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Is Walsh on the Sky bandwagon?

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JMBeaushrimp said:
That's the thing, isn't it.

All of these choads have been media trained to a certain degree.

Thanks for the hard digging, David.

Truly an unparalleled investigative journalist...

But also what else would you say about your employer to a journalist?

You're not going to rat your own team out!

Did Walsh think a cyclist would start complaining? Or say the food was better at Cassie?

Publicly you stay true to your paymaster. That is a given.

Anyone would do that. In fact in most organisations your not allowed to say anything to a journalist. It's law.
 
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thehog said:
But also what else would you say about your employer to a journalist?

You're not going to rat your own team out!

Did Walsh think a cyclist would start complaining? Or say the food was better at Cassie?

Publicly you stay true to your paymaster. That is a given.

Anyone would do that. In fact in most organisations your not allowed to say anything to a journalist. It's law.

I particularly loved his "Leinders didn't say anything after he left, so things are obviously on the up and up" story.

Leinders didn't have a confidentiality agreement in his contract?

Seriously, just stfu!
 
JMBeaushrimp said:
I particularly loved his "Leinders didn't say anything after he left, so things are obviously on the up and up" story.

Leinders didn't have a confidentiality agreement in his contract?

Seriously, just stfu!

Oh of course.

You just can't stop those doping doctors from gossiping! Catty littles b1tches they are :cool:
 
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thehog said:
Oh of course.

You just can't stop those doping doctors from gossiping! Catty littles b1tches they are :cool:

From what I hear; Leinders, Ceyala, Fuentes, Ferrari, and a couple of other buddies like to winter in Mallorca and watch cooking shows together...
 
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JMBeaushrimp said:
From the interview:

"I think your question is an absolutely valid one and the answer is no, I'm not intimately acquainted with how other coaches in other teams operate. But I did listen to the Sky riders who came from other teams, and to a man, they all said the training at Team Sky was on another level to other teams."

As many have said before: PURE AWESOMENESS!

The Hitch said:
Were any of those guys team leaders? Because its one thing for Walsh to make an argument that guys like Kiriyenka or Lopez train harder at Sky. How he can work out from that how hard Contador, Quintana, Nibali train (the riders who actually matter when it comes to discussing Froome) I don't know.

Wait a minute. Does this mean Walsh talked to Froome, and Froome said the training at Sky was better than at Barloworld? And how does that compute with Froome's power numbers being the same as at Barloworld?

Or Walsh only talked to the grunts & not to the vaunted Froome, Wiggins, and Porte about how Sky compared to their previous teams? Because I'd think you'd at least want to talk to those who made the biggest jumps at Sky, and that group ought to include Froome.

Also: is Sky post-August 2011 not radically better at training techniques than Original Recipe Sky? How to explain the performance jumps? OK, Wiggo was riding well at Garmin, but Froome is just an outlier any way you look at it. :confused:
 
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Beech Mtn said:
Wait a minute. Does this mean Walsh talked to Froome, and Froome said the training at Sky was better than at Barloworld? And how does that compute with Froome's power numbers being the same as at Barloworld?

Or Walsh only talked to the grunts & not to the vaunted Froome, Wiggins, and Porte about how Sky compared to their previous teams? Because I'd think you'd at least want to talk to those who made the biggest jumps at Sky, and that group ought to include Froome.

Also: is Sky post-August 2011 not radically better at training techniques than Original Recipe Sky? How to explain the performance jumps? OK, Wiggo was riding well at Garmin, but Froome is just an outlier any way you look at it. :confused:

Yes.
---------
 
skidmark said:
Dear god, David Walsh you are embarrassing yourself. Egregious errors in that interview:

- denying that Brailsford used Gonzales' death as an excuse, when that information is easily findable;

- using the 'he's not the kind of person who would dope' excuse as if Lance Armstrong was the only person who ever doped (hmm, what if Walsh had been 'embedded' with Tyler Hamilton and Christian Vande Velde and Dave Z on Postal?);

- using asinine examples like the (already classic in the realm of mini-memes on the clinic) 'Lopez didn't know you weren't supposed to eat Nutella on this superior team' to insultingly suggest this is why Sky is the best at a sport as demanding as cycling;

- brushing off the idea that people are suspicious of Sky only 'because they succeed' like US Postal, rather than the fact that their 2 Tour winners each underwent miraculous transformations;

- implying that if they were doping he would know it, seemingly using the same standards by which one would find teams were doping in the early 2000s, when riders still didn't feel like they had to go to great lengths to hide it and it was wide open enough that team-sponsored doping was well known in the peloton;

- using the 'I don't think it's fair to go digging into everyone's past' to brush away the problematic elements of Sky's 'zero tolerance' PR. Good 'investigative journalism' there, fanboy.

Seriously, I want to keep an open mind about Sky, I truly do. But they bury themselves time and again by Brailsford's half-truths and ultra-controlled information release, and then Walsh shoots himself and them in the foot by sounding disingenuous and hypocritical. I liked him because he 'stood up' to Armstrong, but I realize now that his career as an investigative journalist is in pursuit of whatever suits him best at the time. It doesn't take much to say 'there's this blindingly obvious thing that everyone knows! I'm going to write a book about it!' (in fact, it's shocking that others didn't do that either) Investigative journalism, in my understanding, is supposed to involve being skeptical and digging for alternate viewpoints, not hanging out with people who have every interest in appearing great and saying 'they're cool, I know because I hung out with them'.

Did anyone actually read the book and see if there are any passages where he talks to someone that's not on Sky? He talks about disgruntled employees in the interview, but does he say anything about them in the book?

I forgot to mention that is is a very perceptive and we'll written post that correctly identifies, with significantly fewer words than I usually do, the 2 big elephants in the sky press room- performance and continuous refusal to be honest.
 
The Hitch said:
So according to Walsh this was 6.4 w/kg?

2vv6vq1.jpg

No, it was 450W or whatever, nowadays he still does 450W but having lost 10% weight he climbs 10% better. Losing all that weight changed his body shape and improved his aerodynamic efficiency thus he also gained 10% in TTs.
 
Ferminal said:
No, it was 450W or whatever, nowadays he still does 450W but having lost 10% weight he climbs 10% better. Losing all that weight changed his body shape and improved his aerodynamic efficiency thus he also gained 10% in TTs.
Looking back at that video it's a good thing Gerrans didn't stay at Sky long enough to benefit from marginal gains - he'd win all 5 monuments and La Vuelta while riding a tricycle :D
 
thehog said:
According to the Walsh Newstalk interview the Sky riders were disgusted when they saw Ryder Hesjedal drinking a beer on the rest day.

Appears Sky can drink alcohol (on a race day) but others can't? :confused:

6teool.jpg

Amazing.

On an unrelated note, interesting how much they all celebrate ventoux. Froome won something like 12 races just in the build up to the tour, Porte another 5 or so, they did the same with Wiggins last year, did a 1-2 in the tour and in the first mtf their third choice rider showed himself to be also miles better than the next best non sky rider.

Did they expect froome, who floored everyone already as a poorly prepared domestique the year before to not beat all these riders riding like it's 2011? After taking over a minute on ax 3. The tdf is like a video game on beginner mode for sky. that section makes it look like they didnt know froome was going to win ventoux. Which considering how the last 2 years have gone is stupid.
 
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LaFlorecita said:
Yea I remember it. He said that Team Sky, scientifically, was on a slightly higher level than other teams. He also said Saxo was getting there. Rogers said the same.

"Scientifically":rolleyes:

indeed. There are so many hints that suggest chemical enhancement.
Sky must be laughing so hard at the fanboys for not picking up the clues.
They practically do everything but say it out loud.
Rather amusing...:D
 
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I'm not a Sky fanboy, I'm not of the opinion Walsh is the greatest writer either, but I think the stick he's getting here is way over the top. As is the assumptive 'given' that Sky are doping according to some here. Some of his comments don't help his cause, Sky don't always help their own either. But how do you prove a negative, especially when it's possible the negative isn't even there to be proven?

Too many of the accusations are poorly thought out, and conveniently dropped or twisted when they don't suit. "Oh Sky deliberatly performed poorly today to avoid suspicion". Absolutely nonsensical

This will no doubt go down like a lead balloon, but don't for a second think your bitterness and contmpt is shared by all, or that anyone who gives them the benefit in the absence of hard evidence (and remember, Walsh had shed loads of evidence in persuit of Armstrong when no one else wanted to know) is a fanboy
 
BradCantona said:
I'm not a Sky fanboy, I'm not of the opinion Walsh is the greatest writer either, but I think the stick he's getting here is way over the top. As is the assumptive 'given' that Sky are doping according to some here. Some of his comments don't help his cause, Sky don't always help their own either. But how do you prove a negative, especially when it's possible the negative isn't even there to be proven?

Too many of the accusations are poorly thought out, and conveniently dropped or twisted when they don't suit. "Oh Sky deliberatly performed poorly today to avoid suspicion". Absolutely nonsensical

This will no doubt go down like a lead balloon, but don't for a second think your bitterness and contmpt is shared by all, or that anyone who gives them the benefit in the absence of hard evidence (and remember, Walsh had shed loads of evidence in persuit of Armstrong when no one else wanted to know) is a fanboy

Now the Sky apologists have reached stage four of the Armstrong play book, the "everyone who disbelieves is bitter and jealous" stage.

People are giving Walsh stick because his writing and interviews are filled with lies. The Nutella thing is hilarious when people can pull up pictures of Sky's stash of Nutella in its service course.

Walsh is an old dude who has not adjusted to the modern reality that anything said can easily be checked. He is living in the past where public figures could tell outrageous whoppers and it took work to figure out they were misleading the public. Now anyone with a spare minute and a smart phone can determine Walsh' rhetoric is a fabric of lies.
 
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"A fabric of lies"

That's definative is it? Couldn't be a mistake, human error, wrong end of the stick? That horrible, dastardly 'lie' he tells about the Tour taking place late July eh... only goes to show Sky are doping right?

I was convinced Armstrong doped by the evidence Walsh helped compile. Even then, I didn't buy all of his arguments. Some, like speed up a climb, used against him now (and it's fair criticism having used the argument the other way before), just aren't strong enough to constitute evidence. That's part of the reason I don't think he's the greatest writer. But if he can't find hard evidence, can't find people to speak out, can't get hold of doped blood samples... what can he do other than write a book about how Sky seem clean?
 
The Hitch said:
Amazing.

On an unrelated note, interesting how much they all celebrate ventoux. Froome won something like 12 races just in the build up to the tour, Porte another 5 or so, they did the same with Wiggins last year, did a 1-2 in the tour and in the first mtf their third choice rider showed himself to be also miles better than the next best non sky rider.

Did they expect froome, who floored everyone already as a poorly prepared domestique the year before to not beat all these riders riding like it's 2011? After taking over a minute on ax 3. The tdf is like a video game on beginner mode for sky. that section makes it look like they didnt know froome was going to win ventoux. Which considering how the last 2 years have gone is stupid.

With all those victories they must have been drunk 24/7! :eek:
 
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BradCantona said:
That horrible, dastardly 'lie' he tells about the Tour taking place late July eh... only goes to show Sky are doping right?
your words, brad.

I was convinced Armstrong doped by the evidence Walsh helped compile.
the point being?

Even then, I didn't buy all of his arguments. Some, like speed up a climb, used against him now (and it's fair criticism having used the argument the other way before), just aren't strong enough to constitute evidence.
who's talking about evidence except you?

That's part of the reason I don't think he's the greatest writer. But if he can't find hard evidence, can't find people to speak out, can't get hold of doped blood samples... what can he do other than write a book about how Sky seem clean?
read the thread first. lots of ideas there.
 

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