gooner said:
I don't deny he may have come across a couple of stories over the years and have already said that. He's a journalist for over 20 years and I'd be amazed if he hadn't. That being said there is a still a lot of myth going around on his work. Lance is the prime example which I have pointed out and you've been found out over-hyping it with many of the names above. I notice you didn't respond to my corrections. Just the other week, I seen on the Irish Independent, they were saying on the back of the O'Driscoll fallout his columns were why Lance took legal action against the Sunday Times.
Being outspoken and investigative is 2 different things. The latter helps us to form better opinions. He's more a brilliant interviewer.
Kimmage told Walsh not to report inside Sky at the start of the year whereby he would be better at doing it from the outside. Hypocritical considering he once was going to do it himself but that's a different matter. I ask if it's better to do it from the outside, what has he achieved? You can try and deflect it to Walsh but since he has been back at work last October, not one column has been written by Kimmage on the topic of questioning Sky. In the same time Walsh has disclosed JTL/passport and written columns criticising Sky for the signing of him along with Rogers. Kimmage has burned a lot of bridges with Sky and with some journalists in the media world, I'm not so sure that is quite the way to go about getting the substance behind a story. Kimmage asked a question during the Tour last summer about Leinders and I remember around here it was the reaction that Kimmage was the only one asking the tough questions. The Leinders topic was covered incessantly the previous year to that and questioned by many journalists, even some of the British ones.
Walsh has deserved criticism(I still think it's OTT) and some of his reasoning doesn't add up but I don't buy either that you have to be "embedded" to still ask questions on tramadol. If Kimmage wanted to do that, he could have easily done so. Jeremy Whittle had no problem in doing it.
As I have pointed out in the past, Kimmage had access to Garmin and even more access to Dan Martin and he has not discovered anything nefarious or called them out on anything even though people are sure Garmin are doping.
Kimmage has still never ever said that Kelly, Roche or Earley doped. Why has he never called them out when Kelly and Roche are still regarded as heros in Ireland and are used in numerous event's for PR purposes. Surely that must rankle with him.
I will say Kimmage was the first person I seen question Armstrong in 99, well it wasn't that he questioned him, rather he refused to line up to pay adulation like a lot of other journalists. He wrote a piece in Procycling magazine in 99 when he hailed Bassons as his hero of the 99 Tour. I never really seen him call out Armstrong afterward until the comeback in 2009.
A lot of people also misrepresent why Kimmage quit his career saying he was cheated out of the sport when that is patently false. Let's be clear here, Kimmage quit because he couldn't handle being average, he knew even if he took drugs he would still have been average so as he had the option of the career in journalism, he opted for that.
In Rough Ride, he stated plainly that after the Giro in 89, everything was rosy for the first time in his career and that he would have a contract as long as Roche was around. However he decided then he didn't want that and was going to quit at the end of the season before actually quitting at the Tour. Considering Roche took quite a few riders from Fagor to Histor to Tonton Tapis(still sounds bizarre now) Kimmage would have got at least a few more years out of his career.
I respect Kimmage for many things but the way he is hailed by Digger and a few other's here is plainly ridiculous as Kimmage has shown a inconsistent approach to the subject of doping in his jornalistic career. One minute all over it and then might not mention it or get involved for ages. If he were the anti-doping advocate he is made out to be, anti-doping would be his main subject most of the time.