Is Walsh on the Sky bandwagon?

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Back at the Team Sky hotel in Embrun, Brailsford slept through most of the time trial, waking in time to watch the finish on television. ‘Chris has always been a good time-triallist,’ he said afterwards, ‘that’s where I first saw him, in Melbourne in the Commonwealth Games in 2006, first time I set eyes on him. Nathan O’Neill won that time trial, we had Steve Cummings and the usual suspects. I was there with Doug Dailey and Shane [Sutton]. Shane’s saying [in Brailsford’s best Australian twang], “You’re not going to believe this, some bloke’s turned up in sand shoes, jumped on his bike and look what he’s done. In a pair of ****ing sand shoes!” ‘We all looked and thought bloody hell that guy is impressive. He wasn’t up there, but it was impressive, you know, he caught the eye. And he was completely unknown. And then Doug, being Doug, said, “Ah, I might have a word with him, lads,” they got in touch, and the rest . . . was history really.'.

What a strange timeline. Funny stuff.

 

[the sceptic]

good literary criticism Hitchs. I wonder if/when any of the cycling media is going to write a review of this book. (cyclingnews if you need a guest writer look no further than this thread)

No doubt the skyfans will embrace this as a cycling bible. The book of Walsh, or as I like to call it, the book of excuses. Whatever nasty things the haters might say about sky, there is an excuse ready.

 

[hrotha]

We need someone to put out an edition in verses, so that we can quote, say, Walsh 6, 38-39 in the future.

 

[The Hitch]

Walsh 3:16 says, "I just kissed your ***"

 

[Dazed and Confused]

From now on, I think it is wrong to call him Clentador or stuff like that

Passtador or Contaport

Just can't get proper marketing people these days. You ask them for a solid piece before the Xmas trade, and this is the result?

Never mind, the buyers won't care about the details.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Apparently Contador went down for bio passport?

Walsh sure knows his stuff!

What.

 

[jens_attacks]

What.

told you will love it

)))))))))))))))
pure genius


even if i like richie, kiry,froomey and lots of others from team sky, it will be very hard to cheer for them with things like cookson, brailsford and walsh happening.

riccardo ricco, pls come back!

 

[Benotti69]

So Froome is the new cycling Jesus according to Walsh!

 

[The Hitch]

Ha, hrotha, I always knew you were secretly a Contador fanboy

I should probably edit my post where I said Walsh compares Sky riders to inspirational figures from history and fiction. Add Jesus of Nazareth to Christopher Columbus, Henry V, Rocky Balboa and of course Tintin.

Definately goes under the fictional characters category though

 

[roundabout]

Leaving aside the blatant factual inaccuracy... is Walsh saying that Froome haters are Contador fans, who are ALSO Armstrong fans? How does that work?

he is not very wrong here

Though thanks to jens_attacks again Walsh gets this across in one of a more cringe-worthy ways imaginable

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Walsh 3:16 says, "I just kissed your ***"

Spit-take.

 

[LaFlorecita]

told you will love it

pure genius


even if i like richie, kiry,froomey and lots of others from team sky, it will be very hard to cheer for them with things like cookson, brailsford and walsh happening.

riccardo ricco, pls come back!

jensie I am a little scared

 

[LaFlorecita]

he is not very wrong here

Though thanks to jens_attacks again Walsh gets this across in one of a more cringe-worthy ways imaginable

All Froome haters are Lance fans
All Froome haters are Contador fans
Ergo all Lance fans are Contador fans

All three are wrong

 

[the sceptic]

I'll take that as a refusal to answer, then.

And once more, therefore, we're back to the fact that your position isn't a conclusion, it's a religious persuasion.

Martin. You look a bit silly with your vortexing now.

Now that most of the clinic has read the book and laughed at it, I think we can say that its a simple verifiable fact that Walsh is on the bandwagon.

What do you think Martin, still not sure? Want more facts?

Do you still have deep faith in Walsh?

 

[jens_attacks]

one thing is for sure, not even phil ligget went that far

 

[Parrulo]

Not that I was expecting a good book by any means, but the snippets I'm reading are just sad.

It trully is sad. I have been checking this thread daily and i always get so depressed at the passages being posted that i always end up doing other stuff like reading on football or EVEN STUDYING(!!!!) instead of replying.

Hilarious how no one mentions how he came to find out about JTL. It's like it never happened.

Hilarious how you can still defend Walsh after all this quotes from his book have been posted. Do you seriously not see the amount of BS that book contains? National bias never ceases to surprise me. . .

Walsh 3:16 says, "I just kissed your ***"

We really need to do that, any volunteers? We can put it all in a thread, stick it and quote it everywhere.

 

[Eshnar]

We really need to do that, any volunteers? We can put it all in a thread, stick it and quote it everywhere.

I'm sure Walsh would be delighted

 

[LaFlorecita]

We really need to do that, any volunteers? We can put it all in a thread, stick it and quote it everywhere.

That would be great

 

[Benotti69]

I'm sure Walsh would be delighted

No doubt he will be ecstatic when it is served cold back to him when Wigans spills the beans.

 

[Rollthedice]

Thanks everybody. Fantastic read. Walsh could have been the main columnist for Pravda during Stalin's rule.

 

[Digger]

Hey can we do that? let's start a new thread...no arguing, but just examples of inconsistencies and inaccuracies. As I say no debating.

 

[The Hitch]

No doubt he will be ecstatic when it is served cold back to him when Wigans spills the beans.

Ha. I can't believe you still think wiggins is going to voluntarily give up all his own money, his knighthood, his children's education and their future, his victories, everything he has spent and risked his life to achieve for absolutely no reason.

Thanks everybody. Fantastic read. Walsh could have been the main columnist for Pravda during Stalin's rule.

As I said yesterday, his portrayal of Brailsford and Froome are very similar to the portrayal in Stalinist and post Stalinist Eastern Europe by Soviet Propaganda of various handpicked heroic blue collar workers who in the name of communism were able to perform supernatural feats at work eg mine 100 tonnes of coal in a few hours or lay an entire city worth of bricks in a day etc.

 

[Parrulo]

I suggest:

1- All passages are added to OP by a mod so search for the right passage is easier
2- All passages should be named "walsh "Number of page":"number of page in chapter"

I know that the number of page in chapter could be annoying and i admit i don't really know how the book is structured but this would probably give most quotes a more accurate biblical name. Like Walsh 3:16 instead of Walsh 8:158, as imo it sounds better with only 3 numbers

What do you guys think?

What about the thread tittle?

 

[skidmark]

Aside from being terribly, terribly written from the excerpts that have been posted (overwrought, factually inaccurate, even worse use of hyperbole and metaphor than I'm used to for sports books) it seems to be a tremendous jerk-off of everything Sky related. Which is fine if you're being hired to write a rah-rah puff piece to inspire the masses, but having known Walsh only as the guy who did a decent job of investigative journalism against Armstrong when no one was willing to do so, this is an embarrassment.

Was LA Confidential this poorly written? Is his other work this fluffy? I've stayed out of this argument because I don't know enough to have a horse in the race and recognize that knowing more might mean caring which might mean getting immersed in the 2000 Sky threads, but holy crap this looks like a completely unobjective book.

 

[Rollthedice]

Add to that the capitalist pigs, here in the form of Contador and Riis. Chris Stakhanov works harder than any human being. It's straight out of propaganda manuals.