Race Radio said:
While I share your skepticism of Froome's Barloworld to Sky transformation (As do many others) I do not see it as being as extreme as Armstrong's or Smith's. Froome had a few top 10 MTF results while Armstrong would get dropped for minutes in every TT and MTF. Smith was barely in the top 100 in the world before she won 4 medals....while Froome was known as a guy who could climb, but also crashed all the time
If there is a conspiracy then it would have to be with UKAD, not the UCI.....and I see/hear no evidence of that.
Froome had 3 MTF top 10s in races of .1 or above before the 2011 Vuelta. He had managed a few results in the Jayco Herald Sun Tour and the Giro del Capo, but he hadn't actually won any of these mountaintops. Apart from that it was one a year 2009-11 (3rd on Mont Faron in February 2009, 9th to Poffe in a weak field in the 2010 Brixia Tour, 8th in the uphill sprint to Leysin in Romandie 2011), though the Taaramäe on San Luca and 3rd in the '08 Giro dell'Appenino isn't too shabby.
However, on Smith being barely top 100 in the world, Froome's highest CQ tally to that date was 275th, although I acknowledge the talent field is far deeper in cycling due to the much higher number of competitors.
It's also alarming in that it wasn't really a Barloworld to Sky transformation as it was a "my contract's up" transformation, as his results at Barloworld (a team without the best of reputations) clearly outstrip those in his first 18 months at Team Sky. Steve Houanard springs to mind when seeing such transformations.
131313 said:
Agree, completely. There's zero comparison between Armstrong and Froome in their early years. None.
A more apt comparison: Bernhard Kohl
Folks seem to be really stretching the bounds of reality to try to believe the unbelievable. I also don't think it's fair to lump Quintana in with Froome. He's always been really good.
Kohl finished on the podium of the Dauphiné in 2006 after climbing, if not with the best, then with the next best, on Mont Ventoux and La Toussuire. It's very hard to find somebody whose transformation was as genuinely out of nowhere in terms of results as Froome's was. Even Santi Pérez could be argued in favour of. The nearest in terms of ROAD results is Wiggins, but he has the focusing on the track as justification.
Race Radio said:
True, but there were several teams, like Garmin, trying to sign him. It is not like he was a complete unknown quantity. Directors and managers at the time saw him as a guy with a good engine who was completely clueless on a bike.
Regardless, his Vuelta performance is even more questionable then his Tour performance
But he was likely to have been on the same low level domestique salary at Garmin or Lampre (the other ones iirc who were keen to sign him); and with good reason. He had the talent to say he could perhaps make it as a decent top level pro rider, but hadn't shown anything that even remotely satisfactorily explains his subsequent meteoric rise. I would agree his Vuelta is more suspect than his Tour, if only because by the time he was ludicrous at the Tour, ludicrousness was already kind of par for the course for Chris Froome, at that Vuelta, he was a directly unfunny joke, and it was deeply frustrating to deal with people (not yourself) throwing daggers at Juan José Cobo, a man who had plenty of top level results and who had shown he was in form by being 3rd on the main MTF at Burgos, for 'cheating' the clean Chris Froome, a man who had next to no top level results and had shown his form by losing 20+ minutes in the toughest two stages of the Tour de Pologne, despite the fact that Cobo had nothing to do with why Froome lost that race, as the real reason was that Team Sky did not commit to him until it was too late as they saw Wiggins as the real leader.
Which may have seemed silly, but it's worth remembering that at this point Wiggins had won the Dauphiné and finished (then) 4th at the Tour, whereas Froome hadn't got any results even at short stage races, and was a total unknown. Why wouldn't you back the known quality over a total gamble?
Race Radio said:
The hiring of Lienders was stupid and their response to the issue has been pathetic. It can be read many ways but I really can't see any team hiring Leinders to run a modern program. If they have a program today it isn't being done by somebody so obvious as Lienders. The higher likelihood is Froome, and a few other riders, have their own guy
I agree fully on this point, but then the question has to arise, why would you hire Leinders if not to dope (or mask doping, as hrotha then brought up)? After all, his name was in the public domain thanks to the Rasmussen case, and while he may not have been a doping household name à la Conconi, Ferrari or Fuentes at that point, I do go back to something I've said many times before: we forum users are just that; for Dave Brailsford his job is built on staking his reputation out, and that involved being thorough in their anti-doping (remember: attention to detail). Therefore while the Clinic may not have done its research on Leinders, you'd think that pre-emptive research from Team Sky might have pointed out: Geert Leinders is not a guy you hire if you want to look transparent on doping. Then trying to hide that appointment doesn't help you look transparent either, in fact it has the opposite effect. If Leinders is a red herring, and I think that that may be the case, then why is there even a red herring in the first place? "The clean team might be doing something dirty, but not with the dirty guy you'd think!!!"
If Froome is clean, he's clearly a completely inept public relations guy. Because he's a dominant champion, and he comes across as a nice, personable and friendly guy (as opposed to Wiggins, who formerly came across as a likable everyman but with success going to his head has come across as a selfish, arrogant, vindictive individual with a very short fuse)... and yet he isn't especially popular and questions are popping up about him all over the place. Few seem to believe in him. And he couldn't look more like an unrepentant doper if the cycling paparazzi caught him stumbling out of a nightclub with white powder on his face and his arms around Davide Rebellin and Danilo di Luca, before taking bags out of the boot of a car owned by Edita Rumsas.