Kimmage on Wiggins, Sky

[msjett]

Froome makes Kimmage look like a hard hitting investigative journalist...with little or no effort on Kimmages part.

 

[will10]

Overall I think Kimmage asked a lot of what I was hoping he would. I wish he had pressed Froome a little more on 2011 pre-Vuelta - I think for many of us that is the key time period in CF's story. We have seen time and again riders pull off big rides in contract years - Kloden made a very long career out of it - why should we believe your story Chris? If it was me I'd be keen to convince everyone that my 'just-in-time' performance was legit - these are my power numbers leading up to the Vuelta, there was no large performance jump etc. Instead he barely sneaks onto the Sky Vuelta team before shocking everyone including those he was close to on the team.

Froome carried himself pretty well throughout the interview, unfortunately every time Paul had Chris on the ropes slightly, Michelle jumped in to save the day. I think it was very handy for Froome to have Michelle on hand to fill in the (embarrasingly large) gaps in his memory. Hell, this is a guy who has literally just released an autobiography, why the 'I don't recall' attitude? At times it feels like he could do with a copy of The Climb to hand to answer some of PK's questions.

Michelle strikes me as someone who is determined to "control the narrative", which on one hand is admirable (I wouldn't envy her jumping into a pit of sharks like The Clinic or on Twitter), but there's an element of Streisand effect sneaking in here - what are you fighting so hard to hide? Does Chris really need his hand holding throughout? Are you that worried about Chris saying something you'll have trouble arguing away?

 

[gillan1969]

I went to Glastonbury a few times and the weather was usually rubbish, but I vividly remember one Sunday afternoon there with glorious sunshine. I sat in front of the main stage and got to see Christy Moore, Van Morrisson, and Brian Wilson play one after the other, all knocking it out of the park. Christy Moore had some of the Planxty guys with him and Van Morrisson was in a good mood for once. I stayed in the one spot for hours and got burned to a crisp.

I was telling someone about this at the weekend and decided to look up what year it was. Turns out it didn't happen - it was actually multiple years I had merged together in my head. Ten years ago, while I was an adult.

There's lots to pick apart in this interview but recollections of Basso isn't one of them.

nah...that's cause you were stoned

 

[The Hitch]

I went to Glastonbury a few times and the weather was usually rubbish, but I vividly remember one Sunday afternoon there with glorious sunshine. I sat in front of the main stage and got to see Christy Moore, Van Morrisson, and Brian Wilson play one after the other, all knocking it out of the park. Christy Moore had some of the Planxty guys with him and Van Morrisson was in a good mood for once. I stayed in the one spot for hours and got burned to a crisp.

I was telling someone about this at the weekend and decided to look up what year it was. Turns out it didn't happen - it was actually multiple years I had merged together in my head. Ten years ago, while I was an adult.

There's lots to pick apart in this interview but recollections of Basso isn't one of them.

Your experience would be more valid to the discussion if you thought you saw all those acts on television and later found out through looking at old pictures you had actually been there.

Froome's mistake, once again, isn't that he mixed dates up, its that he told a story, in detail, that it turns out could not possibly have been true.

And as I said, as a one off incident it could be understandable. But its not the only occasion of Froome and others at Sky conveniently misremembering things.

 

[The Hitch]

So did Armstrong say he had trained for 5 hours straight before setting the Madone time?

MC: I mean, yeah, if you were to do Madone once every day for a week . . .

CF: Well, I think Lance even said that that time he set up Madone was at the end of a five-and-a-half hour training ride where he had been doing efforts and stuff. And then he came to the Madone and then set the fastest time up there. When we do the Madone now, we roll out from Monaco and go there within ten minutes and go straight into it when we’re fresh. So I mean, the sport has changed. The style of racing has changed.
- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/sport/oth...orm-part-2-30394950.html#sthash.rY0JeWZ4.dpuf

Doesn't say anything of the sort here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnAF652bWc

 

[thehog]

So did Armstrong say he had trained for 5 hours straight before setting the Madone time?


Doesn't say anything of the sort here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnAF652bWc

Reading the quote I see this:

The style of racing has changed.

Truth be told. The style or racing hasn't changed. It did for a little while but Sky in essense follow the USPS model of high tempo with the team and the leader attacking with their leader attacking the final climb.

If anything changed is that Froome attacks way more than Armstrong did. Armstrong tended to attack once. Froome just keeps attacking, leaves riderrs behind, catches others and attacks again.

He's a phenomenon.

 

[poupou]

Yes he is a phenomen that shows us how science has improved since Lance.

 

[lllludo]

TUE policy at SKY

If I remember well in Richard Moore's book "SKY is the limit" it is said that team SKY, at the beginning of the 2010 season, held a team meeting, with the riders and the doctors, in Manchester to discuss and define the team anti-doping policy
Surely Froome was attending the meeting and has been informed about the no TUE policy back then.
May be he can't recall with his bad memory ...

 

[Arnout]

Curious that a kid that started racing in 2001 didn't watch the Tour till 2002 / 2004 / whenever.

I have a cycling friend who used to be really competitive and into cycling (reallife has taken over now) yet never watched pro cycling.

 

[MartinGT]

There are some parts of this where he comes accross as a decent bloke. Then there are others where you think "WTF!"

I dont believe he has a bad memory. I think he has a selective memory.

 

[keeponrollin]

If I remember well in Richard Moore's book "SKY is the limit" it is said that team SKY, at the beginning of the 2010 season, held a team meeting, with the riders and the doctors, in Manchester to discuss and define the team anti-doping policy
Surely Froome was attending the meeting and has been informed about the no TUE policy back then.
May be he can't recall with his bad memory ...

Maybe we can ask Michelle ? She seems to be the one who is the expert on who said what & when.

Nice to see PK did ask about the power data, but Michelle butted in & interrupted, & diverted Dawg yet again, before Kimmage could continue

PK: Richard Freeman (a Team Sky doctor) told David Walsh that your performances had tripped an alarm in his head. He looked at your (blood) profiles and there was no inconsistency. But if you’ve had a parasite attacking your red cells, surely there should be (some inconsistency). Surely that should show up?

CF: I would imagine so. I don’t know what the blood passport looks like. I’ve never looked into it.

MC: I think if there were issues at all, the UCI would have raised it. They’re not going to take it for granted that it was in the media that Chris has had Bilharzia.

CF: Logic says your red blood cells would be lower because your haematocrit is being eaten by those parasites. I’d imagine if there were any changes to my normal (profile) it would probably still be within the parameters so . . .

MC: You definitely weren’t in the advanced stages of Bilharzia.

CF: I was pretty full on.

MC: But you weren’t in the advanced stages, so it wasn’t necessarily going to be eating that much of (the red cells). But it was definitely affecting your performance.

CF: Yeah, but I don’t think either one of us is qualified to say exactly what stage of Bilharzia (I was at). But as far as the blood passport is concerned; I don’t know what it looks like or anything, but I’d imagine if it was outside the parameters questions would have been asked.

PK: You would have no problem with anybody else looking at those profiles?

MC: Sorry?

PK: Would you have a problem with that? Because I know the team were asked about your power data last year during the Tour and released it (to Fred Grappe, a French Sports Performance expert) but the data was from after 2011 I think.

CF: I have training files I’d be able to show from before (2011) or even race files.

MC: Do you remember that coach you bumped into last year who did tests on you at Barloworld?

CF: No, that was the doctor. That was Mantovani.

 

[jens_attacks]

grande mantovani: doctor of both froomey and ricco
he still said that esteban chaves was the greatest he has ever seen on a climb

_O_

 

[Merckx index]

This is telling:

CF: I would imagine so. I don’t know what the blood passport looks like. I’ve never looked into it.

MC: I think if there were issues at all, the UCI would have raised it. They’re not going to take it for granted that it was in the media that Chris has had Bilharzia.

CF: Logic says your red blood cells would be lower because your haematocrit is being eaten by those parasites. I’d imagine if there were any changes to my normal (profile) it would probably still be within the parameters so . . .

MC: You definitely weren’t in the advanced stages of Bilharzia.

CF: I was pretty full on.

MC: But you weren’t in the advanced stages, so it wasn’t necessarily going to be eating that much of (the red cells). But it was definitely affecting your performance.

Michelle is clearly trying to establish that the disease was severe enough to affect his performance (hence could explain the great transformation), yet not severe enough to affect his passport. She doesn’t have a clue about whether that is even possible (if it affects his performance through its effect on blood, then of course it's going to affect the passport), but she’s determined to make that point, correcting Froome, who ought to know better about his own body state than she does.

And that Froome doesn’t know anything about the passport strikes me as weird. This is one of the most important anti-doping tools, every rider gets tested periodically, Froome himself complained that there wasn’t enough testing, yet “I’ve never looked into it.” He has no interest in knowing exactly what the passport involves, seriously? It’s never mentioned in team meetings?

If I were a DS, when the passport first went into effect, I would have held a team meeting and explained to every rider in detail exactly what the passport measures, and why, what the significance of the parameters is, how a violation is determined. It doesn't matter if everyone on the team is squeaky clean, and would never consider blood doping. Your blood parameters can vary considerably for other reasons (which is why a panel of experts is called in when the parameters trigger the criteria suggesting doping). I would want every rider on the team aware of this. And if I were a rider who had just discovered I had a disease that usually results in a significant lowering of hemoglobin levels, of course I would spend an enormous amount of time learning as much as I could about how the disease does this, how large the effect is, and how it might impact the passport.

Again and again and again we see a team that prides itself in paying attention to details ignoring gaps in their knowledge big enough to drive a truck through.

 

[thrawn]

This is telling:



Michelle is clearly trying to establish that the disease was severe enough to affect his performance (hence could explain the great transformation), yet not severe enough to affect his passport. She doesn’t have a clue about whether that is even possible (if it affects his performance through its effect on blood, then of course its going to affect the passport), but she’s determined to make that point, correcting Froome, who ought to know better about his own body state than she does.

And that Froome doesn’t know anything about the passport strikes me as weird. This is one of the most important anti-doping tools, every rider gets tested periodically, Froome himself complained that there wasn’t enough testing, yet “I’ve never looked into it.” He has no interest in knowing exactly what the passport involves, seriously? It’s never mentioned in team meetings?

Might be a good topic to ask JV about next time he's around - how aware riders are of their own biological passport etc.

 

[del1962]

This is telling:



Michelle is clearly trying to establish that the disease was severe enough to affect his performance (hence could explain the great transformation), yet not severe enough to affect his passport. She doesn’t have a clue about whether that is even possible (if it affects his performance through its effect on blood, then of course it's going to affect the passport), but she’s determined to make that point, correcting Froome, who ought to know better about his own body state than she does.

And that Froome doesn’t know anything about the passport strikes me as weird. This is one of the most important anti-doping tools, every rider gets tested periodically, Froome himself complained that there wasn’t enough testing, yet “I’ve never looked into it.” He has no interest in knowing exactly what the passport involves, seriously? It’s never mentioned in team meetings?

If I were a DS, when the passport first went into effect, I would have held a team meeting and explained to every rider in detail exactly what the passport measures, and why, what the significance of the parameters is, how a violation is determined. It doesn't matter if everyone on the team is squeaky clean, and would never consider blood doping. Your blood parameters can vary considerably for other reasons (which is why a panel of experts is called in when the parameters trigger the criteria suggesting doping). I would want every rider on the team aware of this. And if I were a rider who had just discovered I had a disease that usually results in a significant lowering of hemoglobin levels, of course I would spend an enormous amount of time learning as much as I could about how the disease does this, how large the effect is, and how it might impact the passport.

Again and again and again we see a team that prides itself in paying attention to details ignoring gaps in their knowledge big enough to drive a truck through.

If you are not O2 vector doping, why would you need to know how the passport works?

If I was wanting to run a clean team, I would just ask my riders to give samples and not have them worry about the specifics of the passport.

 

[thehog]

If you are not O2 vector doping, why would you need to know how the passport works?

If I was wanting to run a clean team, I would just ask my riders to give samples and not have them worry about the specifics of the passport.

I'm a man of constant marginal gains who's suffered from debilitating blood related illnesses and trains at altitude. But I have no interest in my passport?

Riiiiiight.

Which is in contrast to Brailsford on Heano.

“In our latest monthly review, our experts had questions about Sergio’s out-of-competition control tests at altitude — tests introduced this winter by the anti-doping authorities. We need to understand these readings better,” team principal Dave Brailsford said in a team release.

“We contacted the relevant authorities — the UCI and CADF [the UCI’s Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation] — pointed to these readings and asked whether they could give us any insights. We’ve also taken Sergio out of our race program whilst we get a better understanding of these profiles and his physiology.”


http://velonews.competitor.com/2014...oping-test-results_320639#AdsGIklQzv5ODBax.99

 

[del1962]

I'm a man of constant marginal gains who's suffered from debilitating blood related illnesses and train at altitude. But I have no interest in my passport?

Riiiiiight.

Which is in contrast to Brailsford on Heano.

Brailsford should be interested in the BP, to check that his riders aren't doping, however the riders themselves should not, why would they if they are not doping

 

[red_flanders]

PK: Richard Freeman (a Team Sky doctor) told David Walsh that your performances had tripped an alarm in his head. He looked at your (blood) profiles and there was no inconsistency. But if you’ve had a parasite attacking your red cells, surely there should be (some inconsistency). Surely that should show up?

CF: I would imagine so. I don’t know what the blood passport looks like. I’ve never looked into it.

MC: I think if there were issues at all, the UCI would have raised it. They’re not going to take it for granted that it was in the media that Chris has had Bilharzia.

CF: Logic says your red blood cells would be lower because your haematocrit is being eaten by those parasites. I’d imagine if there were any changes to my normal (profile) it would probably still be within the parameters so . . .

MC: You definitely weren’t in the advanced stages of Bilharzia.

CF: I was pretty full on.

MC: But you weren’t in the advanced stages, so it wasn’t necessarily going to be eating that much of (the red cells). But it was definitely affecting your performance.

CF: Yeah, but I don’t think either one of us is qualified to say exactly what stage of Bilharzia (I was at). But as far as the blood passport is concerned; I don’t know what it looks like or anything, but I’d imagine if it was outside the parameters questions would have been asked.

PK: You would have no problem with anybody else looking at those profiles?

MC: Sorry?

PK: Would you have a problem with that? Because I know the team were asked about your power data last year during the Tour and released it (to Fred Grappe, a French Sports Performance expert) but the data was from after 2011 I think.

CF: I have training files I’d be able to show from before (2011) or even race files.

MC: Do you remember that coach you bumped into last year who did tests on you at Barloworld?

CF: No, that was the doctor. That was Mantovani.

I don't know how anyone could read that exchange and conclude anything other than they're lying. There's just so much evasion in that exchange.

Remarkable.

 

[hiero2]

Just leave it Hitch, that bait isn't even fresh enough to catch crabs...

Oooooooo - I used to use chicken parts left out for 3 days to catch crabs! Smelly! they loved it!

 

[The Hitch]

I don't know how anyone could read that exchange and conclude anything other than they're lying. There's just so much evasion in that exchange.

Remarkable.

MC: I think if there were issues at all, the UCI would have raised it. They’re not going to take it for granted that it was in the media that Chris has had Bilharzia.

Only it wasn't in the media. Chris didn't reveal he had Bilharzia until the last day of August 2011 and that was a very small story that made about 2 cycling websites and only expanded on a month after.

So if the uci saw any changes between 2008 and September 2011, they would not have known froome had bilharzia. And it they had googled froome illness they would have gotten an interview where he said he felt fine and spoke only of a chest infection he had for a couple of days

 

[I Love To Dope]

Brailsford should be interested in the BP, to check that his riders aren't doping, however the riders themselves should not, why would they if they are not doping

Oh, this crucial data tool that I have to use to maintain credibility as a clean cyclist? Of course I won't need to know how it works.

 

[Bannockburn]

How can one have gone through, reportedly, a fairly abundant amount of formal treatment for a career-hindering disease and not be able to be fully clear on how advanced the disease was? You'd think the doctor(s) would have, you know, mentioned that at some point.

 

[del1962]

Oh, this crucial data took that I have to use to maintain credibility as a clean cyclist? Of course he wouldn't need to know how it worked.

Other than those who are trying to catch dopers, the only people that need to know how it works are dopers though surely?

 

[thehog]

Other than those who are trying to catch dopers, the only people that need to know how it works are dopers though surely?

I mean surely, you must be right?!

Why know about something that could mean you're sidelined from racing for a long periods not knowing if it was sickness, altitude etc. that caused the readings.

Don't be so absurd. He said he didn't know about because he didn't want to respond to the Badzhilla question eating red blood cells.

What was the statement he made? "The reverse of EPO"?

Unbelievable.

 

[del1962]

Does the bloodpassport not take into account altitude and sickness?

Does Bilharzia eat red blood cells though?

If it does how would it effect the passport?

I would be more worried about a cyclist who knew about all the intracies of the blood passport, because to dope they (or whoever was helping them) would have to know these things.