Is Walsh on the Sky bandwagon?

[Benotti69]

Re:

Walsh fully paid up member of the 'few rotten apples' defence team:

"Most frustrating aspect of this TS train wreck is lots of good people inside team with proper ethics are having their reputations tarnished."

"A medical source inside TS told me that in 2012-15 Wiggins was only rider in team with depressed cortisol levels indicating cortisone use."

Funny how this medical source didn't see fit to tell him earlier about those depressed levels for 5 years. Or, if he did, it didn't initiate a spot of further investigation by Walsh...

I think we're past the stage of being able to put too much trust in anything coming out of Team Sky.

Walsh will always be the fan with the typewriter, unless you are dishonest with him or upset him. Be nice and he'll see butterflies everywhere

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

Walsh fully paid up member of the 'few rotten apples' defence team:

"Most frustrating aspect of this TS train wreck is lots of good people inside team with proper ethics are having their reputations tarnished."

"A medical source inside TS told me that in 2012-15 Wiggins was only rider in team with depressed cortisol levels indicating cortisone use."

Funny how this medical source didn't see fit to tell him earlier about those depressed levels for 5 years. Or, if he did, it didn't initiate a spot of further investigation by Walsh...

I think we're past the stage of being able to put too much trust in anything coming out of Team Sky.

Walsh will always be the fan with the typewriter, unless you are dishonest with him or upset him. Be nice and he'll see butterflies everywhere

the most well remunerated sports stenographer in the history of court records and stenography. prolly gets one million GBP in his bankaccount per annum for the shilling enterprise. He knows they are all doping, but he sells it to the gullible public.

 

[Benotti69]

Re: Re:

Walsh fully paid up member of the 'few rotten apples' defence team:

"Most frustrating aspect of this TS train wreck is lots of good people inside team with proper ethics are having their reputations tarnished."

"A medical source inside TS told me that in 2012-15 Wiggins was only rider in team with depressed cortisol levels indicating cortisone use."

Funny how this medical source didn't see fit to tell him earlier about those depressed levels for 5 years. Or, if he did, it didn't initiate a spot of further investigation by Walsh...

I think we're past the stage of being able to put too much trust in anything coming out of Team Sky.

Walsh will always be the fan with the typewriter, unless you are dishonest with him or upset him. Be nice and he'll see butterflies everywhere

the most well remunerated sports stenographer in the history of court records and stenography. prolly gets one million GBP in his bankaccount per annum for the shilling enterprise. He knows they are all doping, but he sells it to the gullible public.

I guess Walsh's salary went up hugely(maybe he is £200k PA, defo not 1 mill) and his articles are closely vetted by Sunday Times. Quite possible the Murdoch wants Brailsford to resign rather than pay the guy off. Also maybe Murdoch is cheesed off with Wiggins not being more of a Sky 'personality' that they hoped.

 

[sniper]

Walsh hiding behind braislford's dishonesty?

The arguments Walsh has come up with over the years to argue Sky are clean go weeeeellll beyond Brailsford's dishonesty.
Stuff like "Froome can't be doping because he shares a room with Porte", etc.
Disingenuous to the bone, and it has zilch to do with brailsford being dishonest yes/no.

Walsh has supported and co-facilitated the rise of a major doping team, and has helped Sky steel from clean athletes. There's no coming back from that.

 

[Benotti69]

Walsh gave an interview to PatKenny of Newstalk this morning. Now Kenny is a big wig in Irish media/radio but his knowledge would be very limited. Kenny defended Roche against Walsh live on TV and ambushed Walsh on same show with a doctor claiming the Conconi files were legit blood tests. Kenny very much dyed in the wool part of the establishment.

If Walsh wanted to make a real point he would've went on Off the Ball or Second Captains 2 very knowledgable sports programs in Ireland.

Walsh still playing the PR game.

 

[sniper]

Simply brilliant from Kimmage on Walsh and Farrell:

There is a point worth making in relation to transparency and the *** we have had to put up with for the past few years. This guy, the doctor Alan Farrell, he knew what was going on there. He was in there when it was going on, he knew what was going on, yet he still presented the team – and, to a degree, Wiggins – as being whiter than *** white.

Or certainly David Walsh presented it, and Farrell then backed him up then with that piece he did in the Sunday Times [in July 2015 ]. He wrote, ‘I’m ex-Sky, there are loads of us out there, come and find us.’ But I’m sorry, I’ve been trying for five *** months to get this guy to pick up a phone and he won’t do it. So draw your own conclusions there.

Now David [Walsh] is now trying to say, ‘there were loads of really nice people in Sky, and this is terrible. This is a small little nub of bad eggs.’ Well, I tell you, I haven’t met these really nice people in Sky. I have had bad experiences with practically everybody on that team.

I include Rod Ellingworth in that – I have had bad experiences with all of these guys. I’d love to know who these nice guys are, as they certainly don’t act in a way that would lend you to have any faith in them.

David may talk about these nice guys, but I haven’t had any experience that they have been in any way believable or transparent.

Alan Farrell’s article [in July 2015] did paint the team in a flattering light. And David Walsh’s piece at the weekend portrayed Alan as a person coming forward with information.

And he had that information at that stage [when Farrell wrote the article defending Sky]. He had that information about Wiggins’ TUEs at that stage, and about Freeman. He obviously has reservations about Freeman and what Freeman was doing. He knew it back then. He could have had a quiet word with David, saying ‘listen David, there are problems on this f**ing team. Don’t think for a moment that there aren’t some issues here.’ Did he say that? I don’t know.

As I said on the radio to Matt Cooper [an Irish radio broadcaster], it is bit *** rich for David to try to produce this guy Farrell as a *** hero. He is not a *** hero to me.

https://cyclingtips.com/2017/03/interview-paul-kimmage-team-skys-charade-exposed/

 

[sniper]

continued:

"And very conveniently, David [Walsh] ignores the role of Geert Leinders [former Team Sky doctor later implicated of doping riders with the Rabobank team and banned for life]. It is as if Leinders was never at the team.

Where did they get the expertise for all this? Yet it’s as if Leinders was never on the team. Or he was there to treat saddle sores. What a joke that was."

 

[Benotti69]

The biggest thing about Walsh's failings is he didn't talk to people outside of Sky, people that were on other teams that rode and worked with Wiggins, Froome et al.

Kimmage mentions Marco Pinotti showing Kimmage a picture in a book of Wiggins having to walk up climbs in the Giro in 2007, 2 years later Wiggins is 4th(upgraded to 3rd) in the TdF!!!!!!

But then Walsh was not there to find anything. He was there to be there seal of approval. Walsh was part of the "seen to be doing things right rather than actually doing things right" and I beleive Walsh did that in the full knowledge it would be a sham and he is still playing his part to the bitter end.

 

[thehog]

Digger has started a very good blog (much better than Race Radio writing about his buddies) and he's post on Walsh is exceptional.

The Walsh post below, other posts in the link; https://diggerforum.wordpress.com

The 1998 Tour is now infamous for the Festina affair – the result of which exposed wholesale EPO abuse across professional cycling. As seen since Tom Simpson’s death a half century ago, the fall out was typical. New beginning, new generation, drawing a line in the sand, were all the buzzwords as the 1999 cycling season began. Marco Pantani was the first to wreck that myth by being kicked out of the Giro in May of 1999 for a Haematocrit over 50%, as he was on the cusp of winning the race.

Enter David Walsh. A guy who has followed cycling on and off since the early 80’s, he’s visiting the 1999 Tour with an open, if sceptical eye, to examine if this is indeed the so called ‘Tour of Renewal.’ On the third week of the race Lance Armstrong is about to win his first Tour de France, David Walsh is suspicious of what he is seeing in front of his eyes. In a car with other long time Tour de France journalists, Charles Pelkey, John Wilcockson and Charles Pelkey, they discuss the race when average speeds comes up. Walsh says ‘we know from the average speed of the race so far, this year’s Tour’s going to be faster than last year’s, when we know doping was pervasive….Leblanc said he looked forward to a slower tour, proving that fewer drugs were being used.’

July 2007, Michael Rasmussen has just been expelled from the Tour de France. A Canadian website asks David Walsh if he’s been following the 2007 Tour and if he’s sad that both Michael Rasmussen and Alexander Vinokourov have been expelled from the race, Rasmussen for whereabouts issues, Vinokourov for failing a doping test. Walsh answers the question with the disdain it deserves ‘why is it sad? They’re cheating. What is sad is the guy who’s wearing the yellow jersey now, Alberto Contador is definitely cheating.’ Walsh is asked why is arrives at this conclusion. ‘Michael Rasmussen went up the Col d’Aubisque faster than Lance Armstong ever went up it. Alberto Contador was alongside him the whole way.’

July 2013, Chris Froome has just won a stage in the Tour de France to AX 3 Domaines. The fans are already talking about how fast Froome has ridden up the climb. Froome rode up the climb with the third fastest time ever. Froome has matched and beaten numerous times set in the era of known EPO abuse. Walsh however arrives at a different viewpoint. In his book ‘Inside Team Sky’ he says ‘inevitably times set in the doping era will someday be surpassed by clean riders.’ Further on, in this same book, Walsh has clearly taken the side of Tim Kerrison and Dave Brailsford in dismissing the calculations of the ‘pseudoscientists. ‘A cottage industry has grown in recent years, supplying the blogosphere with statistics which are supposed to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ whether a cyclist is guilty. A few paragraphs later David went on to ask ‘why pay attention to just one statistic?’

Indeed David – so what changed for you in the space of a decade?

David cites the bullying of Bassons by Lance in 1999 as a red flag towards Lance. David rightly points out that these actions were not of a clean rider. However Froome appears in an intimate picture with the previously suspended Alexander Vinokourov, for blood doping, with a caption that reads ‘too cool for words’, at a private party in Monaco, whilst they both showed off their Olympic medals. One could rightly ask are these the actions of a clean rider David?

In the book from Lance to Landis, Walsh goes to great lengths to exemplify the unnatural progression of Lance Armstrong’s career. In fairness to Walsh, his logic on this was solid. Lance’s career progression was anything but gradual, or what one could reasonably expect for an already elite cyclist. In Lance’s first two Tours he withdrew and in the first one he completed he came 36th. Walsh goes into great detail in the book by explaining how much time Lance was losing in time trial stages and mountain stages pre cancer. It all pointed the reader toward asking how a guy could recover from cancer and suddenly come fourth in the Vuelta at the age of 27.

The career trajectory of Chris Froome raises no such suspicions for Walsh however, despite his progression being far more dramatic than Lance. Froome’s first Grand Tour was the 2008 Tour de France where he came 83rd. Next up was the 2009 Giro where he finished 34th. 2010 Giro was an embarrassing ending for Froome when he was disqualified for holding on to a motorbike going up a mountain. Then came the 2011 Vuelta. Froome is 26 at this stage and only gets a late call up to the Sky team because Lars Petter Nordhaug pulled out of the race due to illness. Froome comes 2nd overall, wins a mountain stage, holds the leader’s jersey for a stage, and could arguably have won the race overall if he hadn’t been riding for Wiggins for the first two weeks. Three weeks prior to the 2011 Vuelta, Froome came 83rd overall in the Tour of Poland. In the 2011 Tour of Brixia Froome finished 45th overall. Froome’s transformation is, as Sport Scientist Ross Tucker points out, ‘unparalleled in endurance sport history.’ This all begs the question though as to why Lance’s transformation, and let’s not forget that Lance won the World Championships at 21, garnered more suspicion from David Walsh than Froome’s, whose notable success, prior to the 2011 Vuelta, was the 2009 Anatomic Jock Race and a stage of the world famous (In Walsh’s head) Giro del Capo.

In May 2013 I spoke with Walsh about Sky. In the course of this conversation he vociferously denied that his employer had any part or bearing on his Sky stance. For every point I’d raise, he’d raise a counter point, most of which left me frustrated and bemused. For example, one argument he made, which was beyond belief, was that Sky’s lack of Classics success was evidence of a clean team. Outside of how nonsensical this statement is, stage races are harder to win and Sky win those in abundance, let’s look at the facts. Sky have won semi classics such as Het Nieuwsbald, E3, Strade Bianche, Henao has come second in Fleche Wallone. Wout Poels won the 2016 Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Kwiatkowski won Strade Bianche two weeks ago. This success actually compares favourably to specialist classics teams like Quick Step, but because Sky’s stage success is so dominant, anything less than this extraordinary level is seen as failure.

Toward the end of the phone call I wondered where David Walsh was gone, the one who had shown such raw intuition in his early Lance Armstrong musings. I wondered if what had happened to his long-time friend Paul Kimmage had broken his spirit – Paul having been let go by the Sunday Times only months previously. Did David think to himself that being a hero wouldn’t pay the bills for his family, just like anti-doping hadn’t paid the bills during the Lance years? Did he, as Paul Kimmage said last September on Irish Radio, say to himself I’ll sit this one out?

I’ve been one of David’s fiercest critics on Sky. The primary reason for this is that he’s literally disregarding one set of criteria, which he used for Lance, whilst saying this same criteria isn’t of use or accurate enough to use when it comes to Sky and Froome. Even as late as last Sunday’s piece by Walsh, on the 12th of March, there was still the firm belief that Froome was the honest one in all this – despite him ALSO having taken cortisone before a race for a chest infection. A TUE which was fast tracked through by a one man committee, and known about by the same staff, like Alan Farrell, who kept the TUE’s Wiggins got very much a secret from Walsh in 2013. In summary Froome was so sick he needed cortisone to race, won the race easily, despite this chest infection, but told Paul Kimmage he got no performance benefit from the cortisone. That’s quite the tightrope. He also neglected to point out to Walsh that he was a life-long asthma sufferer, despite Walsh ghostwriting his autobiography. This ‘omission’ becomes significant when we see that Froome pulls out his inhaler with 25km to go in a key Dauphine stage and takes a puff of his inhaler, or before ‘a big effort’ as he told Kimmage. This incident earned Froome the nickname ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ inside the peloton.

Walsh is doubling up and dismissing the outright lies, the half -truths and lies by omission from people such as Brailsford, Ellingworth, Kerrison and Freeman because he is STILL clinging to his one hope. That Froome is clean. He is a walking example of Stockholm syndrome. Despite their success, Walsh and Froome are both seen as figures of derision among the real cycling fans – we’ve seen it all so many times before from other nations. A quote David should have pinned up on his wall in 2011, on marginal gains, and saved himself this current embarrassment, is from a certain Doctor Leinders, who was alreadyat Sky one season,‘ innovation has always been there. Think of it as shedding your skin. The snake gets a new skin, but underneath remains the same.’

How does plays out from here? In the last few weeks we have journalists writing about Sky as though they played no role in the sycophancy which helped perpetuate the Sky myth. But the anger towards Walsh runs deeper. One could make an argument for many British mainstream journalists being clueless about cycling and its history, but Walsh has no such excuses. It’s almost forty years since he was, as he has admitted, the archetypal fan with a typewriter. Walsh has come full circle and Froome will be his Waterloo. There is a Texan looking on at this, surely in despair at Walsh’s hypocrisy, but also secure in the knowledge that both fought each other like tigers for a decade and ended their careers with reputations destroyed because of the fight they didn’t see coming. Tyler Hamilton said, as cyclists, we all went into the casino, gambled what we had, and left when the chips ran out. Walsh’s exit of the same casino is ahead of him – again showing how little was separating himself and Lance all along. Walsh is on his last roll of the dice – it’s all in on red or black. Froome surviving unscathed will determine Walsh’s own legacy. But as Floyd Landis said on Sky and Froome, ‘we’ve seen this movie before, we know how it ends.’ Cycling never did listen to the truth tellers. That’s why the cycle never ends. That’s David Walsh on Team Sky. That’s how he’ll be remembered

 

[GraftPunk]

If you lie with dogs and so on. I wonder if Walsh knew just how entrenched he would become.

 

[The Hitch]

Re:

The biggest thing about Walsh's failings is he didn't talk to people outside of Sky, people that were on other teams that rode and worked with Wiggins, Froome et al.

Kimmage mentions Marco Pinotti showing Kimmage a picture in a book of Wiggins having to walk up climbs in the Giro in 2007, 2 years later Wiggins is 4th(upgraded to 3rd) in the TdF!!!!!!

But then Walsh was not there to find anything. He was there to be there seal of approval. Walsh was part of the "seen to be doing things right rather than actually doing things right" and I beleive Walsh did that in the full knowledge it would be a sham and he is still playing his part to the bitter end.

This is what we've been saying for years.

In a just world, Walsh should have his journalism licence, hell his licence to ever write or talk about everything withdrawn.
He never asked a single person outside Sky yet continued to publish things like "no other team trains" "all non Sky riders drink beer on rest days" etc.

When you *** up your job that much there should be a penalty for it.

 

[The Hitch]

Digger has started a very good blog (much better than Race Radio writing about his buddies) and he's post on Walsh is exceptional.

The Walsh post below, other posts in the link; https://diggerforum.wordpress.com

The 1998 Tour is now infamous for the Festina affair – the result of which exposed wholesale EPO abuse across professional cycling. As seen since Tom Simpson’s death a half century ago, the fall out was typical. New beginning, new generation, drawing a line in the sand, were all the buzzwords as the 1999 cycling season began. Marco Pantani was the first to wreck that myth by being kicked out of the Giro in May of 1999 for a Haematocrit over 50%, as he was on the cusp of winning the race.

Enter David Walsh. A guy who has followed cycling on and off since the early 80’s, he’s visiting the 1999 Tour with an open, if sceptical eye, to examine if this is indeed the so called ‘Tour of Renewal.’ On the third week of the race Lance Armstrong is about to win his first Tour de France, David Walsh is suspicious of what he is seeing in front of his eyes. In a car with other long time Tour de France journalists, Charles Pelkey, John Wilcockson and Charles Pelkey, they discuss the race when average speeds comes up. Walsh says ‘we know from the average speed of the race so far, this year’s Tour’s going to be faster than last year’s, when we know doping was pervasive….Leblanc said he looked forward to a slower tour, proving that fewer drugs were being used.’

July 2007, Michael Rasmussen has just been expelled from the Tour de France. A Canadian website asks David Walsh if he’s been following the 2007 Tour and if he’s sad that both Michael Rasmussen and Alexander Vinokourov have been expelled from the race, Rasmussen for whereabouts issues, Vinokourov for failing a doping test. Walsh answers the question with the disdain it deserves ‘why is it sad? They’re cheating. What is sad is the guy who’s wearing the yellow jersey now, Alberto Contador is definitely cheating.’ Walsh is asked why is arrives at this conclusion. ‘Michael Rasmussen went up the Col d’Aubisque faster than Lance Armstong ever went up it. Alberto Contador was alongside him the whole way.’

July 2013, Chris Froome has just won a stage in the Tour de France to AX 3 Domaines. The fans are already talking about how fast Froome has ridden up the climb. Froome rode up the climb with the third fastest time ever. Froome has matched and beaten numerous times set in the era of known EPO abuse. Walsh however arrives at a different viewpoint. In his book ‘Inside Team Sky’ he says ‘inevitably times set in the doping era will someday be surpassed by clean riders.’ Further on, in this same book, Walsh has clearly taken the side of Tim Kerrison and Dave Brailsford in dismissing the calculations of the ‘pseudoscientists. ‘A cottage industry has grown in recent years, supplying the blogosphere with statistics which are supposed to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ whether a cyclist is guilty. A few paragraphs later David went on to ask ‘why pay attention to just one statistic?’

Indeed David – so what changed for you in the space of a decade?

David cites the bullying of Bassons by Lance in 1999 as a red flag towards Lance. David rightly points out that these actions were not of a clean rider. However Froome appears in an intimate picture with the previously suspended Alexander Vinokourov, for blood doping, with a caption that reads ‘too cool for words’, at a private party in Monaco, whilst they both showed off their Olympic medals. One could rightly ask are these the actions of a clean rider David?

In the book from Lance to Landis, Walsh goes to great lengths to exemplify the unnatural progression of Lance Armstrong’s career. In fairness to Walsh, his logic on this was solid. Lance’s career progression was anything but gradual, or what one could reasonably expect for an already elite cyclist. In Lance’s first two Tours he withdrew and in the first one he completed he came 36th. Walsh goes into great detail in the book by explaining how much time Lance was losing in time trial stages and mountain stages pre cancer. It all pointed the reader toward asking how a guy could recover from cancer and suddenly come fourth in the Vuelta at the age of 27.

The career trajectory of Chris Froome raises no such suspicions for Walsh however, despite his progression being far more dramatic than Lance. Froome’s first Grand Tour was the 2008 Tour de France where he came 83rd. Next up was the 2009 Giro where he finished 34th. 2010 Giro was an embarrassing ending for Froome when he was disqualified for holding on to a motorbike going up a mountain. Then came the 2011 Vuelta. Froome is 26 at this stage and only gets a late call up to the Sky team because Lars Petter Nordhaug pulled out of the race due to illness. Froome comes 2nd overall, wins a mountain stage, holds the leader’s jersey for a stage, and could arguably have won the race overall if he hadn’t been riding for Wiggins for the first two weeks. Three weeks prior to the 2011 Vuelta, Froome came 83rd overall in the Tour of Poland. In the 2011 Tour of Brixia Froome finished 45th overall. Froome’s transformation is, as Sport Scientist Ross Tucker points out, ‘unparalleled in endurance sport history.’ This all begs the question though as to why Lance’s transformation, and let’s not forget that Lance won the World Championships at 21, garnered more suspicion from David Walsh than Froome’s, whose notable success, prior to the 2011 Vuelta, was the 2009 Anatomic Jock Race and a stage of the world famous (In Walsh’s head) Giro del Capo.

In May 2013 I spoke with Walsh about Sky. In the course of this conversation he vociferously denied that his employer had any part or bearing on his Sky stance. For every point I’d raise, he’d raise a counter point, most of which left me frustrated and bemused. For example, one argument he made, which was beyond belief, was that Sky’s lack of Classics success was evidence of a clean team. Outside of how nonsensical this statement is, stage races are harder to win and Sky win those in abundance, let’s look at the facts. Sky have won semi classics such as Het Nieuwsbald, E3, Strade Bianche, Henao has come second in Fleche Wallone. Wout Poels won the 2016 Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Kwiatkowski won Strade Bianche two weeks ago. This success actually compares favourably to specialist classics teams like Quick Step, but because Sky’s stage success is so dominant, anything less than this extraordinary level is seen as failure.

Toward the end of the phone call I wondered where David Walsh was gone, the one who had shown such raw intuition in his early Lance Armstrong musings. I wondered if what had happened to his long-time friend Paul Kimmage had broken his spirit – Paul having been let go by the Sunday Times only months previously. Did David think to himself that being a hero wouldn’t pay the bills for his family, just like anti-doping hadn’t paid the bills during the Lance years? Did he, as Paul Kimmage said last September on Irish Radio, say to himself I’ll sit this one out?

I’ve been one of David’s fiercest critics on Sky. The primary reason for this is that he’s literally disregarding one set of criteria, which he used for Lance, whilst saying this same criteria isn’t of use or accurate enough to use when it comes to Sky and Froome. Even as late as last Sunday’s piece by Walsh, on the 12th of March, there was still the firm belief that Froome was the honest one in all this – despite him ALSO having taken cortisone before a race for a chest infection. A TUE which was fast tracked through by a one man committee, and known about by the same staff, like Alan Farrell, who kept the TUE’s Wiggins got very much a secret from Walsh in 2013. In summary Froome was so sick he needed cortisone to race, won the race easily, despite this chest infection, but told Paul Kimmage he got no performance benefit from the cortisone. That’s quite the tightrope. He also neglected to point out to Walsh that he was a life-long asthma sufferer, despite Walsh ghostwriting his autobiography. This ‘omission’ becomes significant when we see that Froome pulls out his inhaler with 25km to go in a key Dauphine stage and takes a puff of his inhaler, or before ‘a big effort’ as he told Kimmage. This incident earned Froome the nickname ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ inside the peloton.

Walsh is doubling up and dismissing the outright lies, the half -truths and lies by omission from people such as Brailsford, Ellingworth, Kerrison and Freeman because he is STILL clinging to his one hope. That Froome is clean. He is a walking example of Stockholm syndrome. Despite their success, Walsh and Froome are both seen as figures of derision among the real cycling fans – we’ve seen it all so many times before from other nations. A quote David should have pinned up on his wall in 2011, on marginal gains, and saved himself this current embarrassment, is from a certain Doctor Leinders, who was alreadyat Sky one season,‘ innovation has always been there. Think of it as shedding your skin. The snake gets a new skin, but underneath remains the same.’

How does plays out from here? In the last few weeks we have journalists writing about Sky as though they played no role in the sycophancy which helped perpetuate the Sky myth. But the anger towards Walsh runs deeper. One could make an argument for many British mainstream journalists being clueless about cycling and its history, but Walsh has no such excuses. It’s almost forty years since he was, as he has admitted, the archetypal fan with a typewriter. Walsh has come full circle and Froome will be his Waterloo. There is a Texan looking on at this, surely in despair at Walsh’s hypocrisy, but also secure in the knowledge that both fought each other like tigers for a decade and ended their careers with reputations destroyed because of the fight they didn’t see coming. Tyler Hamilton said, as cyclists, we all went into the casino, gambled what we had, and left when the chips ran out. Walsh’s exit of the same casino is ahead of him – again showing how little was separating himself and Lance all along. Walsh is on his last roll of the dice – it’s all in on red or black. Froome surviving unscathed will determine Walsh’s own legacy. But as Floyd Landis said on Sky and Froome, ‘we’ve seen this movie before, we know how it ends.’ Cycling never did listen to the truth tellers. That’s why the cycle never ends. That’s David Walsh on Team Sky. That’s how he’ll be remembered

Ha very nice.

Only things I would add would be mentions to Walsh hanging out with froome at his mansion, posting selfies, and same kind of buddy behaviour with DB.

 

[red_flanders]

Digger has started a very good blog (much better than Race Radio writing about his buddies) and he's post on Walsh is exceptional.

The Walsh post below, other posts in the link; https://diggerforum.wordpress.com

Thanks for the link, good read.

Bizarre dig at RR. He's been gone for years. Get over it.

 

[GraftPunk]

Digger has started a very good blog (much better than Race Radio writing about his buddies) and he's post on Walsh is exceptional.

The Walsh post below, other posts in the link; https://diggerforum.wordpress.com

Thanks for the link, good read.

Bizarre dig at RR. He's been gone for years. Get over it.

Whatever happened to him btw?

 

[red_flanders]

Digger has started a very good blog (much better than Race Radio writing about his buddies) and he's post on Walsh is exceptional.

The Walsh post below, other posts in the link; https://diggerforum.wordpress.com

Thanks for the link, good read.

Bizarre dig at RR. He's been gone for years. Get over it.

Whatever happened to him btw?

I could only speculate.

 

[42x16ss]

Digger has started a very good blog (much better than Race Radio writing about his buddies) and he's post on Walsh is exceptional.

The Walsh post below, other posts in the link; https://diggerforum.wordpress.com

Thanks for the link, good read.

Bizarre dig at RR. He's been gone for years. Get over it.

Whatever happened to him btw?

I could only speculate.

He started posting a lot less after Joe Papp released his real identity.

 

[blackcat]

Digger has started a very good blog (much better than Race Radio writing about his buddies) and he's post on Walsh is exceptional.

The Walsh post below, other posts in the link; https://diggerforum.wordpress.com

Thanks for the link, good read.

Bizarre dig at RR. He's been gone for years. Get over it.

Whatever happened to him btw?

I could only speculate.

He started posting a lot less after Joe Papp released his real identity.

the irony is, Lance "respects" RR. relative ofcource, insofaras, Lance respects anyone.

he has some limited dialogue with RR.

I thought the Joe Papp doxing RR, was just board speculation, or did Papp really tell Armstrong?

I know the Sky and Michelle had Digger's details and sent him passive aggressive non-veiled threats.

It is just cycling. No characters are axiomatically evil. Even if Betsy may describe Lance like this. This is not the case, it is just cycling, a sport, doping, have a freeeeeekin laff. It is absurd. funny.

I had enough info from RR, I could have found out who his name/details was, but he gave me so much info in personal messages, I had such a comprehensive cycling-worldview, 90% thanks to RR, I followed him to all the fora he posted on under different handles, read all his posts, asked him information, and he was so generous, he always answered my personalmessages. So, I never had to read Albergotti/Oconnell's Wheelmen. I had such a good meta-view. Wheelmen would have been whitenoise, and details would have merely impaired my overarching script.

anyway, then on Betsy Andreu's Facebook, Reed said that RaceRadio was about their primary(all) source, for the material in Wheelmen.

But, Lance atleast gives RR a grudging respect. Tho, he did call him an @rsehole, lance called RR an @rsehole, in a previous correspondence, lol. Cant remember what it was over.

Folks, everyone gotta get over it. It is just cycling, just some doping. absurd. Michelle, take a bex, get a prescription of xanax. it aint serious.

 

[thehog]

Digger has started a very good blog (much better than Race Radio writing about his buddies) and he's post on Walsh is exceptional.

The Walsh post below, other posts in the link; https://diggerforum.wordpress.com

Thanks for the link, good read.

Bizarre dig at RR. He's been gone for years. Get over it.

Whatever happened to him btw?

I could only speculate.

He started posting a lot less after Joe Papp released his real identity.

True, once everyone realised he was an average joe posing as a cycling demigod he became a lot less interesting, thus he had to turn into a bot to gain a Twitter folllowing. Digger kept his integrity and his recent blogging and posts shows the respect he gets from journalists and those in the scientific community. Race is still slumming it with Walsh, which explains all we need to know.

 

[Dan2016]

''Why's this fussing and a-fighting?
I wanna know, lord, I wanna know
Why's this bumping and a-boring?
I wanna know, lord, I wanna know now

We should really love each other (love each other)
In peace and harmony (peace and harmony), ooh
Instead, we're fussing and fighting (fussing and fighting)
And them workin' iniquity (... iniquity)''


#legalisemarijuana

 

[Robert5091]

True, once everyone realised he was an average joe posing as a cycling demigod he became a lot less interesting, thus he had to turn into a bot to gain a Twitter folllowing. Digger kept his integrity and his recent blogging and posts shows the respect he gets from journalists and those in the scientific community. Race is still slumming it with Walsh, which explains all we need to know.

I heard from a solid source that paranoia finally got the best of him. After convincing himself every poster who did not hate Lance as much as he and Betsy was in cahoots with the Dark Lord, he found it more and more difficult to leave the house. Eventually he holed up in dimly lit basement room, sitting on an open bucket with a laptop balanced on his legs, furiously typing out his exaggerations about Armstrong. It was pathetic. In the end he became what he accused Lance of being. It is hard to say whether he followed Betsy down that path or Betsy followed him.

Hey! "Site title" is the best! https://diggerforum.wordpress.com/author/diggerforum/

 

[thehog]

True, once everyone realised he was an average joe posing as a cycling demigod he became a lot less interesting, thus he had to turn into a bot to gain a Twitter folllowing. Digger kept his integrity and his recent blogging and posts shows the respect he gets from journalists and those in the scientific community. Race is still slumming it with Walsh, which explains all we need to know.

I heard from a solid source that paranoia finally got the best of him. After convincing himself every poster who did not hate Lance as much as he and Betsy was in cahoots with the Dark Lord, he found it more and more difficult to leave the house. Eventually he holed up in dimly lit basement room, sitting on an open bucket with a laptop balanced on his legs, furiously typing out his exaggerations about Armstrong. It was pathetic. In the end he became what he accused Lance of being. It is hard to say whether he followed Betsy down that path or Betsy followed him.

Very true. He accused me of receiving messages from Lance. He even went as far as informing mods that Lance was controlling my posts! Strange guy.

 

[thehog]

True, once everyone realised he was an average joe posing as a cycling demigod he became a lot less interesting, thus he had to turn into a bot to gain a Twitter folllowing. Digger kept his integrity and his recent blogging and posts shows the respect he gets from journalists and those in the scientific community. Race is still slumming it with Walsh, which explains all we need to know.

I heard from a solid source that paranoia finally got the best of him. After convincing himself every poster who did not hate Lance as much as he and Betsy was in cahoots with the Dark Lord, he found it more and more difficult to leave the house. Eventually he holed up in dimly lit basement room, sitting on an open bucket with a laptop balanced on his legs, furiously typing out his exaggerations about Armstrong. It was pathetic. In the end he became what he accused Lance of being. It is hard to say whether he followed Betsy down that path or Betsy followed him.

Hey! "Site title" is the best! https://diggerforum.wordpress.com/author/diggerforum/

The hypocrisy post is also very good.

 

[purcell]

Ha very nice.

Only things I would add would be mentions to Walsh hanging out with froome at his mansion, posting selfies, and same kind of buddy behaviour with DB.

All seems to remind one of all those photos of Liggett riding in the private jet with a former champion .....

People never learn.

 

[Digger]

my own view is that he became popular and had a big following, far bigger than I will ever have, but with that he became compromised. People from Sky were following him. He didn't want to annoy those people or their fans. It was similar with jv. He was licking jv's a** at every turn as well as lemond. Irony being that he didn't even like Greg that much in private. There was the two faces. The one playing to the gallery and the private one. He was trying to stay friendly. No question he had contacts but he also name dropped and exaggerated some of these I know for a fact. His stance depended on who was following him. The most shameful example was the 2015 tour when Thomas was riding tempo in the rain with Quintana barely holding his wheel. Rasmussen expressed dismay. RR did also and I thought fair play. Then 20 mins later he backtracked. Clearly down to a few replies he had received. Again I have no doubt whatsoever he will continue to grow a following and will dwarf any of ours, but he had been compromised by trying to keep his followers sweet. This is basically what the cycling media have been guilty of for years. To be honest in cycling commentary you have to be willing to fight with everyone, to never get friendly with anyone.

 

[Irondan]

Somehow this thread has been hijacked from David Walsh to become a thread about Race Radio, who's a member of this forum.

Please post comments to the topic at hand.


***I will be removing the off topic comments, if anyone wants to copy their comment to post somewhere else or revise the comment to include the actual topic I will wait for a bit before I remove all the off topic posts.