. I mean, they forfeit every single minute of their privacy over a period of time. Then we can at least conclude that they weren’t doping during that period. Since, according to Walsh, these guys are so dedicated they can't even drink a beer occasionally, i assume they have no distracting social life that would be a problem. All they do is eat, sleep, and train, right?

How about at least doing that during the TDF, particularly on rest days? Just to be able to conclude that Froome did not dope at any time during that period would be a major breakthrough. It wouldn't answer all questions, but it would be a very good start.
 

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Merckx index said:
Again, what strikes me most forcefully is how much of an adoring fanboy Walsh is. Nothing wrong with that, but fanboys are not the ones you want investigating doping..

He's a great admirer of sports, obviously. That's why he's a sports journalist. You seem to have it backwards. If Sky are clean, and obviously Walsh has made that determination, then why in the hell would he not be a fan? These guys ride the tour. They're not politicians. To try to make out he's some deranged fan boy who puts all the doping to one side just doesn't wash. It's the other way around - he's a fan BECAUSE they are clean.

I suppose there's a chance Sky have some secret new way of doping that doesn't have to involve anybody apart from Dave Brailford, Froome and Wiggins - which is kinda implied from what you're saying - but that strikes me as unlikely. A lot of people would have to be involved. I've pointed out all the staff and how difficult that would be. Family members would also get a whiff of it fairly quickly. It would be reeking off doping for anybody with the inside track. But no, not a sniff.

They'd have to be pioneers of a new type of lying as well. Much is made of Lance Armstrong's strong denials, but he was always fairly open with his inner circle and those inside the sport, and this would filter out in the rumor mill. He often talked in double speak code. His denials were formulaic and legalistic at times behind the strong bluster. It's quite hard to imagine characters like Froome and Wiggins lying their hearts out to Walsh all day long, every day, at a training camp and the tour. When Wiggins makes his denials, he obviously hasn't scripted it. It's very different. It doesn't quite ring true to imagine Brailford being able to maintain such a coherent lie sitting next to Walsh in the team car.

So it would have to be a new type of secret doping, plus a new type of lying. Hmmmm. Maybe....I guess.
 

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BroDeal said:
I suggest "Mid Octane" for your next sock puppet.

Pssst, sock puppet means several different accounts at once. Something you know all about, Mr Super Troll, Calls People Thick And Blames Them For Not Understanding You're a Troll.

That should be your next sock puppet.
 
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nickhalliwell said:
Sorry mate but actually that wasnt what was happening, people were basically suggesting froome is a mediocre rider who somehow is winnig the tdf.
You may not of but if you look at many of the posts they were.
I started reading this forum to get some info what was in walshs book and if it was worth a read despite its bias.... but the amount of nonsesnse on here suggesting froome is a average bike rider deserved a response in my opinion.

Seeing how it's a forum about professional cycling, speaking about the pro peloton and Froome, I'm pretty sure one could safely assume that people were presenting the idea that Froome, without Sky, was and has been proven to be an average pro cyclist.
 

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Merckx index said:
If Sky really wants to convince us skeptics, the solution is very simple. Put a bunch of journalists on Froome, Porte and a few others 24/7.

LOL! All these journos would have their names run through the mud by people with integrity who hate lying and cheating. Look what's happened to Walsh.

I have nothing against the likes of BroDeal, thehog etc having the right to lie for fun - my only issue is the hypocritical way they cry about being censored and do everything they can to censor people who don't sing their tune. These people will always exist. The internet attracts people who see it as their pastime to lie and troll for fun. I don't believe for a second that BroDeal believes Walsh is lying or even that Sky are doping, he just plays it for laughs. That's great, but there is a place for the truth as well.

Nice chatting. So long!
 
thehog said:
.........

Lol, is Kerrison using the small error caused by their marginal gains rings as an excuse not to publicise data?

Even their own SRM data is not an accurate representation of physiology according to that spiel (pretty sure the error is 1-2% and fairly constant, someone else will know). Yet their amazing training system is heavily based on SRM data?

Froome's race data is unreliable due to his rings, but in training it's more than good enough to extract supramarginal gains.
 
Low Octane said:
LOL! All these journos would have their names run through the mud by people with integrity who hate lying and cheating. Look what's happened to Walsh.

I have nothing against the likes of BroDeal, thehog etc having the right to lie for fun - my only issue is the hypocritical way they cry about being censored and do everything they can to censor people who don't sing their tune. These people will always exist. The internet attracts people who see it as their pastime to lie and troll for fun. I don't believe for a second that BroDeal believes Walsh is lying or even that Sky are doping, he just plays it for laughs. That's great, but there is a place for the truth as well.

Nice chatting. So long!

Maybe you can continue your crusade for truth, justice, and the British way with CensoredCyclist on Twitter. Seeing how well year after year of defending Armstrong worked out, perhaps your dedicated work will be similarly effective with Froome and Sky. If nothing else then long after everyone else in the world has seen the truth and abandoned them, the Sky dopers will still have you parroting their excuses.

It is funny to read about lies and truth from someone who did everything he could to protect the Armstrong lie and prevent the truth from coming out.

For the record, I had no doubt at all that Armstrong was doping and I have no doubt that Froome is doping. Hogwalsh has proved himself to be little more than a pimp for Team Sky.
 
I don't understand how Walsh figured he would detect doping at Team Sky. Did he think training for dopers would be any different than training for non-dopers? Did he expect to stumble upon a secret meeting in a dark cavern beneath Team Sky headquarters where riders and staff dressed in black robes and planned the team's doping strategy between bouts of evil laughter? The testosterone oil that Postal used would take seconds to administer. The entire team could have been doping under Walsh's nose and he would have been unaware.
 
Ferminal said:
Lol, is Kerrison using the small error caused by their marginal gains rings as an excuse not to publicise data?

Even their own SRM data is not an accurate representation of physiology according to that spiel (pretty sure the error is 1-2% and fairly constant, someone else will know). Yet their amazing training system is heavily based on SRM data?

Froome's race data is unreliable due to his rings, but in training it's more than good enough to extract supramarginal gains.

Just above this paragraph he quotes Tucker to add some authority:

I thought that Ross Tucker of the Sports Scientists site, a man who I have met and respect, got it right when he spoke about what we were seeing this year, the new craze for science to feed extreme conclusions.

It doesn’t deserve outright dismissal and it doesn’t warrant embracing as conclusive proof of anything,’ Tucker said.


(FYI I agree wholeheartedly with both points in this statement)

And then he goes on to call it pseudoscience, garbage and the work of Wikipedia scholars. It's part of a tirade where you will never be able to isolate enough variables to get any desirable accuracy (which are valid points, but overstated in the way they are used to dismiss everything) yet doesn't realise the vast majority of the uncertainty is removed if there was access to power data? Here are some other quotes from Tucker which would have been a good addition to that chapter:

The idealistic view that the so-called “noise” can be silenced simply by with-holding the information is naive and false, and only serves to grow suspicion. If anything, he amplifies the sounds of cynicism with this view, and certainly allows for more voices and thus more noise

And history has shown that people will make up what they are not provided with, and so with-holding the data doesn’t silence the noise, it actually increases it.

Filling the silence – if you don’t tell them, they make up the truth

Therefore, what Brailsford is currently hearing is noise of cycling’s own creation – the secrecy and refusal to talk openly about performance leads to silence that will, for better or worse, be filled by all manner of “experts”, some of whom, it must be said, are real experts. Others are not.


So, the world will watch the Tour, and measure the performances on the climbs. And, starved of the accurate data, the calibration and the context, they will amplify Brailsford’s ‘noise’ by filling in the blanks for themselves.

Use experts to pro-actively control data and create transparency

Why not take the initiative as a team who want clean cycling, who stand for transparency, and make the data available to experts? Why not put the data in the hands of experts who can explain to the “pseudoscientists” out there what the difference is between noise and valuable data? At the very worst, the discussion of data will drive better understanding of those ‘quirks and anomalies’. At best, it will silence the cynics, because they will have the numbers explained to them, and after all, they are pseudoscientists, so should be led towards the truth by those who know better.

What we currently have is a situation where those who claim to have the reliable data, the ‘truth’, are not sharing it, and leaving the way open for people to do what people will do. If the team and their experts know the rider to be clean, and if they can explain that “a record ascent was possible because of a tail-wind, and here is the power output data that shows it”, then everyone would seem to be better off.

This may be a path towards some compromise – I’m not advocating that they tweet the power output within hours of the finish line, because that is uncontained data, analogous to throwing money at beggars and hoping they spend it wisely. But there is no reason, in my opinion, that they cannot make the data available weeks after the Tour, and then educate the public, the cynics, the media, and tell the world the story they seem to believe.


http://www.sportsscientists.com/201...ut-noise-for-people-who-are-pseudoscientists/ (and all of Tucker's posts throughout July were equally sensible)

It would be nice if Walsh engages in an open discussion about these issues rather than being dismissive telling us why everything Brailsford says is perfect.

Oh and this is immediately after the Tucker quote:

He [Tucker] also recommends that we use our other senses if we feel the absolute necessity to come to conclusions. To me this is called journalism. You go into the background, test the transparency, test the substance of the people involved, find out what they do when we are not looking. When Bradley Wiggins speaks to me about doping in the context of letting his children down, when he speaks as the child of a man and doper who let him down, I hear somebody who has weighed the cost of cheating and found it excessive. That doesn’t end my curiosity but it informs my conclusions.

So he goes and does some of this "journalism" and finds out that Wiggins couldn't dope because his father was rough and he has kids. Never heard that one before have we?
 
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thehog said:
This has to be the corner piece of the Walsh book.

It's worth reading more than once to grapple what he's actually saying or not saying.

snip
All I can read out of that is Kerrison is bad at actually communicating a point, but good at talking confidently about a subject he hasn't quite gotten his head round, giving pushovers like Walsh the impression he knows what he's talking about. Is he saying that an SRM doesn't give reliable power output for a bike rigged with oval chain rings? If that's the case then why are the Skybots constantly staring at their handlebars?
 
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Ferminal said:
And then he goes on to call it pseudoscience, garbage and the work of Wikipedia scholars. It's part of a tirade where you will never be able to isolate enough variables to get any desirable accuracy (which are valid points, but overstated in the way they are used to dismiss everything) yet doesn't realise the vast majority of the uncertainty is removed if there was access to power data
Funny stuff indeed, combined with:

''Brailsford is inclined to meet him because he knows that Vayer’s figures on power output in the Tour de France are the basis for others’ calculations. Kerrison, too, because whatever his reservations, he recognises the attempt to factor in many of the variables makes Vayer’s model better than most people’s.''

It is pretty well documentated Vayer/Porteleau's model is very accurate, just not for oval rings, yeah...
Good thing the whole Sky training masterplan is based on SRM.

edit:
great quote:
So the foundation for the statistics is notoriously unsteady to begin with, before we start adding twists. The newest twist on time stats has been to submit them to various equations depending on when they occurred: 2002-2008 is the doping era, 2008 onwards is for some reason (well, the biological passport) deemed to be the clean era (it is not worth asking about Armstrong and Contador in 2009).
Did he forget Wigans to include there?

edit:
Froome had his first dose in January 2011. The side effects are brutal. The drug doesn’t question and ID everything it finds. It just wipes stuff out. For a week to ten days the patient is wiped out as well. By spring of 2011, Froome was showing signs that the treatment was working and he raced well through March and April. In May, though, at the Tour of California the bilharzia was back in business.
6/03/2011 2.1 Esp 61 Vuelta a la Region de Murcia
27/03/2011 2.WT Esp 61 Volta a Catalunya
17/04/2011 2.1 Esp 14 Vuelta a Castilla y Leon
1/05/2011 2.WT Sui 15 Tour de Romandie
22/05/2011 2.HC Usa 66 Tour of California

Indeed, GT winning material.
 
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Ferminal said:
Lol, is Kerrison using the small error caused by their marginal gains rings as an excuse not to publicise data?

Even their own SRM data is not an accurate representation of physiology according to that spiel (pretty sure the error is 1-2% and fairly constant, someone else will know). Yet their amazing training system is heavily based on SRM data?

Froome's race data is unreliable due to his rings, but in training it's more than good enough to extract supramarginal gains.

I think Kerrison is confusing himself with a physicist! Surely all he needed to say was that a crank based power meter measures the average power per pedal stroke. You will still get a variation of power during a pedal stroke with round chainrings depending on how evenly the rider pushes the pedals.

Oval rings will likely exaggerate any peaks or troughs but this will be averaged out over a complete pedal stroke and certainly over an extended duration of measurement.

Yes this is an excuse - release data and caveat it with the assumptions used and error %s? Personally I would just maintain info is confidential for competitive reasons and no need for BS - as why bother with power data at all if it is so poor?
 
I just wish Race Radio still posted on here so he could defend this nonsense...reality is this:
Even if Froome isn't doping (i obviously feel otherwise), this book is so bad, with such poor arguments, that it has damaged Walsh anyway...either way he was become what he loathed - a fan with a typewriter.
He started off as one - writing that book on Kelly, eventhough he admits himself he ignored the drug taking and the pills that fellout of his pocket.
He has now gone full circle back to that.
 
Pies&Booze said:
I think Kerrison is confusing himself with a physicist! Surely all he needed to say was that a crank based power meter measures the average power per pedal stroke. You will still get a variation of power during a pedal stroke with round chainrings depending on how evenly the rider pushes the pedals.

Oval rings will likely exaggerate any peaks or troughs but this will be averaged out over a complete pedal stroke and certainly over an extended duration of measurement.

Yes this is an excuse - release data and caveat it with the assumptions used and error %s? Personally I would just maintain info is confidential for competitive reasons and no need for BS - as why bother with power data at all if it is so poor?

Correct.

And the fact that Walsh had the Kerrison speech down word for word is worrying. Walsh doesn't understand it himself but allowed it to be printed.

And yes, data is a big part of the Sky machine. Walsh on one hand is telling us its not so important due to the variables but lists of the variables as a reason to why Sky went as fast as dopers, wasn't as fast as dopers.

It's also clear he has fact checked nothing. He has taken everything at face value. Badzhilla obvious of no cross referencing.

I can only assume Sky had a lot of fun feeding Walsh as he was willing to publish anything they told him.
 
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thehog said:
Correct.

And the fact that Walsh had the Kerrison speech down word for word is worrying. Walsh doesn't understand it himself but allowed it to be printed.

And yes, data is a big part of the Sky machine. Walsh on one hand is telling us its not so important due to the variables but lists of the variables as a reason to why Sky went as fast as dopers, wasn't as fast as dopers.

It's also clear he has fact checked nothing. He has taken everything at face value. Badzhilla obvious of no cross referencing.

I can only assume Sky had a lot of fun feeding Walsh as he was willing to publish anything they told him
.
yap.
after the "why i believe in froome" fluff piece, most of us here in the clinic knew what was coming and the book didn't disappoint.

as dr. mas would say, we must acknowledge that walsh has 'quizzed' everybody and 'covered' everything. :rolleyes:
 
sniper said:
yap.
after the "why i believe in froome" fluff piece, most of us here in the clinic knew what was coming and the book didn't disappoint.

as dr. mas would say, we must acknowledge that walsh has 'quizzed' everybody and 'covered' everything. :rolleyes:

Well I do chuckle the most of the botclub thought we wouldn't read the book. Thus pretending what Walsh had published was the product of great research.

It's not even the doping angle that concerns me. It's the fact he's for so many things wrong and taken everything on face value.

But I'll give Walsh one thing; he has provided great entertainment!

And trust me what has been printed here is only half of what is absurd in the book.
 
thehog said:
Well I do chuckle the most of the botclub thought we wouldn't read the book. Thus pretending what Walsh had published was the product of great research.

It's not even the doping angle that concerns me. It's the fact he's for so many things wrong and taken everything on face value.

But I'll give Walsh one thing; he has provided great entertainment!

And trust me what has been printed here is only half of what is absurd in the book.

You should write a book on The Clinic like a chapter on why you believe in Sniper :D and why you like me post :p
 
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Digger said:
I just wish Race Radio still posted on here so he could defend this nonsense...reality is this:
Even if Froome isn't doping (i obviously feel otherwise), this book is so bad, with such poor arguments, that it has damaged Walsh anyway...either way he was become what he loathed - a fan with a typewriter.
He started off as one - writing that book on Kelly, eventhough he admits himself he ignored the drug taking and the pills that fellout of his pocket.
He has now gone full circle back to that.
Pills didn't fall out of Kelly's pocket, Walsh thinks he heard the noise of pills rattling in a pillbox, coming from the pocket in the back of Kelly's jersey.
 
Digger said:
I just wish Race Radio still posted on here so he could defend this nonsense...reality is this:
Even if Froome isn't doping (i obviously feel otherwise), this book is so bad, with such poor arguments, that it has damaged Walsh anyway...either way he was become what he loathed - a fan with a typewriter.
He started off as one - writing that book on Kelly, eventhough he admits himself he ignored the drug taking and the pills that fellout of his pocket.
He has now gone full circle back to that.

There is a marked similarity in some of the postings here and the book.

Even the Leinders is not Ferrari makes an appearance.
 

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